Google Search Console
Query clicks, impressions, click-through rates and positions, inspect how Google indexes a URL, and list sitemaps.
A Google Search Console connection gives a playbook's functions the Search Console API, from a document Auto ships. You sign in to Google and allow Search Console, and the connection acts as you, for the properties your account is verified for. It reaches both kinds of property: a domain property, named sc-domain:example.com, and a URL-prefix property, named with its scheme and trailing slash, https://www.example.com/.
On Auto Cloud, available once Google's review of Auto completes; on a self-hosted runtime, with your own Google Cloud project, now.
What a playbook can do with Google Search Console
- Query search analytics: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and position by query, page, country, device, search appearance and date.
- Inspect how Google indexes a URL: its index status, the canonical Google chose, and when it was last crawled.
- List the properties you can reach and a property's sitemaps.
- Add or remove a property.
The search analytics query and URL inspection are marked as tools that only read.
The tools, as the connection lists them
Tools that read: webmasters.searchanalytics.query, webmasters.sites.list, webmasters.sites.get, webmasters.sitemaps.list and searchconsole.urlInspection.index.inspect.
Tools that act: webmasters.sites.add and webmasters.sites.delete.
An example workflow
A weekly watch on the pages that matter. A schedule trigger runs the workflow on Monday. A lookup function queries last week's clicks, impressions and position by page, and a second lookup function queries the week before. A computation function joins the two and lists the pages whose position fell by more than two places while their impressions held. A reasoning function, given the URL inspection tool, inspects each of those pages, reads whether Google still indexes it and which canonical it chose, and writes a short note per page: a ranking drop, an indexing problem, or a canonical that moved. A prediction function can forecast next week's clicks for the top pages from the figures the playbook has recorded week after week, with a likely range. An interaction function sends the note to the SEO lead through a Slack or Outlook connection, and the run's history in Studio keeps every row.
How to connect Google Search Console
- Sign in to Google and allow Search Console. The consent screen shows the permissions listed below.
Then:
- Ask your agent to connect Google Search Console to Auto, or open Settings, Agents, Connections in Auto Studio and choose Google Search Console. On Auto Cloud, Studio lists Google Search Console once Google's review of Auto completes.
- On the Studio page, check the service and its access, choose which playbooks may use the connection, and approve it.
- Have your agent check one small read through the connection before a function depends on it.
What it needs
- A Google account that is a verified owner or a user of the properties the playbook reads.
- Your agent connected to Auto and signed in as you, with permission to change your organization, if your agent adds the connection.
- On a self-hosted runtime, a Google Cloud project of your own with the Search Console API enabled and an OAuth client registered for the runtime, as Let people add connections sets out.
Google grants Search Console as one scope, webmasters, which covers adding and removing properties as well as reading. A playbook that only reports gives its functions the query and inspection tools alone.
Permissions Auto asks for
- Read and manage Search Console data of verified sites.
Good to know
Search Console's search analytics lag by a few days, as they do in the interface, so a weekly query of "last week" is more reliable than a daily one of "yesterday". A query's rows are kept in the run's history, where people with access to the playbook can read them.