Google Search Console for dentists: set-up and what to read

Google Search Console for dentists is the free Google tool that shows which searches put your practice website in front of people, how often they click, and whether Google can find and index your pages. If you only set up one Google tool for your website, make it this one. It answers the questions every practice owner asks, such as "do we show up for implants?" and "why did the phones go quiet in March?", with Google's own data instead of guesswork.

This guide covers how to get access, how to verify your practice website, the five reports worth reading, and the mistakes that make the numbers misleading.

What Google Search Console is, in one paragraph

Search Console is Google's reporting tool for website owners. It shows how your site performs in Google Search: the search terms that showed it, the clicks it earned, the pages Google has indexed, and any problems Google found. It does not change your rankings by itself and it costs nothing. Google describes the core figures in its Performance report help page: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position.

It is different from Google Analytics. Analytics tells you what people did once they reached your site. Search Console tells you what happened in Google before they arrived, including all the times you appeared and nobody clicked. A practice needs both, and the two can be linked so the search data appears inside Analytics.

How do I access Google Search Console?

Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with a Google account. That is the Google Search Console login. There is no separate sign-up and no fee. Once signed in, you add your website as a "property" and prove you control it.

Use a Google account the practice owns, ideally a shared practice mailbox that survives staff changes, rather than one person's personal Gmail. You can add colleagues and your web developer later as users.

Has someone already set up a Google Search Console account for you?

Quite possibly. Many practice websites were built by a developer or agency who verified the site in their own account. Ask them. If they did, ask to be added as an owner. Google's users and permissions page explains that owners have full control, can add and remove other users and can see all data, while full and restricted users can only view and act within limits. The practice should hold at least one owner seat, so the data stays with you if you change supplier.

How to verify site ownership

Verification is how Google confirms you control the website. You choose one of two property types when you add your site, and the choice decides how you verify.

Google sets this out in its guide to adding a website property and its list of verification methods, which notes that only the DNS method works for a Domain property.

For most practices the Domain property is the better choice because it catches every version of your address in one place. You or whoever manages your domain adds a short TXT record at the domain registrar. If that is a hurdle, a URL prefix property verified through your existing Google Analytics or Tag Manager is a reasonable second best.

Two things to know:

• Verification has to stay in place. Google says verification lasts only as long as it can find your verification token. If a developer removes the file or tag during a rebuild, Google warns you and then removes your access after a grace period.
• Data takes a few days. Google says data should start to appear a few days after you verify, so do not judge the tool on day one.

The Performance report: where does my site rank?

The Performance report answers "where does my site rank?" better than searching for yourself, because your own searches are skewed by your location and history. Google is explicit about this: results are specific to the time, place, device and recent history of the person searching, so you may not see your site for a query even when the report says you appeared.

Open the report and switch on all four figures at the top:

• Clicks: times someone clicked through to your site from Google Search.
• Impressions: times your site appeared in results.
• CTR: clicks divided by impressions.
• Average position: Google defines it as the average position of the topmost result from your site.

The default view is three months. Change it to the longest range available. Google keeps 16 months of Search Console data, as its Analytics linking guide confirms, which is enough to compare this autumn with last autumn.

The four views a practice owner should check

1. Queries, sorted by impressions. This is your real search footprint. You will see your practice name, "dentist" plus your town, treatment searches and probably some surprises. A treatment you offer that never appears here is a page Google does not connect with that treatment.
2. Pages, sorted by clicks. Most practice sites find that the homepage takes most of the clicks and treatment pages take very few. If your implant or Invisalign page has impressions but almost no clicks, its title and description in the results are not persuading anyone.
3. Branded against non-branded. Search Console now has a branded queries filter. Searches containing your practice name come from people who already know you. Non-branded searches are new patients finding you. Google notes the filter is not available for sites with few impressions and that some queries may be classified wrongly, so treat it as a guide. If it is not available, filter queries that do not contain your practice name instead.
4. Device. Compare mobile with desktop. The results page looks different on a phone, and your position can differ between the two.

Reading average position sensibly

Average position is an average across every search, place and device where you appeared. A position of 8 for "dentist near me" might mean you are third for people on your street and nowhere for people two miles away. That is why the figure moves around and why one number never tells the whole local story. Our guide to rank grids and map visibility explains how position changes across a catchment.

Google also omits some queries to protect user privacy, so the query table will not add up to your total clicks. That is normal.

The Page indexing report: can Google see your pages?

The Page indexing report shows which of your pages Google has indexed and why others are not. A page that is not indexed cannot appear in search at all.

Google's own advice in its Page indexing help page is reassuring for small sites: not every URL needs to be indexed, the goal is the canonical version of every important page, and a site with fewer than 500 pages probably does not need to use this report routinely. Most practice websites are well under that.

So check it with one question in mind: are your important pages indexed? That means the homepage, each treatment page, fees, the team page and contact. The reasons you will most often see:

• Excluded by "noindex" tag. Often left behind from when the site was being built. If a treatment page shows this, it is invisible to Google and needs fixing.
• Not found (404). Old pages that were deleted. Fine if nothing links to them, worth redirecting if they once ranked.
• Page with redirect. Usually fine. These are old addresses forwarding to new ones.
• Crawled, currently not indexed. Google looked and chose not to index it. Thin or duplicated pages land here.

The other Google Search Console tools worth knowing

URL Inspection

Paste any address from your site into the bar at the top to see whether it is indexed, which version Google treats as the main one, and when it was last crawled. After you publish or fix a page you can request indexing. Google's URL Inspection help page is clear that a request does not guarantee indexing and that there is a daily limit per property.

Sitemaps

A sitemap is a file listing your pages. Most website platforms create one automatically. Submit its address once in the Sitemaps report. Google says in its Sitemaps report guide that there is no guarantee a page in a sitemap will be crawled or indexed, so a sitemap helps Google find pages but does not force them in.

Manual actions and security issues

These two reports should be empty. A manual action means a person at Google has decided pages on your site break its spam policies. Security issues means Google found something like hacked content or malware. Either one can wipe out your search visibility, and Search Console is where Google tells you. If you ever see an entry, deal with it that week.

Core Web Vitals

This report groups your pages by real-world loading speed and stability for visitors on mobile and desktop. Small sites often show "not enough data" because Google needs a minimum amount of real traffic. It is a useful signal, but speed is a topic of its own.

How to use Google Search Console in 15 minutes a month

You do not need to live in the tool. A monthly check covers it:

1. Open Performance, set the last 28 days compared with the previous period, and note clicks and impressions.
2. Look at the top 20 queries. Are the treatments you want to grow in there? Are any new ones appearing?
3. Look at the top pages. Has any important page dropped sharply?
4. Check that Manual actions and Security issues are both clear.
5. Inspect any page you published or changed that month to confirm it is indexed.

Compare like with like. Search demand rises and falls through the year, so this October against last October is a fairer test than this month against last month. Write the numbers down somewhere, because a single snapshot tells you very little.

What Search Console does not show

Search Console covers Google Search. It does not tell you:

• What happened on your Business Profile. Calls, direction requests and website clicks from your profile on Search and Maps are reported in the profile's own performance view. For most practices that is where a large share of new-patient contact starts.
• Who your rivals are. It only shows your own site. It cannot tell you which practice holds the map places in your town or how many reviews they have.
• Bookings. A click is not a patient. Linking Search Console to Google Analytics, and tracking calls and form submissions there, gets you closer.
• Other search engines. Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's equivalent and it can import a site you have already verified in Search Console, which saves a second verification.

Common mistakes practices make

• Leaving the agency as the only owner. When the relationship ends, so does your access to your own history.
• Not verifying the new site after a rebuild. A new site on a new platform may drop the old verification tag. Check access the day a new site goes live, and watch the Page indexing report for a spike in errors that week.
• Panicking over a one-week dip. Bank holidays, school holidays and Google's own data delays all move short-term numbers. Look at trends over months.
• Judging success by average position alone. Clicks from non-branded searches are the closer measure of new patients finding you.

If you want an outside view of how your practice shows in search before you dig in, our free search audit needs no email. For the wider picture of what moves rankings, start with SEO for dental practices.