How to add a Substack subdomain to Google Search Console with 10 steps?

If you have a subdomain with your Substack account, follow these 10 steps to add it to your Google Search Consolo:

1. Click Dashboard of your Substack account
2. Click Settings of your publication (the url of this setting page is https://yoursubdomain.substack.com/publish/settings) (Please be aware main Settings page of Substack does not show url settings)
3. Find Advertising analytics section of the Settings page and Google Tag Manager ID
4. Visit https://tagmanager.google.com/ to create a container by choosing an account (if you do not have an existing Google Tag Manager account, you also need to create account first)
5. Create Container on Google Tag Manager with these details:

Container name: yoursubdomain.substack.com

Container type: Web

6. Google Tag Manager will generate a Container ID for you, it looks like: GTM-XXXYYY

7. Enter the Container ID that will be generated to Google Tag Manager ID section of Substack, which is mentioned on 3rd step.

8. Visit Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome), create a search console account and click to add property from the left top menu.

9. Add property as URL prefix, not domain. Enter your Substack url as https://yoursubdomain.substack.com and click on Continue.

10. Google Search Console will show you various options. Choose Google Tag Manager (Use your Google Tag Manager account) option. Then click on VERIFY.

Done… You will see such a verification message.

Remarks: I assumed you have single and admin account for Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager accounts. Above results are verified by using our Google Workspace account. I did not copy paste the long code generated by Google Tag Manager, since Substack is not our own domain. I only entered the Google Tag Manager ID to Substack. And VERIFIED via Google Search console.

Hope it helps you.

Indexing issues:

As I searched, Substack does not automatically generate a sitemap file.

After entering sitemap.xml to Google Search Console manually, it gives an error ‘couldn’t fetch’ and it says Sitemap could not be read with below warnings:

General HTTP error

We encountered an error while trying to access your sitemap. Please ensure that your sitemap is present at the specified address and is not blocked to Google. See our help center for more debugging help.

Examples: HTTP Error: 404

Substack URL is successfully registered to Google Search Console but indexing and adding sitemap is not verified yet. I waited for 10 days but it is still not verified. Thus I followed below manual indexing solution:

Manual Indexing by Using Google Search Console (‘Request Indexing’ feature)

1. After adding your Url to Google Search Console, you will see URL inspection on the left side, under Performance. Click on it and enter your new page’s Url (https://yoursubdomain.substack.com/your-post/or main Url (https://yoursubdomain.substack.com/).

2. Google Search Console will warn you as follows

3. Then click on the REQUEST INDEXING which is shown on the right bottom corner of above image

4. If your inspected Url is live you will see green lights and Google Search Console will add that specific Url for indexing.

5. After a few days, search your Url on Google by copying-pasting your specific Url. If it is seen on Google search results Done. ✅. Otherwise you have to check above steps again or be patient since Google is not doing this indexing radidly.

6. Repeat above steps for every specific Url.

This is the solution I could find. I am still searching for a simpler or automatic way of indexing. When I found I will update the post. Follow up.

Have a great day.