Google Search Console

Connecting Google Search Console gives RankAscend a direct line to your site's ranking data and lets it request Google indexing immediately after each publish, no manual sitemap submissions or URL inspection requests needed.

Connecting GSC

Go to Settings → Integrations → Google Search Console and click Connect with Google.

RankAscend requests the following OAuth scopes:

Name
webmasters
Type
scope
Description
Full read/write access to Search Console — required to submit sitemaps and read performance data.
Name
indexing
Type
scope
Description
Access to the Google Indexing API — required to notify Google of newly published URLs.
Name
openid / email
Type
scope
Description
Identifies your Google account so RankAscend can display which account is connected.

RankAscend requests prompt: consent to ensure you receive a refresh token. Without a refresh token, the connection breaks after the first access token expires (one hour). If you skip the consent screen, disconnect and reconnect to force it.

After authorization, Google redirects back to RankAscend. Both the access token and refresh token are encrypted before being stored. The connected account email and last-synced timestamp are shown on the settings page.

What RankAscend does with GSC

Sitemap submission

RankAscend submits {site.url}/sitemap.xml (or your custom sitemap URL) to the Search Console API. It tries multiple siteUrl formats automatically, https://domain, sc-domain:domain, plain domain, until one succeeds.

Trigger it manually with Submit Sitemap in Settings, or configure it to run automatically after every deploy via the Deploy Hooks integration.

URL indexing notification

After a successful publish, RankAscend calls the Google Indexing API with type: "URL_UPDATED" for the newly published page. This asks Google to crawl that URL immediately rather than waiting for a sitemap recrawl.

This runs automatically when the inbound deploy hook fires. You can also trigger it per-page from Settings → Integrations → Google Search Console using the sitemap pages list.

Performance data sync

RankAscend pulls keyword data for the last 30 days from the Search Console Analytics API. Data syncs on demand when you visit the performance dashboard and is cached for five minutes.

The data is used in two places:

Performance dashboard — shows ranking metrics across all your keywords
Keyword queue — keywords you already rank in positions 1–10 are automatically filtered out so RankAscend never generates content for keywords you already own

Performance dashboard

The performance dashboard (Settings → Integrations → Performance) shows:

Name
Total Impressions
Type
number
Description
Sum of all Google Search impressions across your keywords over the last 30 days.
Name
Total Clicks
Type
number
Description
Sum of clicks, with the overall CTR shown alongside.
Name
Average Position
Type
number
Description
Weighted average ranking position across all keywords.
Name
Keywords Ranking
Type
number
Description
Count of keywords appearing in the top 20 results.

Below the summary cards: a top-keywords table with position, clicks, impressions, and CTR per keyword, and a position distribution chart grouping keywords by ranking tier.

Indexing individual pages

The settings page lists all URLs found in your sitemap. For each URL you can:

Click Index page to send an immediate URL_UPDATED notification to the Indexing API
Click Submit all to notify Google about every URL in the sitemap at once

Status indicators show whether a page is indexed, pending, or needs a retry.

Configuration

Name
Custom sitemap URL
Type
string
Description
Override the default {site.url}/sitemap.xml if your sitemap lives at a different path. Set this in Settings → General → Sitemap URL.

Error handling

GSC auth errors (401, 403, expired tokens) appear as a toast with a Reconnect button. RankAscend detects these automatically during any GSC API call, sitemap submission, URL indexing, or performance sync, and prompts you to reconnect rather than silently failing.

Error	Cause	Fix
`gsc_auth_error` on sitemap submit	Access token expired or revoked	Reconnect GSC in Settings
`gsc_auth_error` on performance sync	Refresh token invalid or missing	Disconnect and reconnect to force a new consent screen
`insufficient permission`	Token lacks required scopes	Reconnect, RankAscend will re-request all required scopes
Sitemap fetch timeout	Sitemap URL unreachable	Check your sitemap is publicly accessible; RankAscend times out after 15 seconds

Disconnecting GSC

Go to Settings → Integrations → Google Search Console → Disconnect. RankAscend deletes the stored tokens. Revoke app access at myaccount.google.com/permissions if you want to fully remove RankAscend's access from your Google account.