Google Search Console API gains fresh data & more

Google announced updates to the Google Search Console API, after informing us the company was upgrading the API’s infrastructure a few months ago, now those upgrades are resulting in some new and useful features.

Fresher data. A year ago last September, Google brought faster and fresher data to the Google Search Console performance reports. Now, with the updated API, that data can be accessed via the API.

Google explained that the Performance report already supports fresh data that is less than a day old. You can now access this data through the API by passing the request parameter dataState with value set to all.

A reminder that the fresher data, where you set the dataState value to all is not yet final. If you wish to get only final data, you can either pass this parameter with value set to final or not pass it at all and you will get only final data by default.

News filter. In July, Google added a news filter to the performance report in Search Console. Now you can also access this data directly in the API. You can access it by setting the value of searchType parameter in the request to news.

Domain property support. Google also added the ability to query, add, and delete your sitemaps on domain properties. Domain properties is a way to verify your whole domain name in Google Search Console, it launched in February 2019.

Here is how you would request it:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/webmasters/v3/sites/sc-domain:example.com/sitemaps

Discovery doc migration. Google also explained that will no longer support the Webmasters discovery document. Google said “if you’re querying the Search Console API using an external API library, or querying the Webmasters API discovery document directly, you will need to update your API calls to include the following changes.”

Why we care. Fresher data is great and so are more filters and support. So these changes are welcomed. The removal of some support is also important to know, if you happen to be using those older APIs.

So now you can request fresher data from the API, but remember, that data is not considered “final” data and may change over time. Make sure to become fluent in the new API changes if you use the API for any application or software programs that you have built. Also, you might want to encourage your tool providers to enhance their reporting with the new features mentioned here.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.