Compare · Search Console
Skald and Search Console: Google's figures, beside your own
Skald and Search Console answer different questions. Search Console tells you what Google showed and what people clicked. Skald syncs those figures every 6 hours and puts them beside what your server log saw: the visit, every crawler, and the lead.
Skald and Search Console is how the two work together. Search Console is Google's own report of searches, impressions, clicks and position for your site. Skald reads your server log, syncs Search Console and Bing every 6 hours, keeps their figures as the engines give them, and sets them beside its own count of visits from search. The two are never forced to match.
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- Search Console query "server log analytics" · position 4Google: impression and click
- 09:14:02 198.51.100.7 "GET /pricing/" ref "google.com"log: a visit from Google
- 09:14:05 198.51.100.9 "GET /pricing/" no referrerlog: a visit, Direct
- 09:14:06 192.0.2.66 "GET /pricing/" "Googlebot"log: Googlebot, checked
- 09:14:09 203.0.113.24 "GET /pricing/" "GPTBot/1.2"log: AI crawler, not in Search Console
Sample lines. Search Console sees the search. The log sees what reached your server.
[01] question by question
Skald and Search Console, question by question
Pick what you need to know. Search itself is Search Console's ground, and Skald's search figures come from it. Every comparison is on Skald alternatives and comparisons.
What do you need to know? pick one
Search itself: Search Console's ground. It answers 2 of these 8 in full and the other 6 in part. Skald answers 6 in full, using Google's own figures for the search rows.
| The question | Search ConsoleGoogle's own search data | Skaldyour server log, with Search Console synced |
|---|---|---|
| Search queries, impressions, CTR, position | Yes, Google's own | Synced from it every 6 hours, as Google gives them |
| Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode | In its generative AI performance report | Not yet: Google's API does not give them apart; Skald sees assistants' live fetches |
| Clicks from AI Overviews told apart | Reported apart, but also merged into Web results | No, they arrive as ordinary Google clicks |
| Newest figures | 2 to 3 days late, with a preliminary 24-hour view | Visits every 2 minutes; Google's days marked provisional until final |
| Countries | Yes, of searchers | Yes, of every visit |
| Browser, system and device | Device only | Yes, all three |
| Top pages | Pages in search | Every page, from every source |
| Unsampled, unthresholded tables | 1,000-row tables; rare queries hidden | Its own counts are; Google's hidden queries stay "Not given by Google" |
| Visitors and visits | No, it stops at the click | Yes, as an upper bound on people |
| Visitors with an ad-blocker | No, not what it measures | Yes, every request is in the log |
| Each visit's pages in order | No | Yes, journeys |
| Referring sites and UTM campaigns | No | Yes |
| People who clicked through from an AI assistant | No | Yes, by assistant; a floor, as apps strip referrers |
| Leads by source and AI assistant | No | Yes, first and last touch |
| Search engine crawlers | Googlebot only, in Crawl Stats | Every search crawler, in its own group |
| AI training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) | No | Yes, page by page |
| Is that crawler who it claims to be? | No | Yes, its owner's published addresses or DNS |
| Crawl health: sitemap coverage, orphans, errors | Google's crawler only; no AI crawler | Per crawler: Google, Bing and each AI crawler |
| 404s, and who met them | Googlebot's 404s, past month | People apart from probes and crawlers |
| Server errors (5xx) by page | As Googlebot met them | As every visitor met them |
| Page speed | Googlebot response time | PageSpeed Insights for top landing pages, plus server time per hour |
| Totals must add up, or the day is withheld | No | Yes |
| A second, separate recount of every figure | No | Its own figures, recounted; Google's tables re-added by a second road |
| Runs on your own server | No | Yes, free to self-host |
| Scheduled email reports | No | Daily and weekly, refused if figures do not add up |
| Email alerts | Yes, site issues | Yes, site down, 5xx, crawler bursts, traffic drops |
| Change markers on charts | Yes, annotations | Yes, written by every deploy and config change |
| Named users and roles | Yes | Yes, owner, admin and viewer |
| API | Yes | Yes, a read-only JSON API and an MCP server |
What each tool is built to do, as we read their own docs in October 2026. If we have yours wrong, tell us.
[02] to be fair
Where Search Console does more than Skald
Search happens on Google, not on your server. Only Google can say what it showed.
The search itself
Queries, impressions and position exist only in Google's data. Skald shows them because it syncs them from Search Console.
Google's AI features
Its generative AI performance report counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google's API does not give those to Skald yet.
Indexing
Whether Google indexed a page, and why not, is Google's answer. Skald sees which pages Googlebot fetched, not what Google kept.
[03] the cross-check
Google's clicks beside your visits, never forced to match
The Search tab puts Search Console's clicks beside Skald's visits from Google search, by day and landing page. What matters is the ratio over time.
Search Console's clicks
Clicks, impressions, CTR and position, by query, page, country and device. Days in Pacific Time, 2 to 3 days late, provisional until Google calls them final. Skald fetches the last 4 days again on each sync.
[04] use both
Keep Search Console for the search. Add Skald for what came after.
Connect it once from the dashboard. A service account reads it as a Restricted user; it can change nothing.
Keep Search Console for
Queries, position, indexing, and Google's AI feature impressions. Those are Google's answers.
Add Skald for
The visit, the journey and the lead after the click, every crawler with its proof, and the 404s people met.
Read them together
Google's clicks beside your visits, by landing page. A sharp move in the ratio is usually a page that stopped loading or a redirect that drops the referrer.
[05] choose by the question
Which one answers it
- "What did people search to find us?" Search Console. Skald shows it beside your visits.
- "Is Google indexing this page?" Search Console.
- "Did search visitors become leads?" Skald.
- "Which AI crawlers read our pages?" Skald.
What it does not do
- Skald does not count searches. Search figures are Google's and Bing's, shown as they give them.
- It cannot tell a click from an AI Overview from an ordinary Google click.
- It does not show what Google indexed, only what Googlebot fetched.
- Google's clicks and Skald's visits will not match. Skald never forces them to.
keep reading
More on Skald and Search Console
questions
Skald and Search Console FAQ
Straight answers, including what Skald does not do.
Does Skald replace Search Console?
No. The search figures are Google's and Bing's. Skald syncs them every 6 hours and shows them beside its own visits. It does not count searches, and it never changes Google's numbers.
Why do Google's clicks and Skald's visits differ?
A click is not a visit: two clicks by one person can be one visit, and a click closed before the page drew is no visit. Some browsers send no referrer, so those visits count as Direct. Google's days run in Pacific Time. The Cross-check panel shows both by day and landing page, and flags a sharp move in the ratio.
Can Skald show clicks from AI Overviews?
No. They arrive looking like ordinary Google clicks, and Google's API does not give them apart yet. A click from AI Mode is named only when Google's address carries the AI Mode mark. What your log can prove about AI Mode.
How do I connect Search Console?
From the dashboard: upload a Google service-account key, add its email to Search Console as a Restricted user, test, connect. There is a ready text to send a client who must add it. Bing connects with an API key.
Does Skald check Google's figures?
It cannot recount them from the log, as they are Google's. Every day it adds up every stored table again by a separate road and asks Google again for one day's total. If they disagree, the Search tab says so. Skald's own side, visits from search, is counted twice like every Skald figure.
What about Bing?
Bing Webmaster Tools connects the same way and gives fewer figures: daily clicks and impressions, and its top queries and pages, weekly. Bing reports citations in Copilot in its own tool; Skald syncs its search clicks and impressions.
$ tail -f access.log | skald
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