7 min read
How to set up Google Search Console, and the first five reports to read
Domain or URL-prefix? Where the TXT record goes, what a sitemap does (and doesn’t) do, and the five reports to open on day one.
ReadTrafficmend shows who is on your site right now, connects Search Console and Analytics, crawls every page, and turns it all into one ranked list of fixes, each with the clicks it is worth and a brief you can hand straight to whoever does the work.
From $9 a month. Cancel anytime.See how it works
Works with
[01]In numbers
Search Console, Analytics, a full crawl and real-visitor speed, side by side.
Of daily clicks and impressions, compared with the previous period.
Every fix ranked by the clicks it is worth, not by how loud it sounds.
Crawled per scan, from your sitemap and internal links. Nothing to install.
[02]Product
More of the right visitors. Everything your site is doing in search and traffic, in one place, with the next best fix always at the top.
A cookieless script counts every visit in real time: sources (ChatGPT and other AI assistants included), pages, countries, devices, goals and revenue, and the full journey of each visitor.
Users, sessions, channels, landing pages, devices and countries from Google Analytics 4, each compared with the previous 28 days.
Clicks, impressions, CTR and position for every query and page in Search Console. Queries sitting in positions 8 to 20, where a small lift adds real clicks, are flagged for you.
Titles, meta descriptions, headings, broken links, redirect chains, canonicals and indexability, plus speed checks on every page and Core Web Vitals from your real visitors.
Each fix is scored on the clicks it is worth and how serious it is, with steps and acceptance criteria. Verify a fix and we check your live site: it only counts as done once the issue is gone.
Every improvement turns into a brief with the evidence attached. Claude writes it on Pro and Agency; on Base, a template builds it from your own data.
[03]Search Console
Connect your Google account once and Trafficmend pulls Search Console and Analytics into every scan, then uses them to rank what to fix first.
Sign in with Google
Read-only access to Search Console and Analytics. Nothing on your site changes.
Match your properties
Trafficmend suggests the right Search Console and GA4 property for each site from its domain.
Stay current
Queries, pages, CTR and positions refresh every day on their own, next to your crawl and traffic.
Fig. 02 — Search Console, connected
[04]How it works
Paste your URL
Trafficmend reads your sitemap and robots.txt, then crawls up to 500 pages, following internal links.
Connect Google
Optional, and worth it: Search Console and GA4 add the clicks, queries and visitors.
Work the list
Start at the top. Each fix shows the clicks it is worth and exactly what to change.
[05]Questions
Not for the crawl, Search Console or Analytics: paste a URL and Trafficmend reads your site the way a search engine does. Live analytics is the one part that needs a script tag, a single line in your site's head.
No. Visitors are counted with a one-way hash made with a salt that changes every day (UTC). Earlier days' salts are deleted, so old hashes can't be recomputed. Whether you still need a consent notice depends on where you and your visitors are, so check the rules that apply to you.
Read, and nothing else. It asks for read-only access to Search Console and Google Analytics, so it can't change a setting in either. Disconnect at any time from Settings.
Up to 500 pages per scan. It starts from your sitemap and robots.txt, then follows internal links the way a search engine would.
You, unless you share. Sites, reports and your Google connection are private to your account. You can publish a link to your live analytics card, which anyone with the link can view until you revoke it, and create API keys for your own tools.
Base is $9 a month for 1 website, Pro $19 for 5 and Agency $49 for 25. Paying annually gives 2 months free, and you can cancel at any time. There is no free plan, but your first 3 days are free. In Nigeria, prices are shown and charged in naira.
[06]From the blog
Plain-spoken walkthroughs of Search Console, analytics and on-page SEO: what to look at, what to change, and how to tell whether it worked.
7 min read
Domain or URL-prefix? Where the TXT record goes, what a sitemap does (and doesn’t) do, and the five reports to open on day one.
Read7 min read
Google already ranks these pages just out of view. How to find queries sitting at positions 8–20, why they move faster than anything else, and the four fixes that move them.
Read6 min read
No cookies and no stored ID: how visitors are counted with a daily-rotating salted hash, what that approach gives up, and why many teams run it next to GA4.
Read[07] Start now
From $9 a month. First 3 days free.