Set up GSC in 15 minutes: domain or URL-prefix property, and who should have access

To set up GSC, add your site as a domain property, verify it with one DNS record, and then give each person in the company the lowest permission level their job needs. After that, link it to Google Analytics and submit your sitemap. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes of work, plus the wait while your DNS provider publishes the record.

This is part 2 of our series on Google Search Console. If you are not sure what GSC is or why it matters, start with part 1: What Is GSC?

Step 1: pick a domain property

GSC offers two kinds of property, and the choice decides how much of your site you see.¹

• Domain property (for example example.com). It covers the whole domain: every subdomain (www, m, shop) and every protocol (http and https).¹
• URL-prefix property (for example https://www.example.com/). It covers only addresses that start with exactly that text, protocol included. http:// and the version without www are not in it.¹

For a business, pick the domain property. With a URL-prefix property, a search that lands on a version you didn’t add is simply missing from your numbers, and nobody notices. A domain property sees all of it. URL-prefix properties still have a use: you can add one for a single section of the site (say, the blog) later, to look at it on its own.

Step 2: verify with a DNS record

Google needs proof that you control the domain. For a domain property there is one way: a DNS record.²

1. Sign in to GSC with a Google Account the company controls (not someone’s personal one), add the property and type your domain without www or https.¹
2. GSC gives you a TXT record. Add it at the company that runs your DNS: your domain registrar, your hosting or a service like Cloudflare.
3. Go back to GSC and click Verify. Google says it can take up to two or three days for a provider to start serving a new record; if it fails, wait a day and try again.²
4. Leave the record there forever. Verification is checked again over time, and removing the record can cost you the verification.²

If DNS is in the hands of a developer or an agency, send them the record; it is a two-minute job for them. URL-prefix properties can also be verified with an HTML file, a tag on the page, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager, but those methods don’t work for a domain property.²

Step 3: give each person the right level

GSC has three levels of access, plus a distinction between two kinds of owner.³

• Owner. Full control: sees everything, changes settings, adds and removes users. A verified owner is one who proved ownership with a token, such as the DNS record. A delegated owner was made an owner by another owner, without a token of their own.³
• Full user. Sees all the data and can take some actions, such as submitting a sitemap, asking Google to remove a URL or confirming that a fix is done.³
• Restricted user. Sees most of the data, and nothing more.³

Who should have which, in a typical small or mid-sized company:

• The company: a verified owner on a company account, held by the owner or the person responsible for the website. Not a former employee, not your web agency.
• One backup owner (delegated), so nobody is locked out if one person leaves. Google’s rule is strict here: if a property has no verified owner left, nobody has access to it.³
• Whoever works on the site (your marketing lead, your developer, your agency): full user. They can do the work; they can’t add people or remove you.
• Everyone who only reads (managers, analysts, an outside auditor): restricted user. That is all an audit needs; we explain why in Read-only access: how to let an auditor in without handing over the keys.

Adding someone is quick: Settings, then Users and permissions, then Add user, with their Google Account email and the level.³ Groups of addresses can’t be added, only individual accounts.³

When someone leaves, removing them is not always enough. A verified owner keeps access while their token is on the site; Google says to delete every verification token of that person, or they can verify again.³

Step 4: link GSC to Google Analytics

Linking puts your search data next to what visitors did after the click, in Google Analytics. Two things are required: the Editor role on the Analytics property and verified ownership of the GSC property.⁴ In Analytics, go to Admin, then Product links, then Search Console links, choose the property and the web data stream, and submit.⁴

Two reports then become available, one for the searches and one for the landing pages, but they start unpublished: someone has to publish them from the Library in Analytics before anyone sees them.⁴ Each GSC property links to one web data stream only.⁴

Step 5: submit your sitemap

A sitemap is the list of pages you want Google to know about. Most website platforms make one for you, usually at /sitemap.xml. In GSC, open Sitemaps, paste the address and submit. Submitting only tells Google where the file is, and Google is clear that it doesn’t guarantee every listed page will be crawled or indexed.⁵ The report then shows whether Google could read the file and how many pages it found in it.⁵

Only an owner can submit a sitemap here; without that, you can list it in your robots.txt file instead.⁵

What you have at the end

A property that sees your whole domain, verified in a way that doesn’t break when someone redesigns the site, with access that matches each person’s job and ends when they leave. Data starts arriving from the day you set it up, so the sooner the better. The next part of this series explains how to read the main screen, the performance report, without fooling yourself.

If you want an outside view before your data builds up, our free website audit checks what Google can see from the outside. Once GSC has a few months of data, the deep audit reads it, with restricted access only, to find the searches and pages worth money.

Notes. ¹ Google, “Add a website property to Search Console”. ² Google, “Verify your site ownership”. ³ Google, “Manage users, owners, and permissions”. ⁴ Google, “Search Console integration in Google Analytics”. ⁵ Google, “Manage your sitemaps using the Sitemaps report”. Read on 26 October 2026.