Connecting data

Google Search Console — the deep dive

The connection is per user: you grant SeoKestrel read-only access to your own Google account’s Search Console. It is requested separately from sign-in, so the app only ever holds the permission it actually needs.

1. Go to Settings → Integrations.
2. In the Google Search Console account card, choose Connect Search Console.
3. Pick the Google account that owns (or can read) your clients’ properties.
4. If Google shows a “Google hasn’t verified this app” screen, choose Advanced → continue. Expected while the app’s verification is pending; the scope stays read-only either way.
5. Keep the “View Search Console data” permission ticked and continue. (Untick it and SeoKestrel will politely refuse the connection — there is nothing to connect without it.)
6. You land back on Integrations with the account email shown as connected.

Grants are per-user, and one is enough per client: the nightly ingestion picks a valid Search Console grant from a teammate assigned to that client. More connected teammates simply means more fallback.

Property formats — the 403 paragraph

Each client workspace records which GSC property it reads. The string must match Search Console verbatim:

• sc-domain:example.com — a Domain property (covers all subdomains and protocols).
• https://example.com/ — a URL-prefix property (exactly that prefix, trailing slash included).

Copy it from Search Console’s property selector. A near-miss does not degrade gracefully; it simply returns no data.

The other data sources

• Plausible (traffic) — record the Plausible site id per client in Settings → Integrations (Data sources card). Plausible is EU-hosted analytics — cookie-banner-free by design.
• Rankings & backlinks — collected nightly for the keywords you track per client. Nothing to install; add keywords in the client’s Keywords tab.
• Crawl data — Site Health is powered by SeoSwift, a site crawler connected automatically when a client is created (and retryable from the Data sources card if it could not connect).

The nightly schedule

Ingestion runs every night (all times UTC):

• 03:00 — Search Console data.
• 03:30 — Plausible traffic.
• 04:00 — Core Web Vitals checks.
• 04:30 — rankings & backlinks.
• 06:00 — alert detection over the fresh numbers.

A new connection shows data after the next scheduled run, not immediately.

Disconnecting

1. Go to Settings → Integrations and choose Disconnect on the Google Search Console account card — this removes SeoKestrel’s stored tokens.
2. To revoke at the source too, visit myaccount.google.com/permissions and remove SeoKestrel there.

Good to know

• Nightly means nightly — a new connection shows data after the next scheduled run, not immediately.
• Clearing a client’s property or site id stops that client’s ingestion — useful when a client offboards.

FAQ

I connected GSC but the dashboard is empty.

Two usual suspects: the property string does not match Search Console exactly, or the nightly run has not happened yet. Check the string first; then check tomorrow.

Can SeoKestrel change anything in my Search Console?

No. The scope is read-only (webmasters.readonly). SeoKestrel can look, never touch.

Whose Google account should we connect?

Anyone on the client’s team whose Google account can read that property. Grants are per-user — each teammate connects their own account, and the nightly ingestion uses a valid grant from someone assigned to the client.

We rotated the Google account password. Reconnect?

No — OAuth grants survive password changes. Reconnect only if the grant was revoked.