Google Search Console

Summary#

Connecting Google lets Metric Vault read your own Search Console figures and show them beside its estimates. The access is read-only, the whole flow takes under a minute, and it costs nothing. Once connected, running Domain Overview on a domain you have verified in Search Console adds a Live from Google Search Console panel with your real clicks, impressions, average position and top queries.

Purpose#

Every SEO platform estimates traffic. Estimates are useful for competitors, where nobody has the real numbers, and unnecessary for your own site, where you do. Search Console holds the measured truth: which queries showed your pages, how often people clicked, and where you actually ranked.

This connection exists so you do not have to choose between the two. Metric Vault keeps its estimates for competitive work and replaces them with your measured figures for the domains you own, in the same result, so you can tell at a glance which numbers you can act on directly.

Overview#

The connection is between your Metric Vault account and one Google account. What Metric Vault can see is exactly what that Google account can already see in Search Console: the properties it has been granted access to, and their performance data.

You do not choose a property during setup. Metric Vault reads the list of properties on the connected account and matches the domain you are analyzing against it when you run a report. That means one connection covers every property that account can reach, and adding a new property in Search Console makes it available here with no further setup.

Nothing is written back. The three permissions requested are all read-only, and none of them allow Metric Vault to change a setting, submit a sitemap, request indexing, or modify anything in your Google account.

Requirements#

• A Metric Vault account you are signed in to.
• A Google account that already has access to the Search Console property you care about. If the domain is not verified in Search Console, connecting will not create it. Verify it at Google Search Console first.
• No plan requirement and no credits. This is available on every plan.

Permissions#

Any signed-in user can connect their own Google account. There is no role or plan gate.

The connection belongs to the person who made it. If you work in a teammate's workspace, their Google connection does not give you Search Console data in your own reports, and yours does not give it to them. Each person connects their own account. See What teammates share.

On Google's consent screen you are asked to approve three permissions:

All three are read-only. The panels that read your data today are built on Search Console; the Analytics permission is requested in the same consent so the connection does not have to be redone later.

Navigation Path#

Dashboard → Account & Team → Integrations

The card is titled Google Search Console + Analytics.

Step-by-Step Guide#

1. Open Integrations from the sidebar, under Account & Team.
2. Find the Google Search Console + Analytics card. The badge beside its title tells you where you stand: Not connected, Connected, or Setup required. Setup required means Google sign-in is not configured for this site, and there is nothing you can do from your account. Report it.
3. Press Connect Google. The page navigates to Google in the same tab.
4. Choose the Google account that has access to your Search Console property. Pick carefully: this is the account whose properties you will be able to read.
5. If Google shows an "unverified app" warning, see the note below before continuing.
6. Review the three permissions and press Continue.
7. Google returns you to a page headed Google connected! naming the account that was linked. Press Back to Dashboard.
8. Reopen Integrations. The badge on the Google card now reads Connected.

Choosing which property is used#

You never pick a property from a dropdown. When you run Domain Overview on a domain, Metric Vault reads the property list from your connected Google account and looks for one that matches the domain you typed.

The match ignores http:// and https://, a trailing slash, and a leading www., and it understands Search Console's domain properties, which Google writes as sc-domain:example.com. A subdomain matches its parent property and a parent matches a subdomain property, so blog.example.com finds a property registered for example.com and the reverse also works.

If no property matches, the panel says so plainly:

The number in brackets is how many properties that Google account can reach. A (0 found) means the account has no Search Console properties at all, or the connection is no longer being accepted. See Google connection problems.

What data flows in#

Three things run in the background once a property is selected, and each one is bounded so it cannot exhaust a Google quota:

Index coverage is capped because Google allows only 2,000 URL inspections a day per property, one URL per call. Pages are checked in order of impressions, so the ones that matter are answered first, and the panel says how many of your pages it has reached.

Because everything is stored, opening a tab reads the database rather than calling Google. Nothing you do in the interface can spend a quota.

Older on-demand panels elsewhere in the app still make a single live request:

The range ends three days back because Search Console data is delayed by roughly two days. Asking for yesterday returns nothing, so the window is shifted to where the data is complete.

The result is stored for one hour so repeated report runs do not re-query Google. That is why a change you see in Search Console can take up to an hour to show here. Disconnecting clears the stored copy immediately.

Index coverage#

The Index coverage tab answers a question the performance report cannot. In that report, a page with no impressions and a page Google refused to index look identical: both are absent. Only the URL Inspection API knows which one you have, and why.

Each row gives the page, whether it is indexed, and what Google did with it in plain words. "Crawled - currently not indexed" is shown as "Google read it and chose not to index it. Usually thin, duplicated, or too close to another page." Where Google overrode your canonical, the canonical it picked instead is shown, because that is the part you can act on.

The panel states its own scope. On a large site it has checked a sample, and it says which: "Checked the top 100 of 4,312 pages that got impressions in the last 28 days." When it really has reached every page, it says that instead.

Core Web Vitals#

This tab shows field data: what real Chrome users on real connections measured over a rolling 28 days. That is what Google ranks on.

It is not the same number as the Lighthouse score in Site Audit, which measures one synthetic load on our hardware. The two routinely disagree, and neither is wrong. If you have to choose which to act on, this is the one that affects rankings.

Each metric shows the 75th percentile, a verdict against Google's published thresholds, and the share of visits that were good and poor. That last part matters: a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.4 seconds can be a site that is fine for almost everyone or one split down the middle, and the p75 alone cannot tell you which.

A page with too few visitors for Google to report on is left out rather than shown as zero.

Reading the panel#

Run Domain Overview on a domain you have verified. Below the standard result, a card headed Live from Google Search Console appears with a REAL DATA pill and the date range it covers.

The footer reads Cached for 1 hour · Direct from Google Search Console · Last 30 days.

If you are not connected#

Running Domain Overview while disconnected shows a short prompt in the same place instead:

Its Connect Google button takes you straight to the Integrations screen.

Disconnecting#

Removing the connection makes every panel fall back to estimates and clears the Search Console figures cached for your account.

The Google card does not currently show a disconnect button on the Integrations screen, so the reliable way to end the access yourself is at Google: open myaccount.google.com/permissions, find Metric Vault, and remove it. That revokes the grant at the source, which is stronger than removing it here, and it takes effect immediately.

If you also want the stored connection cleared from Metric Vault, ask support. See Disconnecting an integration for the wider picture and Contacting support for how to reach us.

Connecting a different Google account replaces the existing connection. You do not need to remove the old one first.

What "connected" means on a website#

The tag beside your website reads CONNECTED · GSC only when that specific site is one of the properties you selected. Connecting a Google account is not enough on its own, and neither is owning other properties on the same account.

A domain property covers its subdomains, so selecting example.com marks blog.example.com as connected too. A URL-prefix property covers only that exact address.

Any other site reads YOUR WEBSITE, which is what it is: an address you typed into Add Website, not a linked account.

Limitations#

• Search Console only, for now. The Analytics permission is requested in the same consent, but no Google Analytics figures are displayed anywhere in the app today.
• One Google account per Metric Vault account. Connecting a second replaces the first.
• One place in the product. The live panel appears under Domain Overview results. Other tools continue to use their own data sources.
• Queries only. The report is grouped by search query. Pages, countries, devices and appearance breakdowns are not requested.
• Up to 100 queries. Sites with a long tail will see their top queries, not all of them.
• Nothing is written to Google. No sitemap submission, no indexing requests, no settings changes.
• Not shared with teammates. Your connection is yours.

Troubleshooting#

More symptoms, with what each one means, are in Google connection problems.

FAQs#

Does connecting Google cost credits? No. Connecting is free and reading your Search Console data does not consume credits or count against any quota.

Can Metric Vault change anything in my Google account? No. All three permissions are read-only. There is no way for the app to submit a sitemap, request indexing, alter a property, or write to Analytics.

Which Google account should I use? The one that can already open the property in Search Console. If several people have access, any of them works; the data is the same.

Do my teammates get my Search Console data? No. Each person connects their own Google account for their own reports.

Why do the totals not match Search Console? The tiles are calculated over the top queries returned, up to 100 rows, not over your entire property. Search Console's own overview is the right place for property totals.

Why is the most recent day missing? Search Console data lags by roughly two days, so the range ends three days ago to avoid reporting an incomplete day.

I revoked access at Google. Do I need to do anything here? No, but reconnect if you want live data again. Until then the panel falls back to the "not a verified property" message because no properties can be read.

How do I connect a different Google account? Press Connect Google and choose the other account. The new connection replaces the old one.