Earlier this month, Google announced the Search Analytics API to make the data from the Search Analytics feature in Google Search Console accessible for developers. The company said it wanted to help people bake search performance data into their apps and tools.
Now that this has been made available, Google announced that it is getting rid of the old CSV download scripts for information on queries and rankings. They’ll be turning off access to downloads of these on October 20.
In a quick post on the Google Webmaster Central blog, Webmaster Trends analyst John Mueller writes:
These download scripts have helped various sites & tools to get information on queries, impressions, clicks, and rankings over the years. However, they didn’t use the new Search Analytics data, and relied on the deprecated Client Login API.
Farewell, CSV downloads, you’ve served us (and many webmasters!) well, but it’s time to move on. We’re already seeing lots of usage with the new API. Are you already doing something neat with the API? Let us know in the comments!
Mueller said earlier this month that if yuo’ve used any of Google’s other APIs or one of the existing Search Console APIs, it will be easy to get started with the new Search Analytics API.
The API can be used to verify the presence of data, and can be used for things like top ten queries by click count, top ten pages, top ten queries in India, or top ten mobile queries in India. These are just examples.