Guide · October 2026 · 10 minutes, free forever

Google Search Console: the free tool that tells you how people find you

Every time someone in your town types "plumber near me" or "geiser repair Worcester" into Google, Google keeps a record. Search Console is the free tool that hands you those records for your website: what people searched, how often you appeared, and whether they clicked. It's the difference between guessing and knowing.

Why bother?

• You see the actual searches. Not what you think people type — what they really type. That tells you which words belong on your pages.
• It warns you when something breaks. If Google can't read a page, or your site vanishes from results, Search Console emails you. Without it, you find out months later from the silence.
• It's how you submit a sitemap. Handing Google a list of your pages gets them indexed faster than waiting to be discovered.
• It's free. Google built it; it costs nothing, forever.

Set it up in 10 minutes

• 1. Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with any Google account.
• 2. Choose "URL prefix" and enter your full address — e.g. https://yourbusiness.co.za (the https and any www matter — copy it exactly from your browser bar).
• 3. Verify it's yours. Google offers a few methods; the easiest with most SA hosts is the HTML file one: Google gives you a small file to download, you upload it to your website's main folder (your host's file manager or your web person can do this in two minutes), then click Verify. GoMarty client? Skip the fiddly part — log in to your dashboard, upload the file Google gives you, and we place it on your site automatically. Then click Verify in Search Console and you're done. (And if you're on a GoMarty site, we may already have verified it on our side — your own verification still works alongside ours; neither cancels the other.)
• 4. Once verified, submit your sitemap: in the left menu choose Sitemaps, type sitemap.xml, submit. Done.

What to look at once a month

• Performance → Search results. Your "queries" — the real phrases. Appearing but nobody clicks? Your page title needs work. Not appearing for your trade + town at all? Your page content needs work.
• Pages (Indexing). Green = Google can see your pages. Anything grey or red here is a quiet leak in your visibility.

That's genuinely it. Ten minutes to set up, ten minutes a month to read, and you'll know more about your online visibility than most of your competitors ever will.