Connect Google Search Console to traffic.cx (Coming Soon)
How the planned Google Search Console connection works: the access it needs, the search terms it shows, how estimated revenue per term is worked out, and why Google's numbers run late.
Coming soon. The Search Console connection is being built and is not in the dashboard yet. This guide describes how it is planned to work, so you can get your access ready. Names and steps may change before launch; we will update this page when it ships.
Search Console is Google's free report of how your site appears in Google Search. Connecting it shows the search terms that bring visitors, next to the traffic and revenue traffic.cx already measures. For what it adds and why, see the Search Console feature overview.
Before you start
- Search Console access. Your site must be a verified property in Google Search Console, and the Google account you connect needs Owner or Full user permission on it. Check under Settings → Users and permissions in Search Console. Ask the property's owner to add you if you aren't listed.
- A traffic.cx role that manages the site. Connecting changes the site's settings, so it is for team members who can manage them. Everyone on the team will be able to read the report.
- The tracker, for revenue. Search numbers come from Google and don't need the tracker. Estimated revenue per search term does: install the tracker and connect your payments first.
1. Connect your Google account
In the dashboard, open the site's Settings → Integrations and choose Connect Google Search Console. Google asks you to sign in and to allow read-only access to your Search Console data.
traffic.cx asks for read-only access and nothing else. It can't change your properties, users or settings in Search Console, and this connection is separate from signing in to traffic.cx with Google.
2. Choose the property
traffic.cx lists the Search Console properties your Google account can read, with the one matching your site's domain first. Both kinds of property work:
- Domain property (
example.com): covers every subdomain and bothhttpandhttps. Choose it when you have one. - URL-prefix property (
https://www.example.com/): covers only addresses that start with that prefix.
Choose the property that covers the pages your traffic.cx tracker measures.
3. Wait for the first import
After you choose a property, traffic.cx copies the history Google keeps for it, newest days first, so recent weeks appear before older ones. After that it checks for new days on a schedule and refreshes the last few days, because Google keeps updating them.
The dashboard shows the import's progress while it runs. You can keep using the rest of the dashboard meanwhile.
What the report shows
The Search terms report lists what people typed into Google before they saw or clicked your site:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Clicks | How many times someone clicked through to your site from Google's results |
| Impressions | How many times your site appeared in someone's results, whether or not they scrolled to it |
| CTR | Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions |
| Position | Your average position in the results. Lower is better: 1 is the top result |
| Estimated revenue | Roughly how much revenue the term brought. See the next section |
A Pages view shows the same numbers for each page Google showed. The report follows the dashboard's date range and filters, so filtering to one page shows the terms that brought people to that page.
How estimated revenue is worked out
Google tells us which search terms sent clicks to each page. traffic.cx knows which visits arrived from Google Search, which page they landed on, and which payments they led to. The estimate joins the two at the page level:
- For each landing page, add up the revenue from visits that came from Google Search and landed on that page.
- Split that revenue across the search terms that sent clicks to the page, in proportion to each term's clicks.
- Add up each term's share across all its pages.
For example, a pricing page earns $1,200 from Google visitors. Google reports 240 clicks to it for "invoice app for freelancers", 100 for "freelance invoicing software" and 60 for "recurring invoice tool". Those terms get an estimated $720, $300 and $180.
This is why the column is always labelled estimated. Google doesn't say which visitor searched what, so traffic.cx never knows that a particular paying customer typed a particular term. The estimate assumes every term's clicks to a page are worth the same. The page's measured revenue is shown next to the estimate, so you can see what it is built from.
Revenue per 1,000 impressions divides a term's estimated revenue by its impressions. It shows what a term is worth each time you appear for it, which helps compare a term with many impressions and few clicks against one with fewer impressions that converts.
A term whose pages earned nothing shows — rather than $0.
Why Google's numbers differ from your visits
Search Console and traffic.cx measure different things, so their numbers won't match exactly:
- Google's data runs 2–3 days behind. The last few days are missing or incomplete, and Google keeps revising them. The report says so when your date range includes them.
- Rare searches are hidden. Google leaves out terms that very few people searched, to protect their privacy. So the terms you see can add up to fewer clicks than Search Console's own total for a page.
- A click isn't a visit. Google counts the click. traffic.cx counts the visit when the page loads and the tracker runs. Visitors who leave before the page loads, or who block scripts, appear in one and not the other.
- Only searches where you appeared. Search Console reports terms your site was shown for. It doesn't tell you how often people search for terms where you don't appear.
Privacy
Search Console data is already grouped by Google before it reaches us: totals of clicks and impressions for each search term, page, country, device and day. It contains nothing about individual visitors. traffic.cx stores those totals for your site, and the revenue estimate is worked out from totals too. It doesn't link a search term to a person, a visit or a payment.
traffic.cx's own measurement is unchanged by the connection: it still works without cookies by default. See the privacy details.
Disconnect
Open Settings → Integrations and choose Disconnect. traffic.cx removes its access at Google and deletes the search data it copied for the site. You can also remove access from your Google account's third-party connections page; the dashboard then shows that access was removed and offers to reconnect.
Troubleshooting
- Your property isn't listed: the Google account you connected may only have Restricted permission, or the property may belong to a different Google account. Check Settings → Users and permissions in Search Console, then reconnect with the right account.
- No search terms yet: a new property has little or no data at first, and the newest 2–3 days are always missing. Wait for the first import to finish, then choose a range that ends a few days ago.
- Terms but no estimated revenue: check that payments are connected and that visits from Google are attributed to Organic Search. Pages that earned no revenue in the range show —.
- The connection stops updating: if access was removed or the property's permissions changed, the dashboard shows what happened. Reconnect from Settings → Integrations.