Google Search Console: Mastering Large Sites

For professionals, using the Google Search Console setup is an indispensable, free way to manage a digital presence. It offers a direct line of sight into how Google perceives a website.

However, for those managing large, complex, or enterprise-level domains – be it e-commerce, publishing, or a sprawling corporate site – the standard setup often feels restrictive. Default limitations on data access, row limits, and API quotas prevent professionals from performing deep analysis just when it’s needed most.

The good news is that these limitations are not insurmountable. By adopting a more strategic approach to how Search Console properties are configured, SEO professionals and site managers can unlock a wealth of granular data.

The Google Search Console Problem: Why One Property Fails

When a website is first verified in GSC, most users opt for a “domain-level” property. This provides a comprehensive, top-down view and grants access to the valuable Crawl Stats report.

Despite its utility, this single-property view comes with a familiar set of frustrations:

• 1,000-Row Limit: The performance reports are capped; consequently, professionals only see a fraction of the data.
• API Quotas: Furthermore, the 2,000 URL-per-day limit is insufficient for sites with tens of thousands of pages.
• Data Sampling: Worse still, data is often sampled, masking the true performance of specific site sections.
• 16-Month Data Window: Ultimately, this limitation makes year-on-year analysis impossible without an external backup solution like BigQuery.

For a small blog, these limits are manageable. For an enterprise site, they render the tool blunt.

Unlocking Granularity: The Multi-Property Strategy

The solution lies in moving beyond the single-domain view. Search Console allows users to verify not just an entire domain but also specific URL-prefixes, such as subdomains or subfolders (e.g., https://www.example.co.uk/blog/).

Once the main domain is verified (often via DNS), adding these “child” properties is trivial and requires no additional verification. The true power of this strategy is that most limitations are applied at the property level, not the domain level.

By creating separate GSC properties for a site’s most important subfolders – for example, /blog/, /mens-clothing/, /services/ – a much more detailed picture emerges.

Google Search Console: Key Benefits of a Segmented Setup

This multi-property approach transforms GSC from a simple dashboard into a scalable analysis tool.

Benefit 1: Scaling the Indexing API

Perhaps the most significant bottleneck for enterprise sites is the Indexing API. Indeed, its 2,000 URL-per-day quota is simply unworkable for a 500,000-page site.

This is where the multi-property approach truly shines. That 2,000-URL limit applies to each property.

Example:

• 1 Domain Property = 2,000 URLs/day
• 1 Domain Property + 10 Subfolder Properties = 22,000 URLs/day (2,000 x 11)

This 10x increase lets teams monitor indexation at scale, making an Google Search Console setup vital for checking sections. While setting up the API connection via Google Cloud Console can be a bit of a faff, the benefits are well worth the effort.

Benefit 2: Decoding Indexation Black Holes

With a higher API quota, SEOs can properly investigate why pages are not being indexed. The “Pages Not Indexed” report is crucial here. A segmented view helps differentiate between two common problems:

• Crawled – Currently Not Indexed: Google has crawled the page but deemed it unworthy of the index. This often points to content quality, thinness, or internal linking issues.
• Discovered – Currently Not Indexed: Google knows the URL exists (likely from links) but has not even bothered to crawl it. This can signal crawl budget limitations or that Google does not perceive the section as a priority.

Understanding this difference is key. Google operates a tiered indexation system; it stores high-value, fresh content in more expensive, readily accessible systems, while it relegates lower-value content. A multi-property setup helps you identify which parts of a site Google is consigning to the lower tiers.

Benefit 3: ‘Unsampling’ Performance Data

The 1,000-row limit in performance reports is a constant source of frustration. A segmented property does not remove this limit, but it makes it infinitely more useful.

A /blog/ subfolder property shows the top 1,000 queries and pages for that section alone. As a result, this provides a cleaner, less sampled view, far superior to aggregated domain data.

Beyond Properties: Other Google Search Console Power-Ups

While segmentation is the core strategy, you can optimise other GSC features for large sites.

A Smarter Sitemap Strategy

It is a common misconception that sitemaps are a strong tool for forcing indexation. In fact, they are not. Instead, a page’s “helpfulness” and its associated user engagement signals are what truly matter.

However, sitemaps are vital for reporting. For large sites that use a “sitemap index” (a sitemap of sitemaps), a simple trick can provide much-needed clarity.

The Pro Tip: Do not just submit the sitemap index file to GSC. Submit the index and every individual sitemap it contains as well.

This simple step allows GSC to report on indexation coverage per individual sitemap, giving a granular view of which site sections are struggling to be indexed.

Leveraging the Crawl Stats Report

The Crawl Stats report, available only in domain-level properties, is a goldmine for technical debugging. It allows SEOs to spot problems before they spiral out of control, such as:

• Spikes in crawl activity on parameter-heavy URLs.
• Wasted crawl budget on rogue subdomains.
• Sudden increases in server errors (5xx) or redirects (3xx).

When Free Tools Still Aren’t Enough

This strategic Google Search Console setup provides a vast amount of data for free. However, it still does not solve every problem, most notably the 16-month data retention limit.

For true year-on-year analysis, professionals must export their data, typically to Google BigQuery. Furthermore, several excellent third-party tools connect to the GSC API, automatically bypass these limitations, and offer more advanced analysis, such as query counting and content cluster performance.

Your Action Plan

For those managing large domains, it is time to assess the current setup.

1. Audit: Is the site just using a single domain-level property?
2. Analyse: Identify the most valuable subfolders based on traffic, revenue, or content volume.
3. Implement: Create new URL-prefix properties in GSC for these key subfolders.
4. Optimise Sitemaps: Ensure you submit all individual sitemaps, not just the index, to GSC.
5. Scale: Consider connecting to the Indexing API to leverage the new, higher quota.
6. Look Ahead: Plan for long-term data storage by exploring a connection to BigQuery.

By treating Google Search Console as a scalable, modular tool rather than a single dashboard, professionals can finally make it work as hard as they do.