Google Search Console

Google Search Console

Google Search Console monitors and troubleshoots your site's presence in Google Search. Query search performance analytics, manage sitemaps, inspect URL indexing status, find ranking opportunities, and detect keyword cannibalization.

Data Model

• Verified properties — two types: domain properties (sc-domain:example.com, covers all subdomains and protocols) and URL-prefix properties (https://www.example.com/, covers exact prefix only). Discover registered properties first so site_url strings match exactly.
• Search analytics — impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position. Can be grouped by dimensions (query, page, country, device, date, searchAppearance) and filtered by any dimension.
• Sitemaps — submitted discovery feeds, their processing status, and contained URLs.
• URL inspection — read-only check of indexing status, last crawl time, canonical URL, robots.txt state, mobile usability, and rich results. Does NOT trigger a recrawl — that can only be done in the GSC web UI.

Capability map

Filtering with Search Analytics

Search analytics accepts a dimension_filter_groups parameter that filters results before grouping. This is the key to answering "which queries trigger this page" or "which pages rank for this query."

Format: [{"filters": [{"dimension": "<dim>", "operator": "<op>", "expression": "<value>"}]}]

Operators: equals, contains, notEquals, notContains, includingRegex, excludingRegex

Dimensions for filtering: query, page, country, device

Common patterns

All queries that trigger a specific page (diagnose low-CTR pages):

• dimensions: ["query"]
• dimension_filter_groups: [{"filters": [{"dimension": "page", "operator": "contains", "expression": "your-page-slug"}]}]

All pages ranking for a specific query:

• dimensions: ["page"]
• dimension_filter_groups: [{"filters": [{"dimension": "query", "operator": "contains", "expression": "search term"}]}]

Daily trend for a specific query:

• dimensions: ["date"]
• dimension_filter_groups: [{"filters": [{"dimension": "query", "operator": "equals", "expression": "exact query"}]}]

Mobile vs desktop for a page:

• dimensions: ["device"]
• dimension_filter_groups: [{"filters": [{"dimension": "page", "operator": "contains", "expression": "your-page-slug"}]}]

Property Types (site_url format)

• Domain property: sc-domain:example.com — covers all URLs under the domain across all subdomains and protocols. Preferred for most use cases.
• URL-prefix property: https://www.example.com/ — covers only URLs matching the exact prefix. Must include protocol and trailing slash.
• Using the wrong site_url shape yields empty reads or permission failures—copy the exact value from the property listing.

Quotas

• URL Inspection API: 2,000 inspections/day per property. Shared across all URL inspection traffic for that property.
• Search Analytics API: Up to 25,000 rows per request—keep a steady cadence for heavy dashboards; row cap matters more than burst frequency for most jobs.
• Re-indexing: There is NO API for requesting re-indexing. It can only be done through the GSC web UI (~10-20 submissions/day).

Gotchas

• search_type matters: Defaults to web. Set to image, video, news, discover, or googleNews for those verticals — results are completely different.
• Analytics data delay: Data has a ~2-3 day lag. Avoid the last 2 days in date ranges.
• Date ranges: Use start_date and end_date (YYYY-MM-DD). Maximum lookback is 16 months.
• Row limits: Search analytics returns empty rows when row_limit exceeds 1,000. Use start_row to paginate manually, or set paginate_all=true on the full search analytics query to fetch all batches automatically.
• URL inspection is read-only: Returns indexing status but does NOT request re-indexing. The response includes a link to the GSC web UI.
• Inspection scope: URLs passed to URL inspection must fall within the site_url property scope.