Google Search Console in Claude Desktop
Claude Desktop is Anthropic's native Mac and Windows app. It reads MCP servers from a JSON config file rather than a CLI, so setup is a one-time paste-and-restart. Once it's in, every new chat can pull live Search Console data without you touching the file again.
Setup
- 1. Sign in to Google Search Console (once)
npx search-console-mcp-server login - 2. Open the config file
If the file doesn't exist yet, create it. If it already has an `mcpServers` key, add `gsc` inside it rather than replacing the file.
macOS:~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.jsonWindows:%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json - 3. Add the server block, then restart Claude Desktop
{ "mcpServers": { "gsc": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "search-console-mcp-server"] } } }
Prompts to try first
- “Show queries at position 8–15 with real impressions — what's closest to page 1?”
- “How much Google Discover traffic do I get?”
- “Compare this month vs last, by page. What fell, and why?”
Troubleshooting
The config JSON is likely malformed (a trailing comma is the usual culprit) or Claude Desktop wasn't fully restarted — quit it from the menu bar/tray, not just close the window.
Run `npx search-console-mcp-server login` again from a terminal — the token may have expired or never completed. Claude Desktop launches the server fresh each session but doesn't do the browser login itself.
Confirm you edited the file at the exact path above, not a copy in a different Claude folder. Some installs create both a per-user and a legacy path — the one under Application Support / %APPDATA% is the one Claude Desktop reads.
Frequently asked
Yes. search-console-mcp-server is MIT licensed and free to run. There's no usage fee, no paid tier, and no account required beyond your own Google sign-in.
No. The server ships with a shared OAuth client so `npx search-console-mcp-server login` works out of the box. If you'd rather use your own Google Cloud project, you can — set SEARCH_CONSOLE_MCP_CLIENT_ID and SEARCH_CONSOLE_MCP_CLIENT_SECRET — but it's optional.
Only on your machine, in ~/.search-console-mcp/. Google mints the tokens directly to you during login — nothing passes through a third-party server, and there's no telemetry.
Whatever your Google account already has access to in Search Console: properties, search analytics (clicks, impressions, position, every dimension including Google Discover), URL inspection, and sitemaps. The scope is read-only — it cannot change anything in your Search Console account.
Yes, MIT licensed, on GitHub at sudomichael/search-console-mcp. Read the code, fork it, or self-host your own build.
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