One Search Console Property for the Whole Domain

Four properties for one site

Until last week, Search Console treated each version of a website's address as a separate site.

The address with http and the one with https were different properties. So were the versions with and without www. A typical small business site had four possible properties, and most owners had verified one of them, often years ago.

Subdomains were separate again. A shop on its own subdomain, or a blog or booking page at another address under your domain, needed a property of its own.

Last week Google added a new kind of property that covers all of them at once, and it fixes a problem many owners did not know they had.

Where the split hid data

• The move to HTTPS, which started a new property's history from nothing.
• With and without www, counted separately even when both reach the same pages.
• A shop on a subdomain, often never added at all.
• A blog or booking system on a subdomain of its own.
• An old mobile site on an m address, still in the index.

The first is the one that frightened owners. After a move to HTTPS, the old property showed searches collapsing, while the traffic carried on in a property nobody had created.

What a domain property is

A domain property covers the whole domain: http and https, with and without www, and every subdomain, in one set of reports.

The reports work as they do for any other property. The difference is that nothing falls between properties any more, because there is only one.

Because every version is combined, totals in a domain property are usually higher than in any single property you had before. That is not growth; it is the part you could not see.

The older kind, now called a URL-prefix property, still exists. It covers exactly the address you enter and nothing else.

Why verification is through DNS

DNS is the system of records that tells the internet where a domain's website and email live. Only somebody who controls the domain can change those records.

So a domain property is verified by adding a short text record, supplied by Search Console, to the domain's DNS. That proves control of the whole domain, not just one website on it.

The older methods, such as uploading a file to the site or adding a tag to the home page, only ever proved control of one address.

Finding who controls your DNS

The records live wherever the domain's nameservers point. Often that is the registrar where the domain was bought; sometimes it is the hosting company or another service.

Whoever set up your site will know. If nobody does, the registrar's account shows the nameservers, and the nameservers show where to go.

You need the login for that service before you start, which on some older sites is the hardest part of the whole job.

Be careful once you are in. The same screen holds the records that make your website and email work, and deleting or editing the wrong one takes them offline.

Setting it up

In Search Console, add a property and choose Domain. Enter the bare domain, without http or www.

Search Console shows a TXT record. Add it in your DNS settings exactly as given, alongside the existing records, without changing anything else.

DNS changes can take a while to spread. Wait, then press Verify. If it fails, give it longer before trying anything different.

A worked example

A yarn shop on a small-town main street runs knitting classes and sells online through a shop on a subdomain of its main address.

Its owner had one Search Console property, for the address with http and www, set up when the site was built. Last spring the site moved to HTTPS.

Through the summer, that property showed searches falling steadily, and the owner assumed the move had hurt the site.

It had not. The searches were being recorded under the https address, which had no property, and the online shop's pages had never been in Search Console at all.

With a domain property verified, everything appears in one place: the main site, the shop, both protocols. The Pages tab separates them whenever that is needed.

Keep the old properties too

Domain properties only work in the new Search Console. Some of the older tools, still reached through the old version, work only with the earlier kind of property.

The existing properties also keep their own history and their own list of users. There is no reason to remove them.

Anybody else with access to the old properties, such as whoever runs your ads or built the site, needs adding to the new one separately.

Keep them verified alongside the new one, and do most of your reading in the domain property.

Reading the combined reports

Performance now includes every search that reached any part of the domain. To look at one section, filter by page, such as every address containing the shop's subdomain.

If the HTTPS move falls within the months the new property's reports cover, compare the months either side of it. In a domain property both sides show the whole site, which the old properties never could.

Coverage and Mobile Usability cover every subdomain too, which can surface problems on parts of the site nobody had been watching.

Expect some surprises in the first month. Most are old pages from earlier versions of the site, and they are worth knowing about.

The counter-case

For some sites, the gain is small.

A site that has been on one address, on HTTPS, for years, with no subdomains and a property for that one address, already sees nearly everything.

And where the DNS login is genuinely hard to recover, the existing property remains useful while that gets sorted out.

But most small business sites have changed address at least once, and a domain property is the only way to see all of it together. Set one up.

This week

1. Find out who controls your DNS.
2. Get the login for that service.
3. Add a domain property in Search Console.
4. Add the TXT record exactly as given.
5. Verify, after giving it time.
6. Keep the old properties verified.
7. Leave the record in place for good.

Step seven is the one that gets forgotten. Search Console checks verification from time to time, and a record deleted during a later move of DNS takes access with it.

The three reports worth reading in the new property are covered in Search Console is replacing the old reports.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.