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docs(gsc): state what Search Console's API cannot tell you - #27

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mlava merged 1 commit into
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docs/gsc-api-limits
Jul 30, 2026
Merged

docs(gsc): state what Search Console's API cannot tell you#27
mlava merged 1 commit into
mainfrom
docs/gsc-api-limits

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@mlava mlava commented Jul 30, 2026

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Summary

URL Inspection is URL-by-URL, but nothing said so. The absence read as completeness: inspect ten URLs, get ten clean verdicts, conclude the property is fine.

Four Search Console reports have no API at all:

  • Page Indexing — the aggregate breakdown of which pages are indexed and why the rest are not
  • Crawl Stats — request volume, response codes, crawl budget over time
  • Manual actions
  • Security issues

No tool built on the API can cover them. OpenSEO should say so rather than let silence imply coverage.

Changes

web/content/docs/mcp.md — a new section naming the four gaps and the sampling limit: "inspecting a handful of URLs that all come back clean is not evidence the property is healthy — you have sampled, not surveyed."

inspect_urls tool description — the same caveat, because that is where the wrong inference actually gets made. An agent choosing tools reads the description, not the docs site.

No behaviour change.

Note

web/content/docs/mcp.md is byte-identical to upstream/main, so this section would apply cleanly upstream too. search-console-tools.ts has diverged (fork-only rich-result issue flattening), though the description string itself is shared. Worth upstreaming later — not bundled here, since every-app#173 is still awaiting review.

Reported by Hermes: the product implied URL Inspection was the whole indexation picture.

URL Inspection is URL-by-URL, but nothing said so, and the absence read
as completeness: inspect ten URLs, get ten clean verdicts, conclude the
property is fine. Four Search Console reports have no API at all — Page
Indexing, Crawl Stats, manual actions and security issues — so no tool
built on the API can cover them, and OpenSEO should say that rather than
let silence imply coverage.

Adds a docs section naming the four gaps and the sampling limit, and
extends the inspect_urls tool description with the same caveat so an
agent reading the tool list sees it too — that is where the wrong
inference actually gets made.

No behaviour change.

Reported by Hermes: the product implied URL Inspection was the whole
indexation picture.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
@mlava
mlava merged commit 1379f6d into main Jul 30, 2026
@mlava
mlava deleted the docs/gsc-api-limits branch July 30, 2026 08:13
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