Connect Google Search Console to Rig

    Sync daily Search Console clicks, impressions, click-through rate and position by query, page, country and device into Rig, along with true daily totals and your sitemaps. You can connect with a Google sign-in, or by sharing your property with a service account.

    Before you start

    • You need to be an owner of the Search Console property. Only owners see the Users and permissions page.

    Step 1: Share your property with the service account

    Do this step only if you connect with a service account. Skip it for the Google sign-in.

    1. Open Rig's connect form for Google Search Console and choose the service account option. Rig shows the service account email. Keep that page open.
    2. In Search Console, open your property and go to Settings, then Users and permissions.
    3. Click Add user, enter the service account email and choose Full permission. Restricted also works for read-only reporting.
    4. Save your changes. Rig then discovers every property shared with the account.

    Email groups do not work
    Search Console takes a single Google Account for each user, so add the service account email by itself.

    Step 2: Connect it in Rig

    Adding a source needs a workspace owner, or a role with the Manage connections permission, on a workspace where you manage your own connections. If the Connectors tab says “Data ingestion for this workspace is managed by Rig”, ask an owner or Rig support to add the source.

    1. In Rig, open Connections, choose the Connectors tab and go to Sources & actions.
    2. Search for Google Search Console, open the card and click Connect.
    3. For the quickest route, authorise with Google, sign in with an account that has access to your properties and approve the consent screen.
    4. If Google blocks the sign-in popup for your organisation, use the service account route. Complete Step 1, then paste the key into Service account JSON key (direct auth). Leave that field blank if you used the Google sign-in.
    5. Choose the streams you want and click Connect. The source then syncs on its schedule, which is nightly unless you change it.

    What Rig pulls in

    Google Search Console lands in its own google_search_console schema in your warehouse:

    • Sites: the properties the connection can see.
    • Sitemaps: submitted sitemaps with submitted and indexed counts by content type.
    • Search analytics: daily clicks, impressions, CTR and position by query, page, country and device.
    • Daily totals: true daily totals for each site, including anonymised queries.

    Rig pulls up to 16 months of history and re-pulls the last few days on each run to absorb Google's freshness lag.

    Good to know

    • Adding the query dimension makes Search Console exclude anonymised queries, and 20 to 50 percent of impressions are often anonymised. Summing the detailed rows therefore undercounts, so use the daily totals for site-wide figures.
    • Country and device breakdowns roll up exactly from the detailed rows, so Rig does not store them as separate tables.
    • Sitemaps are replaced on each sync, so a deleted sitemap drops out.
    • To disconnect Google Search Console, click the bin icon on the source's row under Sources & actions. Only whoever connected the source or a workspace owner can do this, and data already synced stays in the warehouse.

    What people use this for

    • Keep search history past Google's 16-month window
    • Join organic performance to revenue
    • Find the pages worth working on

    More ideas for using Google Search Console

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