Select Google Search Console Properties to Connect
Currently, when connecting the Google Search Console (GSC) integration with SEO tools inside of HubSpot, it doesn't give you the option to select which GSC properties you'd like to integrate with HubSpot. While SEO Tools will only pull in search data for domains connected to a given portal, meaning that there's no risk of data bleed across clientele domains, it may be concerning for some users– especially those working with agencies– to know that several of their clients' GSC data is technically connected to another client's portal.
Having the option to select the specific domains/ GSC properties you'd like to connect while setting up the integration would be incredibly beneficial and would alleviate this concern.
Yes - great idea! We have two websites and two Hubspot portals. Since there was no way of selecting the properties I wanted to link with each portal, I was concerned that it was pulling through all search data for both Hubspot accounts together rather than each individually. @breichenbach is this not the case then? Does Hubspot have any posts confirming they only pull through data related to the respective Hubspot portal? How does it differentiate?
Hey @JohnS63! To be honest, I don't think we currently have any documentation outlining our current method for preventing data-bleed between connected and non-connected accounts, so that's already good feedback that I'll relay to our team to see if we can get something drafted up to outline that process in-depth.
For now, the "in a nutshell" version is that the SEO Tool takes your site domains (like what you'd see at Settings> Tracking Code> Advanced Tracking> Additional Site Domains) into consideration when pulling in data from Google Search Console; if a domain is not connected and being tracked in your portal, that GSC property is essentially ignored.
For example, my GSC account has access to my own website's search data as well as one of my former freelance client's search data. Within HubSpot, I only have my website connected and set up for tracking, and not my client's. So, when I look at the performance data, search query metrics, and traffic volume reported in my Topic Clusters in HubSpot, I'm only seeing the GSC data for my site and not my clients. Prior to discussing this with our team that manages that tool, I was manually cross-comparing the data to confirm that my client's website and performance wasn't skewing my data, so once I realized that we were already limiting reporting to tracked domains, it saved me a lot of time and clicking back and forth!
Thanks for the quick response @breichenbach - that's really helpful.
I too have been going through the search query data to see if there were clues as to whether Hubspot was pulling through both sets of data so would be great if there could be some literature on this.
Ok so to confirm you're saying that even though Google Search Console integration brings through both 'Website A' and 'Website B' properties, Huspot will only include data from the domains listed under the portal in question. So because 'Website B' does not appear in the site domains of 'Portal A' Hubspot will exclude this data.
And to find this out you go to:
Settings->tracking code-> advanced tracking -> Additional site domains
OR: Settings->domains & URLs->Domains->Check if they're connected
It seems obvious to me that being able to differentiate between various GSC properties is a must-have feature. So it's great to see this feature being upvoted in here. Hope this will get implemented very soon. Thanks!
Good to hear about the data "ignore" aspect of non-domain URLs. Posting a link to this in the section where the GSC is setup would be a good idea...or posting content there about only tracking the domain name data of your URL, etc. would be helpful. There's no explanation anywhere about this.
I ran into this today in fact. I have multiple GSC properties under my Google account and multiple HubSpot accounts I administer for clients and seeing all of them appear in the settings/domains is unnerving. Hoping this gets fixed soon. Thanks HubSpot team!
Yes, this needs to be prioritized. Imagine if each HubSpot user could see ALL the accounts their agency is working with. It's a security and privacy nightmare for our agency. Please address ASAP.
I just wanted to provide an update that this feature is still on our radar. There are some tricky security/permissions issues we need to think through, but as soon as figure those out and start the development work, I'll provide another update.
The code as it works now would certainly add complexity to any internal or external audit and it certainly looks bad. I have several dozen sites connected.
All that data makes it hard from a user interaface to be able to observe if the correct sites are actually connected, validated, Etc.