Domain property vs URL-prefix property

Updated 2026-08-04

The difference between a sc-domain property and a URL-prefix property, what each one covers, verification requirements, and which to choose.

Search Console has two property types, and the choice determines what data you can see.

Domain property

Written sc-domain:example.com. Covers everything on the domain:

• Every subdomain — www, blog, shop, m, all of them.
• Both protocols, http and https.

Verification is DNS only — a TXT record. That is the catch: no DNS access, no domain property.

URL-prefix property

Written as a URL: https://www.example.com/. Covers only URLs starting with that exact prefix — including protocol and subdomain. https://www.example.com/ and https://example.com/ are two different properties, and neither sees the other's data.

Verification accepts several methods: HTML file, meta tag, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, or DNS.

Which to use

Use a domain property if you have DNS access. It is the complete picture, it survives an http-to-https migration, and it means one property instead of four.

Use URL-prefix if you cannot edit DNS, or if you deliberately want a section reported separately — a URL-prefix property on https://example.com/blog/ gives you blog-only reporting that a domain property cannot isolate.

Both is fine and often ideal. A domain property for the true total, plus URL-prefix properties for sections you want to track independently. They report the same underlying data, sliced differently.

Why your numbers differ between them

If a domain property shows more clicks than your URL-prefix property, it is counting subdomains and the non-www variant. That is the domain property being right, not the prefix one being wrong.