The Google Search Console API lets you pull Search Console data into your own scripts, warehouses and dashboards. Its Search Analytics query method returns clicks, impressions, CTR and position grouped by dimensions such as query, page, country, device, search appearance and date. Other methods cover URL inspection, sitemaps and site lists. It is the usual route past the interface's 1,000-row export limit.
Querying performance data
A query names a date range, dimensions, optional filters and a row limit. Each request returns up to 25,000 rows, and you page through more with startRow. You can choose the search type (web, image, video, news, Discover, Google News) and, through dataState, whether to include the freshest, not yet finalized data.
POST https://www.googleapis.com/webmasters/v3/sites/{siteUrl}/searchAnalytics/query
{
"startDate": "2026-09-01",
"endDate": "2026-09-30",
"dimensions": ["page", "query"],
"rowLimit": 25000,
"startRow": 0
}Limits to know
Data is available for about the last 16 months. Rare queries are anonymized and left out, so totals by query will not add up to totals by page. Requests are subject to quotas, documented in Google's usage limits page. The URL Inspection API has its own daily and per-minute limits per property.
- Keep your own archive to get history beyond 16 months
- Expect query-level totals to be lower than page-level totals
- Respect quotas with batching and backoff
Bulk data export
For large sites, Search Console's bulk data export to BigQuery writes daily performance tables to your own project, avoiding API paging. It starts from the day you set it up and does not backfill history, so many teams run both: the export going forward, and an API backfill for the past 16 months.
Example
Building a query-to-page archive
Suppose Copperwell, a developer documentation platform, runs a nightly job that pulls the previous days' page and query data through the API into its warehouse. After two years it can compare any month with the same month two years earlier, which the interface cannot do.
Common mistakes
Pulling only the last few days of data
Recent data can still change as Search Console finalizes it. Re-pull a trailing window.
Summing query rows to get site totals
Anonymized queries are missing. Use a page-only or no-dimension query for totals.
Questions
It returns more rows, so you see more of the long tail. It does not reveal anonymized queries, which are withheld in both.
