Connect Search Console

Search Console answers the question analytics cannot: whether search can find an article at all. Per article, per day, it reports search impressions, clicks, and average position, and it is the only source that can tell an article nobody found from an article nobody wanted. Like analytics, the connection is read-only.

Two kinds of property, two spellings

Search Console verifies ownership per property, and a property takes one of two forms. The form is not a preference; it is part of the property’s identity, and the connection must carry it exactly.

• A Domain property covers a whole domain: every subdomain, every scheme. It is entered in its sc-domain: form, as in sc-domain:yourcompany.com. No scheme, no slash.
• A URL-prefix property covers one exact prefix, and is entered as the full address, scheme and trailing slash included, as in https://blog.yourcompany.com/.

Do not type the value from memory. Open Search Console, look at how the property picker spells it, and copy that spelling character for character.

A Domain property’s coverage is why a blog on a subdomain usually needs nothing extra: sc-domain:yourcompany.com already covers blog.yourcompany.com, so one property serves both, and there is no second connection to set up.

The right property in the wrong form fails as a permissions error

If you own the Domain property sc-domain:yourcompany.com and enter it as https://yourcompany.com/, both spellings are valid forms, so the form accepts it. The provider then answers every call with 403, saying the user does not have sufficient permission for that site. It reads like an account problem. It is a spelling problem: you asked about a property that exists in a form you do not own. A value that is neither form, by contrast, is caught as you type.

The Google side

Search Console rides the same OAuth client as analytics; if you set that up, there are only two additions:

1. Enable the Google Search Console API on the same Google Cloud project.
2. Make sure the Google account you authorize with can see the property: Restricted access or better is enough, since CommandChain only reads.

Connect it

1. In Settings → Integrations, import Google Search Console from the catalogue.
2. Create a connection: the property, in its exact spelling, goes in settings; the OAuth client’s ID and secret in credentials.
3. Press Connect with OAuth2 and authorize. The consent screen names the account it will act as.
4. On the Categories tab, verify the proposed bindings and activate them. The verify runs a real query, which is where the wrong-form 403 above would surface.

Days of zero are normal

A freshly connected Search Console property reports zero for days, and that is not a broken connection. Two waits stack: Google has to index a page before Search Console has anything to say about it, and Search Console’s own reporting then lags a further two to three days behind reality. Indexing is the unpredictable half; a page in a submitted sitemap can be indexed inside a day, and a page on a new site with few inbound links can take weeks.

The surface keeps the cases apart: an empty cell means nothing has landed yet, and a zero means a zero was measured. The full treatment, including what average position is and why lower is better, is on Metrics and attribution.

The past is recoverable, though: Search Console holds roughly sixteen months of history, and the content view’s Backfill history action pulls it in as daily readings for everything already published.

Next steps

• Publish an article: the whole path, from draft to measured.
• Metrics and attribution: decay, the coverage map, and what position means.
• Connect analytics: the traffic half, and the shared OAuth client.