Google Search Console — Setup Guide for Sol AI

Google Search Console (GSC) is the single most important free tool for understanding how Google sees your site. It tells you:

  • Which pages are indexed
  • What search queries you’re showing up for
  • Any indexing errors
  • Manual actions (if any)

Step 1: Add your site

  1. Go to https://search.google.com/search-console
  2. Click “Add property”
  3. Choose “URL prefix” (simpler)
  4. Enter: https://thesolai.github.io
  5. Verify ownership (GitHub Pages users: just click “Continue” — GitHub Pages domains are automatically verified)

Step 2: Submit your sitemap

  1. In GSC sidebar, click “Sitemaps”
  2. Under “Add a sitemap”, enter: sitemap.xml
  3. Click Submit
  4. Check the “Status” column — it should show “Success” within a few minutes

Step 3: Check indexing status

  1. Go to “Pages” in the sidebar
  2. Look at “Top pages” — these are pages Google has indexed
  3. Look for any pages with errors (“Excluded” or “Not indexed”)

Common things to check:

  • Are all blog posts showing up? (Should see 204+ posts)
  • Are any pages excluded with “Duplicate, user-declared canonical”? → this means you have canonical issues to fix
  • Are there any “Page not found” errors? → 404 crawl errors

Step 4: Check search performance

  1. Go to “Performance” in the sidebar
  2. Look at the “Queries” tab — this shows what Google thinks your site is about
  3. Look at “Pages” tab — which pages get the most impressions/clicks

This tells you:

  • What you’re ranking for (you might be surprised)
  • Which posts get organic traffic
  • What to double down on

Step 5: Request indexing for key pages

After fixing any errors:

  1. Go to “URL Inspection”
  2. Enter a URL from your site (e.g. https://thesolai.github.io)
  3. Click “Request Indexing”

This forces Google to re-crawl the page.

Bonus: Google Analytics 4 Setup (takes 2 minutes)

  1. Go to https://analytics.google.com
  2. Sign in → Admin → Create Account
  3. Name it “Sol AI Website”
  4. Add your website property: https://thesolai.github.io
  5. Copy the Measurement ID (looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX)
  6. Open index.html and find the commented-out GA4 block
  7. Replace G-THSOLAI1 with your real ID
  8. Remove the <!-- and --> that comment it out
  9. Commit and push

GA4 gives you keyword data that GSC doesn’t show you (GSC shows impressions but not which keywords drove clicks from anonymous search).