Analytics without the haze.

Cookieless analytics, Search Console, MCP for AI coding agents, and honest comparisons with GA4, Plausible, Fathom and Matomo.

Topics

• Alternatives & comparisons — Search Console tools such as SEOGets, and privacy analytics such as GA4, Plausible, Matomo and Fathom.
• Comparisons — Honest side-by-sides of SiteLine, the Search Console API, Plausible, Fathom, Matomo and the rest.
• Search Console — Search Console limits, a Google Search Console MCP, and pairing rankings with cookieless on-site analytics.
• Privacy-first analytics — Consent, GDPR, Australian privacy law, and what cookieless actually changes.
• How-to — Install the tracker, query Search Console over MCP, read funnels, proxy the script, and combine GSC.
• Problem pages — The messy jobs: confusing GA4, agency reporting, ad blockers, mismatched numbers.
• AI agents — Search Console MCP and cookieless analytics that Cursor, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Codex, Grok and other agents can query.

Guides

• Gemini CLI Search Console MCP — Connect Search Console history and cookieless analytics to Gemini CLI with gemini mcp add, an HTTP bearer token, and a GEMINI.md that keeps totals honest.
• Plausible vs Umami (2026): price and hosting — Plausible vs Umami on cloud pricing, free tiers, self-hosting licence, data retention, Search Console, API and MCP access. Checked 10 Oct 2026.
• Search Console regex examples — Copy-paste Google Search Console regex for brand, non-brand, questions, long-tail, comparisons, folders and URL parameters. All RE2-safe.
• SEOGets alternatives: 7 tools compared — Seven SEOGets alternatives for Search Console history and MCP. SEOGets core is $49/month per site as of 26 Oct 2026. SiteLine, BigQuery, Sheets and the rest.
• SiteLine vs SEOGets: GSC history and price — SiteLine vs SEOGets on Search Console history past 16 months, row limits, MCP and price. Core is now per site. Checked 26 Oct 2026.
• UTM tracking without cookies — UTM tags are read from the landing URL, so cookieless analytics records campaigns without a cookie or banner. What you keep, what you lose, naming rules.
• How much traffic does a cookie banner cost? — Estimate the visitors analytics never sees when a consent banner blocks GA4. Simple maths, EU, UK and AU ranges, and when cookieless removes the banner.
• Looker Studio Search Console limits — Looker Studio's Search Console connector is a live chart, not a warehouse. ~16-month retention, 12-hour freshness, and what to do when YoY goes blank.
• BigQuery vs hosted Search Console archive — BigQuery bulk export is forward-only. A hosted Search Console archive backfills Google's live window, keeps history while you subscribe, and adds UI/MCP.
• Claude Code Search Console MCP setup — Add SiteLine's Search Console and analytics MCP servers to Claude Code with claude mcp add, a team-scoped bearer token, and a safe query order.
• Best Search Console history tools — Compare ways to keep Search Console history past Google's 16-month window: Looker Studio, CSV, DIY API, BigQuery export, and hosted archives.
• Connect Google Search Console to SiteLine — Step-by-step: register, grant webmasters.readonly, wait for the 16-month backfill, and confirm import status. What SiteLine copies on connect.
• Year-over-year in Search Console — Google's Performance report keeps about 16 months, so month 17 YoY is empty. How to compare honestly, avoid fake zeros, and keep a prior year.
• ChatGPT Search Console MCP connector — Connect ChatGPT to a Search Console MCP with SiteLine’s OAuth connector. Query clicks and pages in chat. Never paste a bearer token into the transcript.
• Claude Desktop Search Console MCP — Claude Desktop can use SiteLine’s Search Console MCP as an OAuth connector or, in a local config, with a bearer token. Both are read-only.
• Google Search Console MCP server — SiteLine's Google Search Console MCP server has ten read-only tools, including movers, striking distance and queries for a page. Setup for Cursor and Claude.
• How to query Search Console with MCP — Prompts and tool calls for querying Google Search Console through SiteLine MCP: the call order, what each tool returns, and the mistakes to avoid.
• Search Console API vs MCP — The Search Console API is how software fetches rows. MCP is how an agent asks questions. SiteLine fills a warehouse via the API, then serves it over MCP.
• Claude connector for Search Console and analytics — Add SiteLine to Claude.ai as a custom connector: the OAuth approval, adding both servers, revoking access, and when to move to Claude Code.
• MCP for Search Console and analytics in Cursor — Point Cursor at SiteLine’s two HTTP MCP servers with a team-scoped bearer token. Query Search Console and analytics from the agent that edits your repo.
• SEO analytics for AI agents — Coding agents cannot log into Search Console or GA4. SiteLine exposes Search Console and cookieless analytics over MCP so agents can query real numbers.
• SiteLine MCP setup for AI coding agents — Connect Cursor, Claude Code, ChatGPT and other agents to SiteLine MCP: OAuth for connectors, a team bearer token for IDEs, two read-only servers.
• Why GA4 is a bad fit for AI agent workflows — GA4 has no agent interface. Explorations are not tool calls, BigQuery is a pipeline, and consent holes look like traffic crashes.
• Agency client reporting, minus the bloat — One SiteLine user per subscription, unlimited sites, Search Console plus cookieless analytics. Multi-member teams exist in code but stay off by default.
• Agency Search Console reporting — Agency Search Console reporting that holds up: site totals for headlines, 25k rows/day for the tail, MCP for agents, unlimited sites, no averaged CTR.
• Analytics and the Australian Privacy Act — The Australian Privacy Act 1988 is not GDPR with extra vowels. How SiteLine maps to APPs, hashed IPs, overseas disclosure, and claims we will not make.
• Analytics blocked by ad blockers — Filter lists cut third-party analytics scripts. Proxy the SiteLine script and collect path first-party to reduce the loss. It does not vanish.
• Combine Search Console with cookieless analytics — Read Search Console clicks against cookieless pageviews: landing pages, a daily visitor hash, two-day lag, and why query totals never equal the site total.
• Consent-free analytics — Consent-free means this tracker sets no analytics cookie that ePrivacy treats as a banner. It is not GDPR-free, notice-free, or a pass for other pixels.
• Cookieless analytics vs GA4: how they differ — GA4 identifies visitors with a first-party cookie. SiteLine uses a daily SHA-256 of truncated IP, user agent and rotating salt. That is the difference.
• Cookieless tracking explained — SiteLine sets no first-party analytics cookie. Visitors are a daily hash of truncated IP and user agent: what is stored, omitted, and sent to our servers.
• Do I need a cookie banner for analytics? — A cookie banner is for cookies, not the word analytics. When a cookieless tracker removes the reason for one, and when the rest of the stack does not.
• EU analytics after Schrems — Schrems II made US transfers a documented problem, not a ban on analytics. SiteLine is cookieless, not EU-only: events reach Aglet, Stripe and Cloudflare.
• Fathom vs Simple Analytics — Fathom and Simple Analytics are hosted cookieless traffic tools. Compare dashboards, site limits and blocker bypass. Search Console history is another job.
• First-party analytics proxy — Proxy SiteLine’s script and collect path from your host so more events survive blockers. Configure nginx, Caddy, Cloudflare or Vercel. No managed CNAME.
• GA4 alternatives: which one fits your situation — Leaving GA4? Pick the job first: cookieless page analytics, Search Console history or product analytics. Then choose a tool, or stay on GA4.
• GA4 and the cookie banner: what changes — GA4 needs a banner because it sets analytics cookies. Cookieless tracking removes that trigger for this script — not your privacy notice, or other pixels.
• GA4 for SaaS: the wrong tool for the site — SaaS teams put GA4 on the app because it is already on the blog. Cookie identity, event cardinality and Ads coupling fight product questions.
• Why GA4 is confusing, and what to do — GA4 piles taxonomy, identity, and modeled conversions into one UI. SiteLine is cookieless pageviews, named events, dashboard goals, and Search Console.
• GA4 sampling and thresholds explained — GA4 Explorations sample; Google signals threshold small slices; Search Console caps 25k rows/day. Unsampled on-site data still needs an honest identity.
• GDPR analytics without a consent banner — ePrivacy cares about cookies; GDPR cares about personal data. How SiteLine’s cookieless tracker changes the banner question, and what it does not legalise.
• Combine Search Console and on-site analytics — Use Search Console for queries and clicks, SiteLine analytics for what happened after landing. Same subscription, same domain list, two systems.
• How to proxy the SiteLine script — Reverse-proxy /js/script.js and POST /api/analytics/event on your domain. SiteLine does not manage CNAMEs. Ad-blocker loss drops, but it does not vanish.
• How to read SiteLine analytics funnels — Build a funnel from exact path, path contains, or event name steps. SiteLine shows visitors per step as a share of step one — derived, not extra events.
• How to set up SiteLine analytics goals — Create goals in the dashboard from exact path, path contains, or event name. They derive from traffic you already send and add no billable events.
• How to track custom events in SiteLine — Send named custom events with at most 10 properties. They are billable 1:1 with pageviews. Goals can match the event name later without a second payload.
• Install SiteLine on React — Mount @siteline.tools/react once at the app root with an absolute collect URL. Call track() for named events; App Router still needs a manual pageview.
• Install the SiteLine tracker — Add one deferred script tag with your public site id and an absolute collect URL. Pageviews start on load; cookies, extra events and banners stay off.
• IP anonymization vs cookieless analytics — GA IP anonymization still set a cookie. SiteLine truncates IPv4 /24 and IPv6 /48, hashes with a daily salt, and does not store the raw IP.
• Matomo vs GA4 with Search Console — Matomo vs GA4 comparisons skip Search Console. Neither keeps GSC past 16 months or beyond the 1,000-row UI. Here is the comparison with both ledgers.
• Open-source web analytics and self-hosting — Matomo, Umami and Plausible CE are real options. Self-host is ops, not privacy. SiteLine is hosted cookieless analytics plus Search Console — not a distro.
• Organic traffic is not Search Console — Organic sessions and Search Console clicks are different events. Anonymised queries, Google surfaces, consent, and a two-day lag explain most of the gap.
• Plausible vs Fathom — Plausible and Fathom are both cookieless traffic analytics. The split is open source and self-hosting versus hosted polish, and what you need from GSC.
• Plausible vs Matomo: cookieless or full platform — Plausible is a cookieless one-screen dashboard. Matomo is a full platform with cookies on by default, a tag manager, page overlay and heatmaps.
• Privacy-first analytics comparison for 2026 — Compare Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, GA4 and SiteLine on identity lifetime, Search Console history, event caps and agent access. A buying test.
• Privacy-first analytics for agencies — Agency reporting without installing GA4 cookies on every client site. What SiteLine stores, what belongs in a proposal, and claims you should not make.
• Privacy-first analytics for SaaS — SaaS can measure usage without a first-party analytics cookie. How SiteLine hashes visitors, what still hits our servers, and what belongs in the notice.
• Search Console 1,000-row limit — Search Console caps the Performance export at 1,000 rows. The API defaults to 1,000, allows 25,000 a request, and stops a day at 50,000.
• Search Console 16-month limit: when data expires — Search Console keeps Performance data for 16 months, then each day is deleted from the UI and API. When a day expires, and how to copy it first.
• Search Console clicks are not analytics sessions — A Search Console click is a SERP click. An analytics session is a visit. They will not match, and averaging position or CTR will not explain the whole gap.
• Search Console is not enough — Search Console is a SERP ledger, not bounce rate, goals, or 17-month history. Pair it with cookieless analytics and stop treating GSC as a full report.
• Search Console plus on-site analytics — Search Console is the SERP ledger. On-site analytics is what happened after the click. SiteLine keeps both, without averaging CTR or summing query rows.
• SiteLine vs Fathom: archive or overlay — Fathom shows Search Console in its dashboard for the window Google still holds. SiteLine copies it daily and keeps it. Prices, privacy and limits compared.
• SiteLine vs Google Analytics: an honest grid — SiteLine is cookieless page analytics plus Search Console. GA4 is cookies, Ads, Explorations and a free licence. Side by side, with what we won’t ship.
• SiteLine vs Matomo: hosted or self-run — Matomo is a full analytics suite you can run yourself for free. SiteLine is narrower and hosted: cookieless traffic plus a stored Search Console copy.
• SiteLine vs Mixpanel — Mixpanel is event analytics for identified users. SiteLine is cookieless website analytics plus a Search Console import. Pick the job, not the logo.
• SiteLine vs Plausible — Plausible is cookieless traffic analytics. SiteLine adds a durable Search Console import: 16-month backfill, 25k rows a day, kept while you subscribe.
• SiteLine vs PostHog — PostHog is product analytics: profiles, replay, flags. SiteLine is cookieless site analytics plus Search Console history. Different jobs, not a bake-off.
• SiteLine vs Simple Analytics — Simple Analytics is cookieless traffic reporting. SiteLine covers that job and stores Google Search Console history past 16 months, at 25,000 rows per day.
• SiteLine vs Umami: hosted or self-hosted — Umami is lightweight, often self-hosted web analytics. SiteLine is hosted cookieless analytics plus a Search Console import kept while you subscribe.
• Unique visitors without cookies — SiteLine unique visitors are a daily hash of truncated IP, user agent, and a rotating salt. No analytics cookie, no cross-day person, no GA4-style user id.
• Why analytics numbers don't match — SiteLine will not match GA4, GSC clicks or ads. Daily hashes, blockers, bot filters, lag and different event definitions pull the totals apart on purpose.
• Why teams leave GA4: consent, not a manifesto — Teams leave GA4 because consent-gated cookies make weekly numbers unusable. The UI, sampling and Ads coupling add cost. Privacy is rarely the real trigger.