In the first weeks after launch, measure whether the site works as built: important pages indexed, the sitemap processed, forms delivering, and key actions recorded in analytics. Over the following months, measure whether it does its job: which pages and searches bring visitors, and which pages produce inquiries. Save a baseline from the old site before launch, or there is nothing to compare against.
Launch day tends to end with a sense of relief and a vague plan to "watch the numbers." Without a short list of what to check, owners either look at a traffic chart that tells them little or wait until something feels wrong. A new site deserves a planned first ninety days of measurement.
This page covers general site health and lead measurement for owners and marketing leads. Measuring mentions and citations in AI answers is a separate task, covered in measuring AI search: mentions, citations, visits and leads.
Before launch: save the baseline
Export what the old site has while it still exists: Search Console performance data for the past year, the list of pages that received the most search clicks, analytics landing page data, and a count of form inquiries by month. Note anything unusual in that period, such as an ad campaign or a seasonal peak.
Do this while the old site is still live. Nobody should have to invent what normal looked like on the old site after it is gone. The baseline is what lets you say later that inquiries from the services pages rose, held or fell, instead of relying on memory. If the domain or URLs are changing, the baseline also tells you which old pages most need working redirects, as covered in how to move a website without losing search traffic.
Weeks one to four: is the site working as built?
These checks confirm the launch itself. Most take a few minutes each.
| Check | Where | What a problem looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Sitemap submitted and read | Search Console Sitemaps report | Errors when Google parses the sitemap, or an old sitemap still listed |
| Important pages indexed | Search Console Page indexing report | A key service page listed as not indexed |
| Forms delivering | A real test submission to each form | No email, or an email to the wrong inbox |
| Form submissions recorded | Analytics events | Submissions arrive by email but do not appear in analytics, or the reverse |
| Old URLs redirecting | Your redirect list, checked by hand or by tool | Old addresses returning errors instead of reaching the new page |
Google's documentation sets expectations for two of these. The Sitemaps report lets you submit sitemaps, see submission history and see errors Google found while parsing them, and Google notes that not every URL in a sitemap may be crawled. The Page indexing report shows how many URLs on the site have been crawled and indexed, and Google says you should not expect every URL to be indexed, only canonical pages. Its stated goal is to get the canonical version of every important page indexed. That turns the check into a short list: are the pages that matter to the business in the index?
Track the actions that matter, not just visits
In Google Analytics 4, enhanced measurement includes form interactions: form_start fires the first time a user interacts with a form in a session, and form_submit fires when the user submits a form. Google's recommended events include generate_lead, described as a user submitting a form or a request for information. A user with Editor access or higher can mark any event as a key event in the Admin area by selecting the star beside it.
Decide which one or two actions represent a real inquiry for your business, mark those as key events, and leave the rest as supporting detail. Then compare them with what actually arrived. A recorded form submission is not a delivered lead. Analytics may count a submit event even when the notification email failed, so the monthly check should match analytics against the inbox. Setting up routing that holds up is covered in how website forms should route leads.
Months two and three: is it doing its job?
Search Console's Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, and its queries dimension groups data by the search query users typed. After a few weeks, look at two views. By page: are the services pages and question pages starting to appear for searches? By query: are the searches that bring people in the ones your buyers would actually use?
Keep the review on a schedule: a short check weekly for the first month, then monthly. Write down what changed on the site and in marketing during each period, such as new pages, ad campaigns or seasonal peaks, so a change in the numbers can be read against what actually happened.
Combine that with the key events by landing page. A page with growing impressions and no inquiries may need a clearer next step. A page with steady inquiries and few impressions may deserve more internal links. Neither pattern proves cause; both point to where to look next.
A fictional example: the cleaning company's first quarter
Consider a fictional commercial cleaning company in Virginia that launched a rebuilt site with new pages for office, medical-office and post-construction cleaning. In week two, the Page indexing report shows the post-construction page as not indexed; it had been accidentally left out of the sitemap, which is fixed that day. In week three, the monthly test shows quote requests reaching the inbox but not analytics, because the form's confirmation step had changed; the key event is reconfigured.
By month three, the owner narrows the review. She asks the team, "Which three pages should bring in inquiries, and are they?" The office cleaning page is. The medical-office page gets impressions for searches about cleaning standards but few inquiries, so the next content task is a clearer explanation of how the company handles those jobs, not a new ad budget.
Hudson South builds websites around the same four steps as its content work: Authority Asset gathers approved business knowledge and evidence, Hudson Twenty-One records how the business communicates across 21 dimensions so the writing sounds like it, Market Intelligence researches the buyer questions and the market, and AEO Creation turns those inputs into answer-first content. As a practice, builds include an XML sitemap and form submissions emailed to the business, which gives the first-month checks above something concrete to confirm. The website builds overview covers the full process.
See where your site stands before the next build
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- Sitemaps report. Search Console Help. Read 2026-10-17.
- Page indexing report. Search Console Help. Read 2026-10-17.
- Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup. Search Console Help. Read 2026-10-17.
- Enhanced measurement events. Google Analytics Help. Read 2026-10-17.
- [GA4] Recommended events. Google Analytics Help. Read 2026-10-17.
- Mark events as key events. Google Analytics Help. Read 2026-10-17.