Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a free Google tool that lets you monitor your site's performance in Google search results, identify indexation issues, and submit sitemaps. For PrestaShop merchants, it is the most important SEO analysis tool after Google Analytics.
Key features of Google Search Console
Performance report
Track clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position for each search query and page. Identify your top-performing keywords and those with room for improvement.
Coverage report
Discover which pages are indexed, which are excluded, and why. Identify 404 errors, noindex pages, canonical issues, and crawl errors affecting your store.
Sitemaps & URL Inspection
Submit your XML sitemaps to guide Googlebot, and inspect any URL to check its exact indexation status and request priority indexing.
How to set up Google Search Console
The first step is to verify ownership of your site. Google offers several methods: adding an HTML meta tag to the `` of your site, a DNS TXT record with your domain registrar, via Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager, or by uploading an HTML file to the root of your server. For PrestaShop, the HTML meta tag method is the simplest: add it in your theme or via an SEO management module.
Essential reports for an e-commerce store
- Performance → Queries: identify keywords that generate impressions but few clicks (low CTR = opportunity to optimise title tags/meta descriptions)
- Coverage → Errors: fix 404 errors and indexation issues before they impact your rankings
- Core Web Vitals: measure loading performance (LCP), interactivity (INP), and visual stability (CLS) based on real user data
- Manual Actions: check whether Google has applied a manual penalty to your site for guideline violations
- Sitemaps: submit and monitor the processing of your sitemaps to ensure all product pages are known to Google
Data delay: 2 to 3 days
Advanced usage for your PrestaShop store
For a PrestaShop e-commerce store, Google Search Console is particularly useful for monitoring product page indexation after they go live, submitting an updated sitemap after adding new products or categories, identifying product pages that are not indexed (Coverage → Excluded), and detecting ranking drops on important commercial queries. The URL Inspection tool lets you immediately test whether a new page or a change is visible to Googlebot.