Do you want to add a user to your Google Search Console account?
Whether you want to share data for your site’s organic traffic or update settings within GSC, this guide will walk you through how to add a user to Google Search Console.
Quick Navigation
First, you’ll want to log into your Google Search Console dashboard.
Next, you’ll select the website property that you want to provide access to using the drop-down menu in the left hand corner of the GSC dashboard.
Once the website property is selected, click “Settings” in the bottom left-hand corner of the dashboard.
Within the property settings, click on “Users and Permissions”.
On the next screen, you’ll be able to see all of the users that currently have access to your Google Search Console account.
From here, click on the “Add User” button in the top-right corner of the dashboard.
After clicking on “Add User” you’ll be prompted to enter an email address for the user you want to provide access for.
One caveat: the entered email address needs to either be a gmail address, or an email address that uses the G-suite.
While on this screen, you’ll also set the permission levels for the user, which I’ll cover below:
This gives a user complete access to your Google Search Console account. Users that are granted full access won’t be able to add or remove property owners, but will have the ability to make a majority of changes to your site’s settings in GSC.
This level of access allows users to view your account’s data, but they can’t make any changes or edits such as submitting sitemaps or disavowing backlinks.
You can also add someone as an owner to the account - they’ll have to prove that they own the website, such as posting a special verification file on their website, but will have full access to the property and the ability to add or remove users.
Delegated owners are granted ownership by a verified owner, but never verified ownership of the website. They can add users or other delegated owners.
Associates can take certain actions or access certain data, but don’t have the ability to open or view your Google Search Console account.
All that’s left is to click the “add” button and you’re done! The user will receive an email confirmation granting them access to your Google Search Console account.
In the future, you can change someone’s level of access, or remove them from the account entirely in the “Users and Permissions” area.
In most cases, restricted access is fine if you want to grant them visibility into your data without the ability to change settings within your account.
Full access, on the other hand, allows users to make changes to your property settings, such as disavowing backlinks, submitting sitemaps, or submitting pages via the URL inspection tool for fetching/rendering.
Google treats this as a separate entity and you’ll have to verify access for the HTTPS version of your website.
There are three ways you can verify a website with Search Console:
Data can take upwards of a few weeks to populate in your GSC dashboard. After that initial period, data is fresh within a 24-48 hour delay.
If the verified owner on your account leaves, you can verify another site owner. The new site owner will have the ability to see the list of all owners/users that are verified for the site. You can also remove previous owners by deleting their verification token from your website.
