Google Search Console MCP server
Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Gemini to your Search Console data and ask questions in plain language, with no exports and no code.
What you get
BasecampSEO keeps your Search Console history past Google's 16 month cut off, and layers movers, brand and non brand splits, page groups, annotations and indexing coverage on top of it. MCP is the open standard that lets an AI assistant read all of that directly, so you can ask about your sites the way you would ask a colleague.
Instead of exporting a CSV and pasting it into a chat, you ask which pages lost the most clicks last month, or which URLs Google crawled but never indexed, and the assistant fetches the real numbers and explains them.
Eight read-only tools. Nothing an assistant does here can edit your data, start a sync or request indexing, and each key sees only the sites your own account sees.
Connect
First create a key in Settings, Developer tools. It appears once, so copy it before closing the dialog. Then pick your assistant.
Add BasecampSEO as a custom connector, then pick it from the tools menu in any chat.
https://api.basecampseo.com/mcp- Open Settings, then Connectors, then Create.
- Paste the server URL above.
- Set authentication to a custom header named Authorization.
- Use the value Bearer plus your key, for example "Bearer bcs_live_...".
- Save, then enable BasecampSEO from the tools menu in a chat.
Connectors need ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business or Enterprise. On some plans you first switch on developer mode under Settings, Connectors, Advanced.
Wherever you see a header value, it is the word Bearer, a space, then your key. One click connection without pasting anything is coming when we add OAuth.
What to ask
Questions that work well once connected.
- How is example.com doing this month compared with last month?
- Which pages lost the most clicks in the last 28 days?
- What are my top 20 non branded queries this quarter?
- Which pages on example.com are not indexed, and what is Google saying about them?
- Traffic dipped in August. What changed, and did we record anything that week?
- Compare mobile and desktop CTR for my blog section.
The question about August is the one worth trying first. Your assistant can pull the annotations your team left on the timeline and match them against the queries that moved, which is slow and fiddly to do by hand.
Tools
Eight tools, deliberately. Every tool description is loaded into your assistant's context on every message, so a smaller set leaves more room for your actual work.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
list_properties | Every site on the account, with its canonical property string |
get_property | How far back one site goes, and whether Google is still connected |
get_performance | Totals and daily trend, with the previous period compared automatically |
get_search_breakdown | Top queries, pages, countries or devices |
get_movers | Biggest gainers and losers against the previous period |
get_indexing_summary | How much of the site Google has indexed, and why the rest is not |
list_indexed_urls | Individual URLs by index status, filterable and paged |
get_segments | Brand terms, page groups and the dated notes your team left |
Every tool accepts a site as a plain domain such as example.com, a full Search Console property string, or the property id. If a domain is connected twice, for example as both a domain property and a URL prefix property, you get an error listing both so the assistant can pick.
Accuracy
Three things the server tells your assistant on every call, so it can qualify its answers instead of guessing.
Search Console lags about two days
Every date range defaults to ending two days ago. If you ask about today, a good answer is “that is not published yet”, not “traffic dropped to zero”.
The last 16 months come live from Google
That data is complete, including the long tail. Anything older comes from our own archive, because Google discards data past 16 months. The archive keeps the top 100 queries and top 100 pages per day, so historical clicks are close to reality while historical impressions under report the tail.
Disconnected accounts are flagged
If a property's Google connection has lapsed, responses fall back to stored history and say so explicitly, so the assistant will not present incomplete figures as current.
Limits
MCP draws on the same daily allowance as the REST API. One number, shared across every key on the account, resetting at midnight UTC. Pro gets 1,000 requests a day and Agency 5,000.
That goes further than it sounds. Repeat questions are served from a short lived cache, so an assistant checking its own work costs almost nothing, and a normal session is a handful of calls. You can watch what is left in Settings, Developer tools, and get in touch if you need more.
Troubleshooting
The connector will not authenticate
Check the header value includes the word Bearer and a space before the key. In Claude.ai and ChatGPT, custom header support is still in beta. Claude Code and Cursor are the reliable path today.
It says my plan does not include this
API and MCP access is on paid Pro and Agency plans. Free trials are not included, so access begins when the subscription starts.
It says the site does not exist
Ask your assistant to run list_properties. That returns every site the key can reach, with the exact property string to use.
It reports zero traffic for recent days
That is the two day publishing delay. Ask for the last 28 days instead, or any range ending two or more days ago.