Google Search Console (GSC) is the connection that changes how Crawl Cove feels. Without it you get a deterministic audit ranked by severity — already useful. With it, every finding is weighted by the real impressions sitting on the affected pages, so "412 findings" collapses into "fix these 9 first." GSC also powers the Search Performance page, free keyword rank tracking, and per-URL query data.
The best part of the design: you authorize one Google account once, and that token then serves every client you manage. Per client, you only pick the property. This guide walks the full setup end to end — the one-time Google Cloud configuration by hand, then the two-minute connection inside Crawl Cove.
Note
What you'll need: Crawl Cove installed, and a Google account that has your clients' sites in Search Console. You'll do a one-time setup in Google Cloud Console (free), then connect inside the app. Budget about 10 minutes for the first account; every client after that takes seconds. No billing, no paid API — GSC is free.
Part 1 — One-time Google Cloud setup (by hand)
You do this once per Google account, not once per client. It creates the OAuth credentials Crawl Cove uses to read Search Console data on your behalf.
Create a project and enable the API
- Go to console.cloud.google.com and sign in with the Google account that has your clients' sites in Search Console.
- Create a New Project (name it something like "Crawl Cove") and select it so it's the active project.
- Open APIs & Services → Library, search for "Google Search Console API", and click Enable.
Configure the OAuth consent screen
- Open APIs & Services → OAuth consent screen.
- User type External → Create.
- Fill in the App name, and use your own email for both the support contact and the developer contact → Save and continue.
- On Scopes → Add or remove scopes → paste
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/webmasters.readonly→ tick it → Update → Save and continue. This is a read-only scope: Crawl Cove can read your Search Console data, never change it. - On Test users → Add users → add your own Google email → Save and continue.
Create the OAuth client ID
- Open APIs & Services → Credentials → Create Credentials →
OAuth client ID.
- Application type: Desktop app → Create.
- Copy the Client ID and Client secret. You'll paste both into Crawl Cove next.
Tip
"Desktop app" is the correct client type — Crawl Cove is a desktop application and completes the sign-in via a local loopback URL on your own machine. There's no web server or redirect domain to configure.
Part 2 — Connect inside Crawl Cove
This half is fast. The credentials live encrypted on your machine (via Electron
safeStorage); the app's interface only ever sees a configured boolean, never
the secret itself.
Paste the credentials (once)
- Open the Connections page (or Settings → Google Search Console), paste the Client ID and Client secret, and click Save.
Connect the Google account (once, account-level)
- Click Connect Google account. Your system browser opens Google's consent
screen.
- Choose your test-user account.
- Continue past the "unverified app" notice (expected — see the warning below).
- Grant the read-only scope.
- The loopback tab confirms the connection and you're done.
This step is account-level. You do it once, full stop. Every client that uses this Google account reuses the same token — no re-authorizing.
Pick the property per client
- Back in the client's Connections page (or step 3 of the onboarding
wizard), pick the property for this client and click Connect. The
matching domain is pre-selected, and Crawl Cove handles both Search Console
property forms —
sc-domain:example.com(domain property) andhttps://example.com/(URL-prefix property).
The first 90-day sync
- The first 90-day sync runs with visible progress. When it finishes, the Connections card shows the property, the last-sync time, and the row count — and your findings re-rank by impact immediately. From here, repeat step 8 for each additional client; no re-authorization is ever needed.
Note
GSC data itself lags about two days, and each sync pulls a rolling 90-day window. History accumulates as you keep syncing, so the longer a client is connected, the richer the rank and search-performance picture becomes.
Multiple Google accounts are supported
You're not limited to one login. Crawl Cove can hold several connected Google accounts (shown by email), and you choose which account + property each client uses. So a client whose site lives in a different Google account syncs from that account, with no conflict. Connect each account once, the same way as above.
The one gotcha you must know about
Heads up
While your OAuth consent screen's publishing status is "Testing", Google expires refresh tokens after 7 days. About a week after connecting, the next sync will fail with a token-invalid banner — this is a Google policy, not a bug. There are two clean fixes (reconnect weekly, or publish the app so tokens stop expiring), and failures are never silent — you get a prominent red "reconnect required" banner.
Why this is worth ten minutes
Connecting GSC is what turns Crawl Cove from a crawler into an agency tool. The impact score — severity weighted by the log of GSC impressions on each finding's affected URLs — is what lets you walk into a client call and say "these nine issues sit on pages worth tens of thousands of monthly impressions; everything else can wait." That's a defensible, deterministic priority order, built entirely on free data that lives on your own machine.
Next
- Prioritising with impact score — how GSC impressions turn hundreds of findings into a ranked to-do list.
- Search Performance: declining pages & striking-distance keywords — the reports GSC unlocks the moment your first sync finishes.