How to Grant Full Access to Google Search Console

When working with a search engine optimization company, like Socium Media, we always ask our SEO clients to provide us with Full access to Google Search Console. Full access allows our SEO team to access important information about the search’s users are performing in Google, allows us to submit sitemaps, and view any manual actions which may affect the website’s ability to rank.

Here is how to grant admin access to Google Search Console.

Login to Google Search Console

To grant full access to Google Search Console, first, you must log in to your GSC account. To log in, go to search.google.com/search-console/. Click the blue Start now button to sign-in to your Google account.

Once signed in, verify you are in the proper Google search console account by selecting the website you would like to provide access to, in the top left dropdown menu.

Navigate to Admin Settings

Once you are signed-in to the proper GSC account, click the Settings button in the bottom left corner of the page. (Note, you may need to scroll down the page to find it.)

You should now see the Property settings, which includes Ownership verification, Users and permissions and Change of address. We will add a user to Google Search Console by editing the Users and permissions.

Add User to Google Search Console Account

Click Users and permissions and then click the blue ADD USER button in the top right corner of the User and permissions page.

Simply add the email address you’d like to grant access then select Full or Restricted permission.

Full Permission

Full permission to Google Search Console allows the user to use all the features in the Google Search Console account including the disavow tool, submitting URLs, submitting sitemaps, and handling manual action requests. We ask our search engine optimization clients to provide us Full permission for these reasons. 

Restricted Permission

Restricted permission grants the user access to all the performance data but restricts access to some of the tools within the account. This is great for internal teams who may need access to the performance data but won’t need access to the disavow tool, sitemap submission tool, or manual actions.

Once you’ve selected the proper permission level for the user, click the ADD button.

And that’s it! You’ve successfully granted Full user permission to your website in Google Search Console. You can now let us know that we will be able to access your Google Search Console account.

Now that we have access to GSC, we will begin to review the search console account for any actionable items we may need to fix. We typically look for manual actions that may prevent your website from appearing in searches to 404 errors which need to be redirected to a live page, to missing sitemaps which may cause indexing issues. These issues are easy to fix but will cause major search engine optimization problems if they are left untouched.