Google Search Console

Google Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners. It reports how your site performs in Google search: which queries it appears for, at which positions, and how many impressions and clicks each page earns. Connecting it to RankYak is optional, but you should do it if you can, because it replaces assumptions about your site's rankings with real measurements. RankYak requests read-only access, so it can never change anything in your Search Console account.

Why you should connect

Keywords you already rank for. During keyword discovery, every keyword is checked against your site's actual search performance. When one of your existing pages already ranks for a keyword, RankYak marks the keyword as covered by that page and excludes it from the content plan, so a new article never ends up competing with a page you already have. This is how RankYak avoids keyword cannibalization, and the keyword overview shows it at work: such keywords display your existing page instead of an article.

Rank tracking. Your dashboard shows the impressions your site earned over the last 30 days, and each article records milestones as it gets indexed, gathers impressions and clicks, and climbs into top positions.

Better refreshes. When RankYak refreshes an older article, the refresh is guided by the article's real search performance.

Connecting

The setup flow offers to connect Search Console when you create a project. Of course, you may also connect at any later moment.

1. Go to Settings, then Integrations.
2. Click Connect on the Google Search Console card.
3. Sign in with the Google account that has access to your site's property, and allow read-only access.
4. Back in RankYak, select the site to connect and click Connect site.

Choosing the site

After you sign in, RankYak lists every property in your Search Console account and preselects the one matching your project's domain. A property identifier takes one of two shapes: a domain property such as sc-domain:example.com, or a URL-prefix property such as https://example.com/. Either works; what matters is that the property covers your project's domain, and RankYak warns you when the selected property does not match, since data from another site would be inaccurate.

A property must be verified in Search Console before it can be connected. If the site you need carries a "Not verified" badge, or does not appear in the list at all, add and verify it in Google Search Console first, then click Refresh to pick it up.

Disconnecting

To disconnect, go to Settings, then Integrations, click Disconnect on the Google Search Console card, and confirm. RankYak removes its stored access immediately, and ranking and traffic data stop updating from that moment on; your keywords and articles are not affected. You may reconnect at any time by going through the Google sign-in again.