SEO tips for a better website experience
How to add a new user to Google Search Console
GSC – “Search Console” – is the ultimate SEO first-aid kit.
All your organic clicks. All your indexed pages.
Plus – all the pages that aren’t showing up in search yet, and how to fix them.
When you’ve already done the hard yards creating informative, authoritative content, Google Search Console gives you the power to identify any errors standing in the way of maximum online visibility.
Here's how to add someone to your GSC inner circle.
Add users and grant admin access to an existing GSC property
Adding a Search Console user allows you to delegate tasks and share access with trusted individuals.
Step 1: Google Search Console > Settings
- To add a user to Google Search Console, navigate to search.google.com and log in.
- Select the correct property from the ‘Search Property’ drop-down box.
- Navigate to ‘Settings’ to manage users and permissions.
Step 2: Users and Permissions
- Under settings, select ‘Users and Permissions’
- Click the ‘Add User’ button.
- On the add user screen, add the new user’s email
- Click ‘add’ to provide access to the account.
How much can a user affect my website with GSC?
GSC offers a fairly deep level of insight into your site performance, including the most popular pages, existing schema markup code and page loading speed results.
Certain levels of users can also perform actions that directly affect your website, such as pushing for live sitemap.xml files to be crawled, requesting indexation for individual URLs, and requesting for pages to be temporarily removed from search results.
So, to keep your website and traffic data protected, it’s best to ensure all people who get Google Search Console user access are given the correct permissions.
Benefits of setting up the account yourself
You can monitor who has access from the Owner account. To prevent security breaches, remember to revoke permissions for previous employees or unauthorised third-party agencies and users.
Monitoring who has access to your account
If your marketing agency asks to set up a GSC account, do this under your company’s login and then share access with them (rather than the agency setting it up for you). This ensures you remain the property owner, regardless of whether you continue to work with the third-party agency in the future.
If someone outside of your company owns the property, they will have ownership of the account and can access data and add/remove users as they wish.
Data Security
Taking charge of your account ensures you safeguard your data and control access according to your internal security policies.
Accountability and Transparency
Setting up your own GSC allows you to closely monitor website performance, track any updates or issues and understand your search presence.
Control and Independence
Ownership of your GSC account empowers you to see how your site performs in search and make decisions based on your digital presence.
Continuity and Long-term Ownership
By setting up your own Google Search Console, you establish a consistent digital asset that remains with your business regardless of external factors.
Steps to edit user permission levels
Sign in to your Google Search Console account.
Select the property you want to change the user’s access level for
Navigate to Settings → Users and Permissions
Locate the user whose permission you want to change
Click on the drop-down menu next to the user's email address
Select the desired permission level from the available options and save your changes
Permissions and Access Levels
Make sure you assign the best permission level based on user roles and responsibilities – outlined below!
Owners
GSC has two types of owners – verified owners and delegated owners. Both have full control over all associated settings.
A verified owner is an individual who has verified ownership of the Search Console property by posting a verification file on the website or their blogger account and the Search Console account are connected to the same Google account.
A delegated owner is a person who has been granted ownership status by a verified owner without the need for a verification token, such as an HTML file or tag. They can add users or other delegated owners.
If the sole verified owner of the website leaves the team, another individual must verify ownership to retain or regain access to the Search Console property.
I need to transfer Ownership – how do I do this?
- Log in to your Google Search Console account
- Choose the specific web property you want to transfer ownership of
- Navigate to Settings → Ownership → Add an owner
- Enter the Google email address of the new owner.
- Click ‘Continue’. The new owner will receive a confirmation email.
Full Permissions
Any user with full permission can:
- Full access to all the features in GSC, such as view data, handle manual action requests, configure settings and add or remove other users.
- Full-access users cannot remove owners or view sensitive billing information.
Restricted Permissions
Individuals with restricted permission have:
- View-only access to most data and restricted access to the disavow tool, crawl errors, sitemaps and robots.txt files.
- A restricted user cannot add or remove users.
Associate Permissions
Associates can’t access your Search Console account directly but can perform other tasks, depending on the type of association.
