Connecting Google Search Console

Search Console is the most valuable free data source in SEO. Connecting it gives us your real search queries, clicks, impressions, average positions, and index coverage. We overlay that data on every audit report and every rank-tracked keyword.

Prerequisites

• You have at least Restricted access to the GSC property (Owner, Full, Restricted or Associate roles all work).
• The property is verified in Search Console. We cannot connect unverified properties.
• Either a domain property (semoptimiser.com – covers all subdomains and protocols) or a URL-prefix property works. Domain properties give the most complete data.

Connection flow

1. Settings → Integrations → Google Search Console → Connect.
2. Google OAuth window opens. Pick the Google account with GSC access.
3. Grant the webmasters.readonly scope (the only scope we request – see below).
4. A modal lists every GSC property your account can see. Tick the ones to connect.
5. Save. We backfill the last 16 months of data, which can take up to an hour for large properties.

OAuth scopes

We request exactly one scope:

text
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/webmasters.readonly

This is read-only. We cannot submit sitemaps, modify settings, or change anything in your GSC property. The userinfo.email scope is implicit (so we know which Google account authorized).

API quota behaviour

Google's Search Console API has two main quotas:

When your daily inspection quota is exhausted, queued URLs roll over to the next day automatically. The bulk inspection UI shows current quota remaining.

Data freshness

After the initial 16-month backfill, we sync incrementally every 6 hours. The most recent two days of data are sampled by Google; once data ages past 48 hours it matches the GSC UI exactly.

Multiple properties

You can connect as many properties as your Google account has access to. Each gets mapped to a site in your SEMOptimiser workspace. To remap, go to Settings → Integrations → Google Search Console → Manage.

Disconnect

Disconnecting revokes our OAuth token at Google and stops sync within 10 minutes. Historical data we already pulled stays in our database – contact support to purge it.