CrawlRaven quickstart
Connect your Search Console data, activate the right property, and reach your first useful report without guessing what to do next.
Product guide · Updated August 2026
What CrawlRaven is — and is not
CrawlRaven v2 is a read-only search intelligence workspace built around your first-party Google Search Console data. It helps you understand search movement, investigate Queries and Pages, prioritize saved opportunities, maintain a Target Keywords plan, and explain changes with annotations. Eligible accounts can also connect GA4 for outcome reporting and use MCP to let an AI client read an approved subset of CrawlRaven data.
| CrawlRaven is | CrawlRaven is not |
|---|---|
| A workspace for analyzing the Search Console data your connected Google account can access. | A web crawler or a live technical SEO audit. The Technical SEO area is currently a coming-soon placeholder. See Technical SEO status. |
| A way to compare Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Google-reported average Position across supported periods. | A neutral rank tracker or an exhaustive keyword database. Search Console can omit anonymized and lower-traffic rows. |
| A planning system for reviewing opportunities, maintaining target keywords, and recording explanatory events. | An autonomous agent that edits your website, changes Google settings, or publishes content for you. |
| A product with a read-only MCP integration for approved AI clients and data scopes. | A public REST API or a write-capable automation platform. CrawlRaven v2 does not offer customer REST endpoints. |
Before you start
CrawlRaven reads Google Search Console data and turns it into site-level reporting, query and page investigation, prioritized SEO opportunities, and a target keyword workspace. You need a Google account with access to at least one Search Console property. Owner, Full, and Restricted property access can be used; an unverified property must be fixed in Search Console first.
- You need
- A CrawlRaven account and a Google account that can see the intended Search Console property.
- Free setup
- One site can be activated on the free plan.
- Important
- Activating a site uses a permanent site choice, so review the domain before confirming.
Complete onboarding and activate a site
- 1
Create or sign in to your account
Open CrawlRaven. Continue with Google, or use an existing email-and-password sign-in. - 2
Tell CrawlRaven how you work
Choose the role that best describes you and the first goal you want to accomplish. Both answers are required before continuing. - 3
Allow Search Console access
Continue to Google and approve the read-only Search Console permission. You can choose a different Google account from the one used to sign in. - 4
Choose a property
On Search Console sites, review the domain and Google access label, then select Activate site. - 5
Confirm activation
Read the permanent-choice message and select Confirm activation only when the property is correct.
Finish the site setup
CrawlRaven creates a default brand term from the site’s domain when you activate it. Open Site → Settings and review that term before relying on the branded split. Add the names and spelling variations people actually search for. A query containing any saved term is classified as branded in Search performance.
- Add the company or product name without punctuation.
- Add common spacing, spelling, and domain-name variants.
- Do not add generic category words that non-brand searches also contain.
The new site may show Preparing reports while CrawlRaven gets the first report ready. You can return to Sites at any time. Open the site when its card is ready; if setup is still running, the status remains visible on the card.
What to do in your first ten minutes
- Check the date and “updated” label above the report so you know what period is being compared.
- Select each KPI tile to show or hide Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Position on the chart.
- Open Queries and use Growing, Declining, New, and Lost to find movement.
- Open a query row to see the pages ranking for it. On a site with full workspace access, adopt useful terms into Target Keywords.
- Open Opportunities to review the partial preview or full workspace available to your site.