Google Search Console

Google Search Console MCP

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Seventeen read-only tools over the Google Search Console API, plus a deterministic white-label HTML audit report an agency can put its own name on and send to a client, in English or Italian.

Regenerate that report from committed synthetic data, with no credentials:

python scripts/render_sample_report.py --lang en --open

Install

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add acamolese/google-search-console-mcp
/plugin install google-search-console@acamolese

The plugin brings the MCP server, five skills (weekly review, cannibalisation check, indexing audit, content opportunities, white-label client audit) and a config prompt for the three credentials.

Claude Desktop

Download google-search-console.mcpb from the latest release and open it. It needs uv installed. Or edit the config file directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-search-console": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-google-search-console"],
      "env": {
        "GSC_CLIENT_ID": "...",
        "GSC_CLIENT_SECRET": "...",
        "GSC_REFRESH_TOKEN": "..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Zed

Any MCP client takes the same three lines: command uvx, argument mcp-google-search-console, and the three GSC_* environment variables.

# Codex
codex mcp add google-search-console -- uvx mcp-google-search-console

# Gemini CLI
gemini mcp add google-search-console uvx mcp-google-search-console

Docker

docker build -t mcp-gsc .
docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:8765:8765 \
  -e GSC_CLIENT_ID -e GSC_CLIENT_SECRET -e GSC_REFRESH_TOKEN \
  -v "$PWD/reports:/reports" mcp-gsc

The container speaks streamable HTTP on /mcp. It has no authentication of its own: keep it on loopback or behind a reverse proxy.

Authentication

The OAuth scope is webmasters.readonly and nothing else. No tool in this server can modify a property, a sitemap or anything else in Search Console.

Credentials are resolved in this order:

1. GSC_AUTH_MODE if set (oauth, service_account, adc)
2. GSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE or GSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON
3. GSC_CLIENT_ID + GSC_CLIENT_SECRET + GSC_REFRESH_TOKEN
4. A token file in ~/.config/mcp-google-search-console/
5. Application Default Credentials

OAuth, once

1. In Google Cloud Console, enable the Google Search Console API and create an OAuth client of type Desktop app.

2. Export the client, or save the downloaded JSON as ~/.config/mcp-google-search-console/oauth_credentials.json:

   export GSC_CLIENT_ID="...apps.googleusercontent.com"
   export GSC_CLIENT_SECRET="..."
   uvx mcp-google-search-console auth
   

3. The browser flow prints the three export lines for a stateless setup, and also stores a token at ~/.config/mcp-google-search-console/token.json with 0600 permissions.

On a headless machine, run auth on your laptop and copy the three environment variables across. --no-browser prints the URL instead of opening one, but still needs a local redirect.

Service account

Grant the service account's email read access to the property in Search Console, then point the server at the key:

export GSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE=/path/to/key.json
# or, for a container:
export GSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON='{"type":"service_account",...}'

Check it works

uvx mcp-google-search-console doctor

Prints the auth mode in use, when the token expires, how many properties the account can read, and the defaults every tool applies. Secrets are masked. Exits 1 when nothing resolves, which is the answer to most "the server won't start" reports.

Tools

Tool	What it answers
gsc_sites	Which properties can this account read, and in what exact format
gsc_site_details	Permission level and type for one property
gsc_query	The Search Analytics report, with filters, dimensions and pagination
gsc_performance_overview	Is the site up or down, against the previous period
gsc_compare_periods	What changed between two periods, ranked by click delta
gsc_quick_wins	Queries close enough to the top that a push would pay off
gsc_ctr_gaps	Pages that rank but are not clicked
gsc_cannibalization	Queries where several pages compete against each other
gsc_traffic_drops	Pages that lost clicks, with a likely cause for each
gsc_content_decay	Pages sliding down month after month
gsc_alerts	What moved sharply enough to be worth a message today
gsc_portfolio	Every property at a glance, worst first
gsc_indexing_issues	Which of these URLs are indexed, and why not
gsc_inspect_url	Full URL Inspection for one page
gsc_sitemaps	Which sitemaps Google knows about, with errors and warnings
gsc_doctor	What is configured, and does the API answer
gsc_audit	The full HTML report

Three prompts wrap the workflows that repeat: gsc_weekly_report, gsc_indexing_audit, gsc_content_opportunities.

Why this server

	Here	Typical GSC MCP server
Client-ready report	Self-contained HTML, English or Italian, white-label	none
Analysis	Cannibalisation, CTR gaps, decay, drop diagnosis, run server-side	raw rows, analysed by the model
Thresholds	Adapt to the size of the property	fixed, or none
Dates	period="last_month", days=28, resolved server-side	explicit dates only
Freshness	dataState=all by default, matching the UI	final only
Auth	OAuth, service account, ADC	OAuth only
Output	TSV by default, roughly a third of the tokens of pretty JSON	json.dumps(indent=2)
Errors	Google's reason plus what to do about it	bare HTTP status
Tests	280+, on both mcp majors, three operating systems	usually none

Report customisation

Colours, logo, report name, brand terms and thresholds come from a JSON file. Pass branding_path, or place it at ~/.config/mcp-google-search-console/branding.json to apply it everywhere:

{
  "brand_name": "Your Agency",
  "logo": "logo.png",
  "brand_terms": ["clientbrand", "client brand"],
  "colors": { "primary": "#2b6cb0", "primary_dark": "#1a365d" },
  "thresholds": { "min_impressions": 200 }
}

A local logo is base64-encoded into the document. A remote one is only kept if allow_external_fonts is true, because the report is otherwise guaranteed to contain no external URL at all: no CDN, no font service, nothing that phones home when a client opens it.

brand_terms matters more than it looks. Without it, the first label of the domain is used as the brand, which is wrong for abbreviations, holding companies and invented names, and it silently mislabels the brand/non-brand split. The report says when it had to guess.

Quotas and limits

• 16 months of daily data. Anything older is not available at any price.
• Hourly data: the last 10 days only.
• URL Inspection: 600 per minute and 2,000 per day per property. This is the limit that bites on a large site.
• Search Analytics: 1,200 queries per minute per site. Responses are cached in memory for 6 hours (1 hour for inspections); no_cache=true bypasses it.
• Rows: 25,000 per API call. Tools default to 100 and cap at 1,000, with start_row for pagination; the cap is reported in the response, never applied silently.

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Purpose
GSC_CLIENT_ID, GSC_CLIENT_SECRET, GSC_REFRESH_TOKEN		Stateless OAuth
GSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE, GSC_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON		Service account
GSC_AUTH_MODE	auto	Force oauth, service_account or adc
GSC_REPORT_LANGUAGE	en	Report language: en or it
GSC_DATA_STATE	all	all includes today's partial data, final does not
GSC_CACHE_TTL_SECONDS	21600	Response cache TTL; 0 disables it
GSC_INSPECT_CONCURRENCY	5	Parallel URL inspections
GSC_LOG_LEVEL	WARNING	Logging, always to stderr
MCP_TRANSPORT, MCP_HOST, MCP_PORT	stdio	Transport

Troubleshooting

spawn uvx ENOENT — the client cannot find uvx on its PATH. GUI apps do not inherit a shell PATH. Use the absolute path: which uvx gives it, typically /Users/you/.local/bin/uvx.

403 forbidden on every call — almost always the property format. A domain property is sc-domain:example.com; a URL-prefix property is https://example.com/, trailing slash included. gsc_sites returns the exact strings.

401 invalid_grant — the refresh token was revoked or expired. Google expires refresh tokens for OAuth apps still in "testing" after seven days; publish the app, or re-run auth.

403 quotaExceeded — the daily URL Inspection quota is gone. It resets tomorrow; nothing retries past it.

Empty report on a small site — check the thresholds in the response meta. They adapt to the property, but the floors (50 impressions, 10 clicks) still apply. Pass thresholds to lower them.

Anything else — run doctor and include its output in the issue.

Security

• Read-only scope, requested and never widened.
• Token files are written atomically with 0600 permissions. Credentials supplied through the environment are never written to disk.
• gsc_doctor masks the client ID and never returns a token.
• No telemetry, no analytics, no request to any host other than Google's API.

See SECURITY.md for the reporting policy.

Development

uv venv && uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
ruff check src tests scripts && ruff format --check src tests scripts
pytest -q --cov=google_search_console_mcp
python scripts/sync_versions.py
python scripts/render_sample_report.py --lang it --open

Tests never hit the network. Live tests exist behind -m live and require GSC_LIVE_TESTS=1 plus credentials; they never run in CI.

Releases: see docs/RELEASING.md. Decisions not covered by the code are logged in docs/DECISIONS.md.

License

MIT. Chart.js 4.5.1 is vendored under src/google_search_console_mcp/static/, also MIT, with its licence alongside.