Connect Google Search Console
One Google connection: what you rank for and when an article starts slipping, plus Analytics traffic per page if you use it. Read-only, both of them.
One Google connection gives Ballad two things: Search Console, so it knows what you rank for and when an article starts slipping, and Google Analytics, so it can see traffic per page if you're not using Ballad's own beacon.
Both are read-only. Ballad never writes anything to either.
1. Verify your property first
Ballad can only read properties your Google account already has access to, so do this first if you haven't:
- In Search Console, add your site and verify it. A domain property
(
yourdomain.com, verified by DNS) is best — it covers www and non-www, http and https in one. A URL-prefix property works too. - Ballad matches the property to the site URL in Settings → Site, so make sure that's set and correct before connecting.
2. Connect
In Ballad: Settings → Site → Search Console → Connect. Sign in with the Google account that has access, and grant both read-only scopes.
Ballad then picks your property automatically: a domain property for your site's host first, then a URL-prefix property on the same host, ignoring anything unverified. If it can't find one it tells you, rather than connecting to the wrong site.
If the Google account also has a Google Analytics 4 property for the same site, Ballad picks that up in the same step and uses it as your analytics source.
3. What Ballad does with it
From Search Console, pulled a few times a day over the last 28 finalised days:
- The queries you appear for, with impressions, clicks and your average position — site-wide and per article.
- Per-article history, which is what makes an article that starts slipping detectable at all.
That feeds three things you'll actually see: the search widget in Signals, the refresh suggestion in your Inbox when a piece loses position, and the weekly site audit, which uses real query data rather than guessing what a page is for.
From Analytics, if it was connected: sessions and pageviews per page, as an alternative to the beacon.
Beacon, Analytics, or both?
They answer different questions, and Ballad is happy with either or both:
| Ballad's beacon | Google Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Which post brought a signup | Yes, first touch and last | No |
| Who the person was | Yes, when your site says | No |
| Pageviews per article | Yes | Yes |
| Cookies | None | Google's own |
If you only do one, do the beacon — attribution is the thing no analytics tool gives you. See Measure what your content does.
Troubleshooting
- "No property found" — the Google account you signed in with doesn't have a verified property for your site's host, or Settings → Site has a different URL from the one you verified.
- Numbers look a few days behind. They are. Search Console finalises data on a delay, and Ballad reads the last complete 28 days rather than showing you a half-counted today.
- A page's numbers don't attach to the article. Ballad matches by URL path, so a changed permalink starts a new history.
Next
- Measure what your content does — the first-party half.
- Signals — where rankings show up.
- Content marketing — what a slipping article triggers.