Hi, I'm Daniel Waisberg,
Search Advocate at Google.
Today, I'll talk about the Google Search Console API,
a solution to pull data programmatically from Search Console.
Using the API,
developers can build applications to pull Search performance data
and make it available via dashboards
for their companies or external products.
This video is not a technical guide.
It's a quick intro
to the four different Search Console API methods
with some examples of which data
can be exported through each of them.
♪ [music] ♪
To begin with,
let me make it clear
that unlike the previous solutions discussed in this series,
you'll need technical skills in order to use the API.
The Search Console API
is exposed as an HTTP REST service
that you can call directly
or using one of Google's client libraries.
We recommend using those libraries
since they provide better language integration,
improved security,
and support for making calls
that require user authorization.
They're available in a number of programming languages,
like Java and Python.
Before you can send requests to Google Search Console,
you need to tell Google about your client
and activate access to the API.
You do this
by using the Google API Console
to create a project and register your application.
Every request your application sends to the Search Console API
must include an authorization token.
This is how Search Console knows
that the user is authorized to access the data.
There is a section in the developer documentation
dedicated to guiding you through important steps
when using the Search Console API.
Check the links in the description to learn more.
Let's go through each of the API methods
to discuss what you can get out of them.
[electronic beep]
The Search Analytics API provides data
related to how websites perform on Google Search.
It includes the data already discussed in the previous episode,
such as clicks, impressions, and average position
broken down by queries, pages, countries, and others.
I'd like to mention that the API will provide more data
than the user interface or the spreadsheet export.
While you can currently see
up to 1,000 sample pages or queries
through those methods,
the API and the Looker Studio Connector
will provide up to 50,000 samples.
These may be important for large websites
when analyzing query and page performance.
For example, this can be helpful for companies
that want to apply advanced models
to analyze query performance.
In that case, the more data, the merrier.
Another common use of the Search Analytics API
is to combine Google data with other sources of data.
For example, an SEO tool or a content management system
could pull data from the API to show their users
how much traffic Google Search is generating
alongside traffic from other search engines
or industry benchmarks.
They could also create dashboards
with other sources of traffic, like social and ads.
[electronic beep]
The URL Inspection API provides methods
to debug and optimize specific pages of your website.
It corresponds to the index data
available in the URL Inspection tool.
The data includes analysis results
containing index status,
AMP, rich results,
and mobile usability on an URL basis.
[electronic beep]
This example shows the Inspection result for a page.
It includes three analysis results:
index status, mobile usability, and rich results.
The result starts with a link to Search Console
where you can also see the Inspection result.
Following the link, you'll see the index status.
This analysis provides information about the URL indexing,
such as whether it is indexed or not,
the last crawl time,
Google-selected canonical,
and the user-declared canonical.
After that, you'll see your page's mobile usability verdict
and more details if any issues are detected.
Finally, you'll see a verdict for rich results,
including a description of all items detected
and any issues detected for them.
If no items were found,
this section will be omitted.
This API could be used by very large websites,
SEO tools, and content management systems
to help the users optimize their websites.
For example, by checking if there are differences
between user-declared and Google-selected canonicals,
by debugging structured data issues from a group of pages,
or by monitoring changes over time for key pages
to diagnose issues and help prioritize fixes.
To learn more about the information provided through the API
and the usage limits,
check the links in the description.
[electronic beep]
The Sitemaps API can be used
to retrieve information about the sitemap
already submitted to Google Search,
for example, the processing status,
the last time it was downloaded,
and existing warnings related to it.
The API can also be used
to submit and delete a sitemap for a site.
These can be relevant for large websites
with tens or hundreds of brands
or for content management systems.
Using this API, they could submit
and monitor sitemaps programmatically.
[electronic beep]
The Sites API can be used to add or remove a site
to a user's set of sites in Search Console.
You can also use it
to retrieve the information for a specific site
or to list all the user's Search Console sites
and permission level in each.
These can be relevant for content management systems,
large websites, and SEO agencies
to manage access in a more scalable way.
For example, monitoring who has access to a specific property.
[electronic beep]
I hope you have learned a bit more about the Search Console APIs
and what you can use them for.
As I mentioned,
you'll need some technical skills to use it,
but it's not rocket science.
In the next episode,
we'll talk about exporting even more data.
[woman clearing throat]
Stay tuned.
♪ [music] ♪
Actually, this is better than the Search Console API.
[chortles]
[in slow motion] Whoa!