Google Search Console lives at search.google.com/search-console. Sign in with any Google account, then add and verify your website through DNS records, HTML file upload, Google Analytics linking, or Google Tag Manager. Once verified, you'll land on the Overview dashboard showing impressions, clicks, and indexing status for that property. If you manage multiple sites, the property selector in the top-left corner switches between them. Each property shows separate data, so verify both the www and non-www versions if you haven't set up a canonical preference, though Google typically consolidates them automatically now. For agencies running portfolios like we do at Ottawa SEO, bookmark the property selector page because scrolling through 500+ domains gets tedious. Use Chrome profiles or separate Google accounts to compartmentalize client access, and set up user permissions under Settings so clients can view their own data without touching verification or settings. The main sections you'll use: - Performance: Query data, CTR, average position over the last 16 months - Coverage/Page Indexing: What Google indexed, what it rejected, and why - Enhancements: Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, structured data errors - Manual Actions: Penalty notifications that tank rankings overnight Most practitioners check Performance weekly for query trends and Coverage after pushing new content or fixing crawl errors. If you're troubleshooting why pages aren't ranking, Coverage usually tells you if Google even sees them. Manual Actions require immediate attention, though they're rare if you're not buying links or cloaking content. One gotcha: Search Console data has a 2–3 day lag and sampled historical queries past 1,000 rows in the UI. Export CSVs for deeper analysis or use the API if you're tracking hundreds of keywords. The console won't replace rank trackers, but it's the only source for actual Google impression and click data, making it irreplaceable for diagnosing indexing issues and understanding search demand.