Google Search Console
Step by step to verifying your shop at Google and handing it your sitemap — and the property type that cannot work for a shop here.
Plan Pro
Esta página aún no está traducida. Se muestra en inglés; todo lo que describe funciona igual en tu idioma.
In Google Search Console you see how Google reads your shop: which pages it found, which searches show them, and what it could not load. It is also where you hand Google your sitemap. Before any of that, Google wants proof that the shop is yours. For a shop here, that proof is an HTML tag: a line of code Google gives you, which you paste into Settings → SEO under Google Search Console. From then on your shop carries it, invisibly, on every page.
Search Console offers two kinds of property, and only one of them works here: always choose "URL prefix", the box on the right. "Domain", the box on the left, can only be verified with a DNS record at your domain name provider, and for a domain bought through 10mShop that is the platform: nothing you paste into your shop reaches it. If Google asks you to sign in to your "domain name provider" and copy a TXT record, you have picked "Domain". The end of this page says how to get out of it.
Before you start
- Your own domain is connected and verified. Only then does Settings → SEO show the Google Search Console field: a verification belongs to a domain, and the shared platform address is not yours to verify.
- Your shop is publicly online, not only published: Google has to be able to open it like any visitor. Your own preview does not count, since Google is not signed in as you. See Going live.
- You have a Google account. Sign in to Search Console at
search.google.com/search-consolewith the account that should see your shop's figures later. - You know your shop's exact address: the one your browser shows when you open
the shop, for example
https://example.com. The sitemap address in Settings → SEO starts with it. - Keep 10mShop and Search Console open side by side in two tabs: you copy the tag from one into the other.
Verify your shop
Add a property
In Search Console, open the property picker at the top left and choose "Add property" at the bottom of its list. If you have never added one, Google shows the choice of property type straight away.
Choose "URL prefix"
Google shows two boxes: "Domain" on the left and "URL prefix" on the right.
In the right one, enter your shop's address exactly as your browser shows it,
with https:// in front, for example https://example.com, and choose
"Continue". Add www only if your browser shows it: for Google, every
spelling of an address is a site of its own.
Copy the HTML tag
Google now asks you to verify ownership. At the top it recommends an
"HTML file": skip it, a shop here cannot serve a file of your own. Under
"Other verification methods", open "HTML tag" and choose "Copy". That copies
the whole tag, which looks like
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="…" />. Leave this window
open.
Paste the tag in 10mShop
In 10mShop, open Settings → SEO and scroll down to Google Search Console. Paste the whole tag into the field and press Save changes. The field keeps only the code between the quotes, so the whole tag and the code alone both work. If a note under the field says it does not recognise what you pasted, copy the tag from Google again: anything else would be dropped when you save.
Press "Verify" at Google
Back in Search Console, choose "Verify" in the "HTML tag" box. Google opens your shop's home page, finds the tag and reports that ownership is verified. If it reports that it could not find the tag right after you saved, wait five minutes and press "Verify" again: a new code can take that long to reach every page of your shop.
Leave the tag where it is
Google checks the tag again from time to time, so keep the code in the field after the verification has succeeded. If you empty the field, Search Console loses the verification sooner or later, and you have to verify again.
Hand Google your sitemap
Your sitemap lists every page and product your shop shows the public, and it updates itself. Once the shop is verified:
- Open the property in Search Console and choose "Sitemaps" in the menu on the left.
- Under "Add a new sitemap", the field already starts with your shop's
address. Enter
sitemap.xmlafter it and choose "Submit". - The list below the field shows when Google last read the sitemap and how many pages it found in it. Showing those pages in search takes Google days to weeks, and nothing on your side speeds that up.
You submit it once. Google comes back to it by itself, so new products and pages need nothing more from you.