Google Updates Search Console’s Users And Permissions Management

Google has updated Search Console’s user and permissions to incorporate functionality related to ownership and user management. Previously, these functionalities were only available in the old Google Webmaster tools. According to Google, these functionalities have been added to Search Console to take a step towards their goal of migrating functionality to Search Console to ensure users have a better, faster, and modernized experience.

The functionalities added to Search Console’s user and permission management are:

• Distinguishing between verified and delegated owners
• Easier, immediate removal of verified owners (no need to remove their ownership token)
• Ability to change delegated owners’ permissions levels (owner, full, restricted)
• Ability to see your property’s verification tokens for all current and previous users and specifically see tokens leftover by previous owners
• Ownership events history

Google has also provided the following best practices on managing user permissions:

• Grant users only the permission level that they need to do their work. You can change permission levels for non-verified owners with the “More actions” menu. Make sure to revoke or change permission levels from users who no longer work on a property, and regularly audit and update permissions through the users and permissions page in Search Console.

• When removing a previously verified owner, be sure to remove all verification tokens for that user. This is one of the updates we’re rolling out today, you can now review the leftover ownership tokens so that removed owners cannot regain access to the property.

For instances when you want to share a specific search console report on a one time bases, you can also click “Share link” on the page instead of directly adding users to Search Console.

For more details on the new features and how to set them up, check out the Search Central blog post here.