The first setup for search traffic after a site goes live
The site is published. Stop here, and half a year can pass with nobody coming to look.
Publishing alone does not make Google come look right away. You have to tell it yourself, “there is a site here.” That is the first half of this article. The second half is the setup that records what people did after they arrived.
The site was put into the world in the previous article. This article is about the two tools you add after that. It is written for someone who has heard the names and still is not clear on “so what do they tell me?”
I am building Shoryaku AI ( https://shoryaku.net ), a marketing-support service, as an indie developer. I actually had the numbers stay empty when I thought the setup was done, so that failure is included.
The two tools are looking at different places
Start by sorting this out. The names are similar and they get mixed up, but they are looking at completely different places.
| Tool | What it tells you | Which side of the visit |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Which words were searched, what rank you appeared at, and how many times you were clicked | Before someone arrives at the site |
| Google Analytics (GA4) | How many pages the person who arrived saw, where they left, and how they got there | After someone arrives at the site |
You were searched for “stiff shoulders bodywork Shibuya,” you showed up at rank 8, and you were not clicked. That is a Search Console story. The person who arrived left in 3 seconds. That is an Analytics story. You can tell where the problem is only after both are in place.
Both are free. There are paid versions, and an individual or a small business never uses them.
“GA4” is the name of the current generation of Google Analytics. It is enough to treat Google Analytics as GA4.
Put Search Console in first
The reason is that right after publication, Analytics has no numbers worth looking at. Nobody has come, so that is expected.
Search Console, on the other hand, is also a tool for checking “whether Google has the site registered at all.” That is the first thing to confirm on a site that has just gone live. The order is Search Console, then Analytics.
1. Register in Search Console
Open Search Console and press “Add property,” and two choices appear immediately and you stop. This is the first gate.
The meaning of the choice is the difference in “how you prove that this site is really yours.”
| Kind | How you prove it | What you can see |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Only by rewriting DNS settings (below. Other methods cannot be chosen) | www and non-www, and http and https, can be seen together as one |
| URL prefix | Several options, such as placing a specified file on the site, or pasting one specified line on the page | Only the form of the URL you entered |
If you are starting out, choose URL prefix. Enter https://your-domain/ and either place the file you are told to place on the site, or paste the one line you are given. You do not have to touch a difficult setting.
If you chose URL prefix, you can skip the DNS section below.
Terms that appear if you choose the domain method
Shoryaku AI chose the “domain” method. The registration does not split later when a subdomain is added (a branched address such as blog.□□.com).
Two terms appear here. Get the meaning first.
| Term | What it is |
|---|---|
| DNS | The address book that decides “when someone comes to this address, show this location.” It is in the admin screen of the company you bought the domain from |
| TXT record | A memo field attached to that address book. You can write any string in it. It is used to prove “this domain is mine,” and to prove that mail is legitimate |
Search Console says “write this specified string in that memo field.” If you can write it, the person who can get into that domain’s admin screen can be confirmed as the owner. That is the mechanism.
The danger is overwriting the memo field
Here is a case that was actually dangerous.
On some DNS services, there is no operation that says “add one entry” to this memo field. You rewrite everything that is already there, as a whole. Shoryaku AI’s DNS was like that.
At the time, the memo field already had 3 entries.
| What was already there | What happens if you delete it |
|---|---|
| A setting that proves outgoing mail is legitimate (called SPF) | Mail you send is treated as spam |
| A setting the hosting company uses to confirm the domain | The connection between the site and the domain breaks |
| A confirmation setting for another service | The connection to that service breaks |
Overwrite it by accident, and the site and the mail break at the same time. You do not ordinarily expect that much breakage from a task that was only supposed to register the site with search.
The countermeasure is simple. Before you rewrite, copy the entire current contents and keep them somewhere. After you rewrite, confirm that it has propagated, and then press the “Verify” button on the Search Console side. Propagation takes a few minutes, so if you press without waiting, it fails. A failure makes you start suspecting the settings and touching them, and the damage spreads from there.
If you are uneasy, it is safer to have an agent assemble the steps.
I want to verify domain ownership for Search Console.
First show me everything that is currently in the DNS TXT records.
Then tell me the steps to add one google-site-verification entry
without deleting a single existing value.
The domain was bought at (registrar).
2. Submit a sitemap
Once you are registered, the next step is to submit a sitemap.
A sitemap is a file that lists “this site has these pages.” Google finds pages on its own too, and handing over the list is faster and more reliable.
Many tools build one automatically. If you have one, it shows when you open https://your-domain/sitemap.xml. If you do not, you can ask an agent for this too.
I want to make a sitemap.xml for this site.
Make it generated automatically at build time,
so I do not have to add pages by hand when a page is added.
Always add “so I do not have to add pages by hand.” A handwritten sitemap always forgets the update when a page is added. Nobody points out the forgetfulness, so half a year later you notice that “none of the new pages are listed.”
Enter sitemap.xml in the “Sitemaps” field in Search Console, and that step is done.
Decide which pages stay out of search results
Not every page needs to be in search. On Shoryaku AI, the login, signup, and password-reset pages are excluded from search. The content is only input fields, and there is no point in arriving at them directly from search.
The way to exclude them is to put noindex on that page (an instruction not to show it in search results). An agent will add that if you ask.
3. When you publish, tell Google without waiting
Once a sitemap is out, Google will come look eventually. The problem is that you do not know when “eventually” is.
When you publish a new page, paste that URL into “URL inspection” in Search Console and press “Request indexing.” It is manual, and whether you do it right after publication changes the early pace.
There is also a mechanism called “IndexNow” that automatically notifies search engines of an update. Shoryaku AI has it too, and Google does not look at it. It works for Bing and Yandex. It is still in place because ChatGPT’s search refers to Bing, so it has a use only for being found through a generative-AI path. If you thought you added it for Google, you end up stuck on “I am sending it and it is not getting registered.”
4. Add Google Analytics (GA4)
From here, this is the “after they arrived” side.
When you create an account and a property in Analytics, a measurement ID that starts with G- is issued. Paste it on every page of the site, and recording starts from that point.
You can ask an agent to do the pasting.
Put the Google Analytics measurement ID G-XXXXXXX on every page of this site.
Make it a form where a new page cannot be forgotten.
“A form where a new page cannot be forgotten” is the point. If you paste it by hand on each page, somewhere is always missed. That page alone has no numbers, and you do not notice.
There is one caution. Every time you open the site yourself, it is recorded as 1 access. Right after publication, most of the traffic is you, so subtract that when you look at the numbers.
5. Google Tag Manager is not required at the start
A third name appears here. Google Tag Manager (GTM). The name is similar, so it gets mixed up, and the role is completely different.
GTM itself measures nothing. It is a box where you write delivery instructions: “when this happens, send this to Analytics.”
| Does it measure? | What it is for | |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics (GA4) | It measures | Collect numbers and show them |
| Tag Manager (GTM) | It does not measure | Add or change measurement settings without touching the site’s code |
What is convenient is adding measurement later. When you want to “count how many times the booking button was pressed,” GTM already in place means you can add it with settings in the admin screen alone. Without it, you rewrite the site’s files every time.
You do not need it at the start, though. If the site has just gone live and what you look at is roughly visit count and traffic source, pasting the measurement ID directly is simpler, and it does not break.
It becomes worth adding once you are in a state like this.
- You want to count a specific action, such as a booking button, a phone button, or a completed inquiry
- The person who can edit the site and the person who wants to see the numbers are different people
- You are running ads, and you change the definition of a result often
What I actually got wrong
Shoryaku AI sends events through GTM. That convenience was the trap, as it stood.
The Shoryaku AI site recorded 21 kinds of user actions and passed them to GTM. Page views, button clicks, the start of signup, the first analysis completed. Everything I wanted to see was passed.
Of those, only 7 had a setting that forwarded them to Analytics.
The flow I wanted to see was this.
| What I wanted to see | Was it passed from the site? | Did it reach Analytics? |
|---|---|---|
| A page was shown | It was passed | It did not arrive |
| A button was pressed | It was passed | It did not arrive |
| Signup started | It was passed | It did not arrive |
| Signup completed | It was passed | It arrived |
| The person reached the first analysis | It was passed | It did not arrive |
The numbers were empty from the first step. Before “there is no response even though it was published,” the response was not being recorded.
GTM is a box, so putting something in the box does nothing by itself. Unless you create, one by one, the instruction “when this event arrives, send it to Analytics,” you have only passed it.
What I fixed was only the GTM settings. Not one line of the site’s code was changed. The mechanism that passes events had been working from the start. The receiving side had no settings.
The lesson is one thing. “I set it up” and “it is arriving” are different. Do not check on the day you put the tag in. A few days later, actually open the Analytics screen and see whether rows are there. That is the only moment you can notice they are empty.
To repeat: this failure does not happen if you paste the measurement ID directly. At the start, that is enough.
Five numbers are enough at the start
Analytics has many screens, and you get lost the moment you open it. At the start, these are enough.
Three in Analytics (after they arrived).
| What to look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Users (how many people came) | Whether people are coming at all |
| Source / medium (where they came from) | Search, social, or direct |
| Views per page | Which pages are being read |
Two in Search Console (before they arrive).
| What to look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Clicks and impressions | Whether you are in the results and not being clicked, or not showing up at all |
| Search queries | The gap between the words you aimed at and the words actually searched |
If you are shown and not clicked, what you fix is the title and the description. If you are not shown at all, what you fix is the content of the page. Being able to make that split is enough to decide what to do next.
If you get stuck, show the screen
Search Console, Analytics, and GTM sometimes change how the admin screen is built. Screenshots in an explainer go stale, and it is ordinary for a button that the text says “press this” to be missing.
In that case, put the Chrome extension (Claude in Chrome) on Claude’s desktop app, and you can show the screen you have open and ask “where do I press?” It is more reliable than translating a written procedure, and it is especially useful for these three setups.
Summary
| What to do | The point |
|---|---|
| Register in Search Console | If you are starting out, URL prefix is fine. If you choose the domain method, keep the existing settings before you rewrite |
| Submit a sitemap | Generate it automatically. A handwritten one always forgets the update |
| Tell Google when you publish | From URL inspection, “Request indexing” |
| Add Analytics | The measurement ID on every page. You do not have to put GTM in between at the start |
| Check a few days later | “I set it up” and “it is arriving” are different. Open the screen and see whether rows are there |
At this point, building, publishing, and measuring are all in place. After that, you repeat looking at the numbers and fixing. The numbers barely move in the first month, and that is normal. The purpose of this article is to put the measurement in first, so that when they start moving you can read what happened.