Google Search Console

Search Console is DispatchSEO's free data backbone: real impressions, clicks, and positions for your site, snapshotted hourly. Connecting it takes a service account - a Google robot identity that can read your Search Console data without your password.

The setup wizard walks you through all of this with a check button at the end - this page is the same walkthrough in document form, every click spelled out. It's a one-time ritual: the same service account works for every site you ever add.

Create the service account

1. Open console.cloud.google.com and sign in with the Google account that can see your site in Search Console.
2. Create a project: click the project picker in the top bar → New project → name it dispatchseo → Create. (Already have any project? Reusing it is fine.)
3. Turn on the API: open the Search Console API page and click Enable.
4. Create the account: open Service Accounts, click Create service account, name it dispatchseo, click Create and continue, skip the roles screen (Continue), click Done. It needs no permissions - it just needs to exist.
5. Download its key: click the account you just made → Keys tab → Add key → Create new key → pick JSON → Create. A .json file downloads. That file is a password for your search data - keep it out of screenshots, chats, and git.

Grant it access to your site

1. On the service account's page, copy its email - it ends in .iam.gserviceaccount.com.
2. Open Search Console, pick your site, then Settings → Users and permissions → Add user.
3. Paste the email, set Permission to Full, click Add.

Give it to DispatchSEO

Open the downloaded .json file in any text editor, select all of it, and paste it where the setup wizard (or the dashboard's Connect Search Console card) asks. Press Verify connection - it asks Google right then and tells you whether it worked. If Google says no at first, wait a few minutes and verify again; permissions can lag.

Env-var installs can set it directly instead:

GSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON=...   # the whole JSON, single line
GSC_SITE_URL=sc-domain:example.com   # or https://example.com/ for URL-prefix properties

Within an hour the first snapshot lands and the dashboard's Search traffic page starts filling in. Historical data backfills from what Google exposes (up to ~16 months).

The data tiers

Search Console is the free floor. The tiers stack - start free, add keys when you want more signal:

| Tier | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Search Console only | $0 | Rankings from GSC, keyword ideas from Autocomplete plus your own impression data | | + SerpApi free key | $0 | Live SERP checks, real positions weekly (250 free searches/month) | | + DataForSEO | pay per call | Search volume, keyword difficulty, domain rating |

Free mode finds keywords you can win. Paid mode also knows which ones are worth winning.