Key Takeaways
- Search Console shows you pre-click data — what searches you appear in, impressions, and click-through rates.
- The Performance report reveals which keywords are bringing you traffic and which have high impressions but low clicks (opportunity).
- The Coverage report tells you whether Google can successfully index all your pages — problems here directly suppress rankings.
- Submitting a sitemap in Search Console helps Google discover new content faster.
If you've set up Google Analytics for your Ontario business website (and you should have), you're measuring what happens once people arrive on your site. Google Search Console fills in the gap before that point: it shows you what's happening in Google's search results that you're never seeing from the Analytics side. Search Console was called Google Webmaster Tools until May 2015 — but the name change also came with significant improvements to the interface and data. The tool now provides a clearer picture of search performance and makes it much more accessible for non-technical business owners to understand what Google is seeing when it crawls your website. This guide focuses on the handful of reports that actually matter for Ontario small business owners.
Definition: Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free web service by Google that allows website owners to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their site's presence in Google Search results. It provides data on search performance (impressions, clicks, rankings), crawling and indexing status, mobile usability, and structured data validity. Unlike Google Analytics (which measures user behaviour on your site), Search Console measures your site's performance within Google's search engine.
The Performance Report: The Most Useful Data in Search Console
The Performance report shows you exactly which searches are triggering your website's appearance in Google — and which ones are almost getting you traffic but not quite.
The Performance report is where most Ontario business owners should spend most of their Search Console time. It shows four key metrics: Total Clicks (how many times someone clicked your listing), Total Impressions (how many times your site appeared in results, even if the user didn't scroll to see it), Average Click-Through Rate (what percentage of impressions result in clicks), and Average Position (where your listing appears on average).
The most actionable insight comes from sorting by impressions and looking for pages or queries that have high impressions but low click-through rates. This pattern means: Google is showing your site for this search, but searchers aren't choosing to click your listing. The fix is usually improving your page title or meta description to be more compelling and more specifically relevant to the query. For Ontario businesses, adding your city name to titles of pages that appear for local searches often increases CTR significantly.
Filter the data by page to see which specific pages on your site are getting the most search traffic — and which important service pages are getting none. If your Hamilton furnace repair page has zero impressions, either Google hasn't indexed it or it's not ranking for any relevant searches. Both have specific solutions.
The Coverage Report: Making Sure Google Can Index Your Pages
If Google can't crawl and index a page, that page cannot rank — the Coverage report tells you if there are any indexing problems.
The Coverage report shows which of your pages Google has successfully indexed, which have been excluded, and which have errors. For most Ontario small business websites with a properly configured CMS, the large majority of pages should show as 'Valid' (indexed). Issues arise when pages are accidentally marked as 'noindex' in the code, when your server returns errors, or when new content isn't being discovered because it lacks internal links.
Pay particular attention to any 'Error' or 'Valid with warnings' entries. Errors mean Google tried to access the page and couldn't — these pages are not ranking for anything. Warnings like 'Submitted URL not found' or 'Redirect error' indicate pages that were previously indexed but are now returning the wrong status code. Both require technical attention to resolve.
When you publish new service pages or blog posts, submitting your sitemap (or individual URLs) through Search Console speeds up how quickly Google discovers and indexes them. Without submission, a new page might take weeks to be discovered on a low-traffic site. With submission, it often happens within a day or two.
Mobile Usability and Other Reports Worth Knowing
Post-Mobilegeddon, mobile usability issues in Search Console can directly explain drops in your Ontario rankings.
Since Google's April 2015 mobile-friendliness update (what the industry called 'Mobilegeddon'), mobile usability has a direct impact on rankings. The Mobile Usability report in Search Console shows specific issues Google found when evaluating your site on mobile devices — things like text too small to read, clickable elements too close together, or content wider than the screen. Each of these issues has a direct negative effect on your mobile search rankings.
The Links report is also useful, showing you which websites are linking to yours (backlinks) and which of your own pages have the most internal links pointing to them. For local SEO, seeing which Ontario directories and local news sites link to your business is valuable intelligence about where your authority comes from and where there may be gaps.
Finally, if you've implemented structured data (Schema markup) on your Ontario business website, the Enhancements section of Search Console will show you whether Google has successfully parsed that markup and whether there are any errors that might be preventing rich results from appearing.
Experience Signal
When we take on a new SEO client in Ontario, Search Console is the first tool we look at — before the site, before Analytics, before anything else. It gives the most honest picture of the relationship between the website and Google. We've found pages that were accidentally blocking Google with a noindex tag, discovered that a client's most important service page had been excluded from the index due to a redirect error, and identified keyword opportunities where a client was ranking position 8 and getting almost no clicks but would get substantial traffic with a move to position 3–4.
Frequently Asked Questions
Google Analytics tells you what visitors do after they arrive on your website — how many came, where they came from, which pages they visited, and whether they converted. Google Search Console tells you what happens before they arrive — what searches your site appears in, how often people click your listing, what your average ranking position is, and any technical issues Google encountered when crawling your site. Both tools are free and complementary.
Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with your Google account. Click 'Add property' and enter your website URL. Google will ask you to verify ownership — the easiest methods are adding an HTML file to your server, adding a meta tag to your homepage, or connecting via your Google Analytics account (which is already verified). Once verified, data starts accumulating within a few days.
A monthly check is sufficient for most Ontario small businesses. Look at the Performance report (impressions, clicks and average position), the Coverage report (indexing errors), and the Mobile Usability report. If you've recently changed your website or launched new content, check more frequently — Search Console is often where you first see whether new pages are being indexed and how they're performing in search.
Sources
Want Help Making Sense of Your Search Console Data?
Webnixon runs technical SEO audits using Search Console data for Ontario businesses — identifying indexing issues, keyword opportunities, and mobile usability problems that are costing you rankings.
Get a Technical SEO AuditAbout the author
Rutul Shah
Founder & CEO
Rutul founded Webnixon in 2012 and has spent over 15 years at the intersection of technology and digital marketing. He has managed more than $700,000 in Google Ads spend, built local SEO programs for 30+ service businesses, and architected ecommerce platforms on Magento and Shopify for clients across North America. He writes about paid search strategy, SEO, analytics, and emerging technology for business.
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