Google Search Console API

# Fix list: Google Search Console API

From Anchor Terminal's listing at https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-search-console, the October 2026 research run, assessed 8 October 2026. Grade C, 59 out of 100.

This is everything the published grade says the listing lacks, the biggest possible gain to the total first. It comes from the reason given for each score, the checklist each category was scored against (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist), the provenance checks, the deductions, what we couldn't check and what the review panel asked for. A fix counts at the next check, once it's public.

For a coding agent working on Google Search Console API: work through the items below in the product, its docs and its public pages. Each category gives the reason for its score, with the points each checklist item earned, and the checklist itself, so the gap is the items that earned less than their points. Change the product, not the wording, and keep a note of what you changed and where it's published.

## 1. Reliability, 37 out of 100, up to 12.6 more on the total

Why it scored 37: Graded on the REST API with the hosted lines. No status page for Search Console or its API was found. Google's Search Status Dashboard lists four systems, Crawling, Indexing, Ranking and Serving, and its nine entries since December 2025 are ranking updates and one 15-minute Serving disruption on 25 February 2026 (0 of 20). No readable incident history for the API (5 of 30). Quotas are published with numbers, 1,200 queries a minute per site and per user for Search Analytics, 2,000 a day and 600 a minute per site for URL inspection, and 20 a second per user elsewhere (15). The limits page says to wait 15 minutes after a short-term load error and explains what makes a query expensive, and the writes are PUT and DELETE, which repeat safely. No Retry-After or backoff guidance was found (7 of 15). No SLA found (0). The API is v1 with no beta or preview label (10). Total 37.

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-reliability):

Hosted APIs, MCP servers, models and platforms.

- 20, a public status page with component history (Statuspage, Instatus, BetterStack or the vendor's own).
- 0 to 30, the incident record for the last 90 days on that page. 30 for a clean record or trivial incidents only, 20 for minor incidents only, 10 for one major outage (an hour or more of a core API down, or errors across the board), 0 for several. 5 when there's no history we could read, and the note says so.
- 15, rate limits documented with numbers.
- 15, documented 429 or overload handling (Retry-After, backoff guidance), and idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance where writes are involved.
- 10, an SLA published for any paid tier.
- 10, the surface agents use is generally available, not beta or preview.

Local packages, SDKs, frameworks and stdio MCP servers.

- 20, installs from an official package with supported runtimes stated.
- 25, a public CI and test suite, passing on the default branch.
- 0 to 25, open crash or regression issues relative to activity (25 for few and handled, 0 for many, old and unanswered).
- 15, semver discipline and breaking changes called out in a changelog.
- 15, version 1.0 or later, or declared stable.

Protocols are read from their reference implementations, the public facilitators or servers, spec stability and test vectors.

## 2. Security & auth, 56 out of 100, up to 7.7 more on the total

Why it scored 56: OAuth 2.0 with two scopes and short-lived access tokens (30), less 10 because the discovery document lists `access_token`, `oauth_token` and `key` as query parameters and the query reference's own example puts `key` in the URL (20). `webmasters.readonly` is a separate scope and Search Console has owner, full and read permission per property, but a token covers every property the user can reach and nothing confirms `sites.delete` or `sitemaps.delete` (14 of 20). Responses carry search query strings and page URLs written by third parties, and no guidance on treating them as untrusted was found (3 of 15). The Cloud console quota tab shows project usage. No log of API calls per user or property was found (4 of 15). security.txt at www.google.com is valid to 1 April 2030 and names the vulnerability reward programme. Google's SOC 2 page did not name Search Console when read (15 of 20). Total 56.

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-security):

- 0 to 30, the credential model. 30 for OAuth 2.1 with scopes, or scoped and revocable keys with rotation. 20 for plain revocable API keys. 10 for one all-powerful key. 10 off when a secret can travel in a URL query string as a documented option.
- 0 to 20, read-only or least-privilege modes, and confirmation or approval for destructive actions.
- 0 to 15, prompt-injection posture where the tool returns untrusted content (documented mitigations or guidance). A tool that returns no untrusted content gets 10.
- 0 to 15, audit logs or per-call visibility for the operator.
- 0 to 20, a security programme. security.txt or a disclosure policy, a bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, advisories handled in public.

Models are read for retention, whether API data trains models (and whether that's off by default), zero-retention options and certifications. Frameworks for telemetry defaults, approval hooks, guardrails and sandboxing.

## 3. Payments & pricing, 40 out of 100, up to 7.5 more on the total

Why it scored 40: No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The pricing page says all use of the API is free of charge, subject to the published limits (20). No card is needed (20). A person creates a Cloud project and OAuth client, verifies a property in Search Console and grants consent in a browser (0). Total 40.

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-payments):

The published rubric, also on the [x402 page](https://www.anchorterminal.com/x402/).

- 40, a machine payment protocol (x402, MPP or L402) on the tool's own endpoints. 10 to 30 when it covers only some endpoints or only goes through a third party, and the note says which.
- 20, per-call or per-unit pricing published without a login. 10 for public plan-only pricing, 0 for "contact sales" or prices behind a login.
- 20, a free tier or trial that doesn't need a card.
- 20, autonomous onboarding, meaning an agent can get access without a person signing up in a browser (keyless use, x402, a programmatic key API).

Payment platforms and agent wallets rarely charge for their own API over a machine protocol, so the first line has steps for them, and the highest one that applies counts. 40 when x402, MPP or L402 runs on all their own endpoints, 30 when it runs on part of their own API, 25 when their merchants can accept one, 20 for running a facilitator, 15 for paying as a buyer, and 0 when the only protocol is their own. Merchant acceptance sits above a facilitator because the platform's own customers can charge agents through it, while a facilitator settles for sellers who wire up the protocol themselves. The counter-argument (a facilitator does more for the protocol as a whole) has a point. Each note says which step applied.

Open-source software you run yourself is scored on its hosted or paid option if it has one. A free, self-hosted package with nothing to buy gets 20, 20 and 20 for the last three lines, and 0 to 40 for the first only if it ships a payment protocol.

## 4. Schema & documentation, 75 out of 100, up to 4.1 more on the total

Why it scored 75: Google publishes a discovery document, not OpenAPI, at revision 20261007 with 11 methods and 30 schemas (25). llms.txt returned 404 at developers.google.com and under /webmaster-tools, while doc pages return Markdown when .md.txt is appended. No page we read links to those copies (5 of 10). The query reference explains each parameter, the data limits and when rows are dropped, and the data guide says how to query for accurate counts. Sites, sitemaps and URL inspection have one-line descriptions (15 of 20). Enums for dimensions, search types, aggregation, data state and six filter operators. Dates are plain strings, and the reference writes values in lower case where the discovery document lists upper case (13 of 15). Python samples and JSON examples, with errors documented only as Google's generic list of standard error codes (10 of 15). The version is in the path (`webmasters/v3` and `v1`), but there are no release notes. Changes appear as notices on reference pages and posts on the Search Central blog (7 of 15). Total 75.

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-schema):

APIs and MCP servers.

- 25, a machine-readable contract (a public OpenAPI file or similar; for MCP, typed JSON Schema inputs on every tool).
- 10, llms.txt or Markdown docs served for agents.
- 0 to 20, descriptions that say what a tool is for, when to use it and when not to, read from the tool definitions in the source or the API reference.
- 0 to 15, typed inputs with enums, constraints and required fields, and no free-form JSON blobs.
- 0 to 15, examples and documented error responses.
- 15, versioning and a public changelog.

Models are read from the API reference, the OpenAPI file, llms.txt, the structured-output and tool-use docs and the model cards. Frameworks from docs a model can follow, typed interfaces, examples and the API reference.

## 5. Transparency & trust, 58 out of 100, up to 3.7 more on the total

Made of editorial 41, provenance 74.

Why it scored 58: Closed service under the Google APIs Terms of Service, last modified 9 November 2021, with Apache-2.0 client libraries (15 of 30). The Google privacy policy (effective 1 October 2026) and the API Services User Data Policy apply. No retention statement, data processing terms or data location statement specific to Search Console API data was found in the pages read (14 of 30). Dated notices exist, such as FAQ search appearance support ending in August 2026 and the practice problem type kept through January 2026, but no stated notice period, and the API terms let Google discontinue an API (12 of 20). No sub-processor list or data location for Search Console was found (0 of 20). Total 41.

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-transparency):

- 0 to 30, source availability and licence clarity. 30 for open source under an OSI licence, 15 for closed with clear terms, 0 for unclear terms.
- 0 to 30, data handling and retention statements that agree with each other (privacy policy, DPA, retention periods, subprocessors).
- 0 to 20, a deprecation policy or notices with dates.
- 0 to 20, telemetry disclosed with an opt-out (local software), or subprocessors and data locations disclosed (hosted).

The other half of Transparency and trust is the provenance score, computed from checked facts (below). The category score is the mean of the two.

Provenance checks not met in full (half of this category, computed from checked facts):

- Terms of service: read, states 6 of the 7 things a reader expects, and has 1 clause that costs points (7.1 of 10)
- Privacy policy: read, states 7 of the 8 things a reader expects, and has 1 clause that costs points (7.3 of 10)
- Status page: not found (0 of 10)
- Changelog: not found (0 of 10)

## 6. Agent ergonomics, 82 out of 100, up to 2.9 more on the total

Why it scored 82: `rowLimit` from 1 to 25,000 with a default of 1,000, the `fields` parameter for partial responses and gzip (22 of 25). Offset paging with `startRow`, dimension filter groups with contains and regular expression operators, capped at 50,000 rows a day per search type (18 of 20). Errors are standard Google bodies with a code, status and reason, and the unauthenticated call we made returned a clear 401 with `CREDENTIALS_MISSING`. The limits page says every quota event returns the same quota exceeded error (13 of 20). Seven of eleven methods read, and the writes are PUT and DELETE on a named property or sitemap, so a retry repeats safely. There is no MCP server and so no tool annotations (15 of 20). A query needs only the property and two dates, and Google lists client libraries for Go, Java, Node.js, Objective-C, PHP and Python (14 of 15). Total 82.

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-ergonomics):

- 0 to 25, context cost. For MCP, the number and size of the tool definitions (25 for ten or fewer compact tools, 15 for 11 to 30, 5 for more than 30, plus up to 10 back for toolsets, dynamic loading or read-only subsets). For APIs, whether responses can be sized (field selection, limits, summaries).
- 20, pagination, filtering and output-size controls.
- 20, actionable, documented error responses, codes and messages an agent can recover from.
- 20, idempotency or safe retries, and for MCP the `readOnlyHint` and `destructiveHint` annotations.
- 15, sensible defaults, few required parameters, and official SDKs in at least two languages.

Models are read for tool use, structured output, prompt caching, context length, batch and SDKs. Frameworks for how much code and how many defaults a tool-calling agent with MCP needs.

## 7. Maintenance & community, 71 out of 100, up to 2.5 more on the total

Why it scored 71: There are no API release notes, so recency is read from the client and the docs. `@googleapis/searchconsole` 11.0.1 was published on 23 September 2026 with the note update the API, and the discovery document is at revision 20261007. The newest dated change to the API docs is the query reference, updated 11 August 2026 with the FAQ search appearance notice. A strict reading on the docs alone gives 20 (30). Seven client releases since 3 August 2026, most for the Node 22 minimum, and one dated docs change in 90 days (10 of 20). A help community and a Search Central blog, with no changelog for the API and no reply sampling by us (8 of 15). Current official client libraries, with google-api-python-client 2.201.0 on 30 September 2026 (15). Clients regenerate from discovery, the Node package went through breaking majors 8.0.0 to 11.0.0 in September 2026, and we did not check CI (8 of 10). Total 71.

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-maintenance):

- 0 to 30, time since the last release, or the last published model or API change for a closed service. 30 within 30 days, 20 within 90, 10 within 180, 0 older.
- 20, at least three releases or dated changelog entries in the last 90 days.
- 0 to 25, responsiveness. Issues and pull requests answered on GitHub (the open issues and how recent the replies are). For closed services, a public changelog and a support or community channel that answers, 0 to 15.
- 15, presence in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace (MCP servers), or current official SDKs (APIs and models).
- 10, package health, current dependencies and CI.

Models are read for deprecation notice periods and model churn rather than release counts.

## What we couldn't check

What we couldn't read counted as absent. Publishing it on a page a plain HTTP fetch can read (not only in a browser) lets the next check count it.

- Whether FAQ search appearance support was removed in August 2026 as the notice said. The notice still read upcoming on 8 October 2026
- Whether `urlTestingTools.mobileFriendlyTest.run` still answers. It is in the discovery document, its reference page returns 404, and we did not call it
- The reference pages give https://www.googleapis.com/webmasters/v3 as the base while the discovery document's root is https://searchconsole.googleapis.com/. We called only the second
- The category's test asks about ten arbitrary domains. This API answers only for properties the user manages, so the fit with the category is partial
- unchecked: how far back Search Analytics data goes. The help page we fetched did not show a figure to our reader
- unchecked: whether the two OAuth scopes are classed as sensitive and need app verification
- unchecked: whether a service account can be added to a property. The Python quickstart mentions service accounts and we did not read the detail
- unchecked: replies in the Search Console help community, and the CI state of the client repositories
- Search Console was not named on Google's SOC 2 page or on the Google Cloud MCP product list as our reader saw them. Both pages are large and partly drawn by script
- pypiWeekly is for google-api-python-client and githubStars for google-api-nodejs-client, which serve every Google API

## Weaknesses

- Data covers only properties the signed-in user has owner, full or read access to. It cannot be asked about any other domain
- Search Analytics exposes at most 50,000 rows a day per search type, and the reference says it returns top rows, not all rows
- No status page, SLA or dedicated changelog was found. Google's Search Status Dashboard lists Crawling, Indexing, Ranking and Serving only
- A scope covers every property the user can reach. No per-property scope and no audit log of API calls were found
- The discovery document still lists `urlTestingTools.mobileFriendlyTest.run`, whose reference page returns 404

## What costs an agent a turn today

The notes we give agents before they call it. Each one is a workaround an agent shouldn't need.

- URL-encode the property in the path. A URL-prefix property needs its trailing slash, and a Domain property is written `sc-domain:example.com`
- Query one day at a time and page with `startRow` in steps of 25,000 until a response has no rows
- Leave `page` and `query` out of `dimensions` when totals must be accurate. Grouping by either drops some data
- Ask for `webmasters.readonly` unless the task adds or deletes properties or sitemaps
- After a quota exceeded error wait 15 minutes. If it repeats, the daily load quota is spent, so shorten date ranges and drop page or query grouping

## When it's done

Send what changed and where it's published as a dispute (https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/#disputes, or `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/contact` with `"kind": "dispute"`). Disputes are answered in public, and the listing is checked again by the same checklist. Paying for an audit or a listing claim changes nothing here.