Google Search Console
GuidedYou confirm it once you can see the access.
Your client adds your Google user to their property on Search Console’s own screen, with our steps beside it: Users and permissions, then Add user. Google has no API that adds a user to a property, so nobody signs in through the link for this. Google sends nothing to accept; you confirm it on your dashboard once you can see the property.
In preview: sign-up is by invitation, and until Meta and Google approve the app, it works with simulated and test accounts only.
The same steps as a guide your client can read: How to add an agency as a user in Google Search Console
What you can ask for
You pick one level when you create the link. Each is shown with Google’s own name for it.
- ViewRestrictedSee most of the data. Cannot take actions or change anything. A new link starts here.
- StandardFullSee all data and take some actions. Cannot add or remove users.
- AdminOwnerFull control of the property: all data, all tools and settings, and adding and removing users. Needs a verified agency.
What you give us once
Google user. A Google user: the email address of the Google Account that receives access. It is filled in with the Google account you connected, if you connected one.
What your client needs
The box tells your client before they start: “You need to be an owner of the property in Search Console.”
If the person who opens the link is not that person, the same link works for whoever is.
The box asks your client:
- Which property? (optional). The address of the site, like https://www.example.com/. For a Domain property, write sc-domain:example.com.
When it counts as given
Nothing can read Google for you, so your client’s “done” alone never finishes the link. You confirm it on the client’s page once you can see the access, and the dashboard says Confirmed by your team with the date.
Google adds you at once: there is nothing to accept.
Removing the access later
The access is given on Google, so it is removed there. Your client does this:
- In Search Console, open the property, then Settings, then Users and permissions. Only an owner of the property sees this page.
- Select the menu next to the agency’s user and click Remove access.
- If Search Console warns that the user might regain access, remove the ownership tokens it lists.
What to check on every platform when an agency leaves is in How to remove an old agency's access to your Meta and Google accounts.
Guides
- How to add an agency as a user in Google Search Console
A property owner opens Settings > Users and permissions > Add user, enters the agency's Google account email and picks Full or Restricted.
Questions
Domain property or URL-prefix property?
They are separate entries in Search Console, and a user is added to one of them. The box can ask your client which property it is, so you both look at the same one.
Search Console says the user may only be added as Owner. What now?
Then that Google account already owns a property that contains this one, so it has owner rights there already. Nothing more is needed.
Can the Google user be a group address?
No. It has to be the Google Account of a person: Search Console does not accept an email group.
Checked against
- support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7687615, Google’s help, read
- developers.google.com/webmaster-tools/v1/sites, Google’s developer documentation, read