Google Search Console for a brand-new site: what to do on day one
Verify by DNS, submit one sitemap, inspect a few pages, then wait. What each report means in the first week, and the one early error worth fixing at once.
A new site has almost nothing to show in Search Console for the first few days, and that is normal. What you do on day one is set it up so that, when data arrives, it is about the right URLs.
Day one
- Add a Domain property and verify it with the DNS TXT record Google gives you. It covers www and every protocol at once.
- Submit exactly one sitemap, at its full URL:
https://example.com/sitemap.xml. A domain property rejects a baresitemap.xml. - Use URL Inspection on the homepage and two or three key pages. It works immediately, even while other reports say they are processing.
- Request indexing for those few pages. Leave the rest to the sitemap.
Reading the first inspections
| Message | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| URL is on Google | Done. Nothing to do. |
| URL is unknown to Google | Not crawled yet, or you published a URL that redirects |
| Alternative page with proper canonical tag | Your canonical points somewhere else. Check it is the URL that returns 200 |
| Crawled, currently not indexed | Google saw it and chose not to index it yet. Improve it and wait |
The second and third rows on a brand-new site are often one bug: canonicals and sitemap entries that do not match the URL the server actually answers. We had exactly that, and wrote it up in the trailing slash that kept our pages out of Google.
The first week
Check the Enhancements section once structured data is read. Ours showed product snippets, merchant listings and breadcrumbs as valid with zero errors, which is the confirmation that the markup is right. Then leave it. Refreshing daily does not speed Google up. Pushing to Bing is a separate step, covered in IndexNow.
Questions
Domain property or URL-prefix property?
A domain property, verified by a DNS TXT record, covers every subdomain and both http and https in one place. Use a URL-prefix property only if you cannot add DNS records.
Why does Search Console say 'Processing data, please check again in a day or so'?
The property is new. Most reports need a day or more of data. URL Inspection works immediately, so use that for specific pages in the meantime.
Should I request indexing for every page?
No. There is a small daily quota, and the sitemap is how Google finds pages at scale. Request indexing for a few important pages, especially after fixing an error on them.