Google Search Console for multiple domains

Search Console is free, exact, and built for one site at a time. Once you run several products, the setup choices you made on day one start to matter: which kind of property you added, which Google account owns it, who else can see it, and how much of the data you can actually get out.

Here is how to set up Search Console for many domains so it stays tidy, the limits worth knowing before you rely on an export, and a weekly check that covers every site.

Domain or URL-prefix property

Search Console has two kinds of property, and Google's guide to adding a property spells out the difference:

• A Domain property (example.com) covers every subdomain and protocol: www, app, blog, http, and https. It must be verified with a DNS record.
• A URL-prefix property (https://example.com/) covers only addresses that start with exactly that prefix. http and https need separate properties, and so does each subdomain. It can be verified in several ways, such as an HTML file or a tag.

For a portfolio, add a Domain property for each product. One property per product means one place to look, and you never miss traffic because a subdomain or the http version had no property of its own. Add a URL-prefix property only when you want a separate view of one section, like a blog on a subdomain.

The DNS step is less work than it sounds. If Search Console lists your domain name provider, you sign in to it and verification happens right away; otherwise you add one TXT or CNAME record yourself. A single Search Console account can hold up to 1,000 properties, so the number of sites is not the constraint.

Keep ownership in one place

The most common mess with several products is that each was set up from a different Google account: a personal Gmail for the first, a work account for the second, a shared login for the third. Fix that once, early.

Search Console has three permission levels. An owner has full control and can add and remove users. A full user can view all data and take some actions. A restricted user has simple view rights on most data. Only an owner can add users, from Settings, then Users and permissions, and a property can have up to 100 users besides its owners.

A sensible setup for one founder:

• Make one Google account you control an owner of every property, so nothing is stuck in an account you rarely sign in to.
• Give anyone who only needs to read the numbers, including tools and contractors, restricted access.
• Remove users who have left. The Users and permissions page lists them per property, so check it when you check the data.

Know the row limits

Search Console reports the exact searches people used to find you, but not all of them in every place. Google's help on exporting data lists the limits:

• Reports and their export: up to 1,000 rows. If your site shows up for more searches than that, the table and the CSV stop at 1,000.
• The Search Analytics API: up to 50,000 rows per day per search type, such as web or image. Each request returns up to 25,000 rows, and you page through the rest, as Google's guide to getting all your data shows.
• Bulk data export: a daily export to BigQuery of all the performance data Search Console has for the property, with no row limit, except anonymized queries. See bulk data export.

For most small sites the 1,000-row view is fine for spotting what moved. The limit matters when you go looking for long-tail searches to write about, since those are the rows that fall off the end of the table first.

A weekly check across every domain

With several properties, the trick is to ask the same questions of each one, in the same order, so a problem on the smallest site gets seen. For each property, set the date range to the last 28 days and compare it with the 28 before:

1. Clicks and impressions, against the period before. Start with the site that moved most, in either direction.
2. Searches on page two. Filter positions 11 to 20 and sort by impressions. These are the cheapest wins you have.
3. Pages seen but rarely clicked. A page-one result with a click rate well below the site's own average usually needs a clearer title.
4. New pages that are not indexed. Run anything published in the last month through URL Inspection.

Our weekly SEO routine walks through each of these checks in detail, with links to Google's own guides. If you want to try the page-two filter on an export first, the striking distance keyword finder and the Search Console analyzer run in your browser with no account.

Seeing every site together

Search Console itself shows one property at a time, so the comparison above means switching properties for each step. The ways around it are the same as for Google Analytics: a Looker Studio report with one Search Console data source per site, a script against the Search Analytics API, or a tool that reads each property for you. The post on GA4 for multiple websites covers the tradeoffs of each.

How LopeBase reads them together

We built LopeBase to run our own products, and the Search Console connector follows the setup above. You connect with Google, read-only, as a restricted user. Domain and URL-prefix properties both work, and each product can use a different Google account, since each one connects on its own. A service account added as a restricted user works too.

On the SEO page, with no property picked, every property's clicks, impressions, and position for the last 7 days sit side by side, with a trend line each. Bing Webmaster Tools shows under the same property when connected, never added to Google's numbers. Pick a property and its data splits into tabs: an opportunity map with the page-two searches and the rarely clicked ones picked out, pages competing for the same search, and a weekly spot check of up to 40 pages against Google's index.

The same limits apply here, honestly stated: LopeBase reads up to 1,000 searches per site over 28 days, and Search Console runs about two days behind. It never submits sitemaps, requests indexing, or changes settings. The SEO guide covers every tab.