google search console, in the interview

the short version

you can now connect your own google search console to underway, read-only. how your site did in google search becomes one line a day in the tray: how many times it showed, how many people clicked, the average position, and the search that brought the most of them.

clicks from google and times shown in google, each added up over 28 days, are milestones, and you can set a goal against either. like everything the app collects, the lines arrive unticked and only go into an episode if you tick them.

it is on every plan. google is still reviewing underway's access, so it opens to a small test group first. more on that below.

why search belongs in the diary

on 5 october google sent rich, who builds underway, an email: congratulations, five clicks in 28 days. it is not much. it is also the first time strangers found the site by typing something into google, with nobody sending them. that is a real moment in a business, and underway did not know it had happened.

search is the slowest number a founder has. it moves days after the work that moved it, which is exactly why nobody remembers to mention it. the article you wrote three weeks ago starts showing up on page two on a wednesday, and by the time you film, you have forgotten to look. so the tray looks for you.

the interview can then ask the question worth asking: what did you write that people are finding, and what were they looking for when they found it. that is an episode. a dashboard you check once a week is not.

what a line looks like

one line per day, once google has settled it. google's numbers arrive about three days late, so a line for friday lands on monday, and it lands in the tray of your next episode rather than on a day already gone.

• google search, friday 2 october: yoursite.com showed 412 times and got 9 clicks, average position 14.2. most searched: "build in public app".
• google search, saturday 3 october: yoursite.com showed 380 times and got 4 clicks, average position 15.0. most searched: "founder video diary".

the lines sit on the numbers tab of the tray, next to payments, traffic and what your ads did, with search console's logo beside each one so you can see where it came from. each is written to your day log once and never rewritten.

milestones and goals

the milestones count what google's own emails count: clicks in the last 28 days, from five, then 25, 100, 500 and on; and times shown in the last 28 days, from a hundred, then a thousand and up. the first reading after you connect is a baseline, so anything you had already passed is never announced as news.

under nudges you can set your own goal against either, clicks from google search in 28 days or times shown in google search in 28 days, and a season can have one as its goal. when you reach it, today says so, and the next interview can ask how.

connecting it

account, connections, what your tools saw. connect search console signs you in with google and asks for one permission: to read search console. if your google account has more than one verified site, the card lists them under which site counts, and you pick one. one site, so the numbers mean one thing.

connect the google account that owns your site in search console. if it has no verified site, the card says so, and verifying your site is a few minutes in search console itself.

in review, and the test group

google reviews every app that asks to read search console before it opens to everyone. until that clears, the card is greyed and marked in review, with a way to join the test group, and testers connect today. when google approves it, the card opens for everyone and nothing else changes.

what it will never do

• change anything. it cannot touch search console, your site or your sitemap. it reads.
• see who searched. google only reports totals and the words people typed, never a person.
• steer the story. a line is context the interview can ask about if you tick it. the director never reads your numbers to decide what an episode is.

connect it once and the week people start finding you on google is a week the interview knows about. see every connection.