2.1 · Connect your data
Grant the access GrowthOS needs before it can score a page, research an opportunity, or draft in your voice.
Everything GrowthOS does starts with your data. Before the workspace, the container holding everything GrowthOS knows and does for your brand, can score a page, research an opportunity (a page worth writing or rewriting), or draft in your voice, it needs to read your site the way you do: what's published, what's earning traffic, and what queries bring people in. You grant that access once, in about 10 minutes, and agents take it from there.
This guide covers the 3 access steps: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and your sitemap.
What you're granting, and why
GrowthOS reads from 5 inputs. Two of them, analytics and search console, are yours to grant. The other 3 (the site crawl, keyword data, and CheckThat) need no setup on your side.
| Source | What it powers |
|---|---|
| Analytics (GA4) | The performance side of scoring: traffic, sessions, how much of its potential each page captures |
| Search console (GSC) | Impressions, position, and the queries each page earns |
| Site crawl | Your Pages Portfolio (every page on your site, one scored record per URL) and Health, the technical-quality score. The crawl is GrowthOS reading your sitemap to build its copy of your pages |
| Keyword data | Opportunity research |
| CheckThat | AI visibility: how engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity see and cite you |
Access is granted to a single service account, which works like a read-only teammate: it has an email address you add the same way you'd add a person.
atlas-876@atlas-474011.iam.gserviceaccount.comGrant access
Add the service account to GA4
In Google Analytics, open Admin, then under your property choose Property access management. Click + and Add users, paste the service account email, and assign the Viewer role. Viewer is enough: GrowthOS reads your analytics, it never changes them.
If you run more than one GA4 property, add the account to the property that covers the domain GrowthOS manages.
Add the service account to Search Console
In Google Search Console, pick your property, open Settings, then Users and permissions. Click Add user, paste the same service account email, and set the permission to Full. The daily sync itself only reads search performance, but Full gives GrowthOS headroom for features like URL Inspection without asking you for access twice.
Make your sitemap reachable
GrowthOS imports your pages from your sitemap, so it needs a live sitemap URL (usually yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml). Open it in a browser: if it loads and lists your URLs, you're done. If it 404s or lists dead pages, fix that first, since the sitemap decides which pages exist in your Pages Portfolio.
There is no error state for pages you never told us about. A section missing from the sitemap is missing from the Portfolio, missing from scoring, and missing from every report, and nothing anywhere will flag it.
Your GrowthX team registers the sitemap and sets its sync cadence; the checks below are the part that's yours.
Check that it worked
Open your workspace, click the workspace logo in the top left, and choose Workspace Admin, then Websites, then open your site. The Connectors card lists Google Analytics and Google Search Console with a live status. A connector is the link from GrowthOS to GA4 or GSC that feeds every traffic figure in the product. Connected means access worked, and Synced with a timestamp means data has landed. If a connector shows Sync failed, the most common cause is the service account missing from the property, so re-check step 1 or 2.
First syncs pull months of history, so give the numbers time to fill in after the status flips to Synced.
Check the page count
Once the first sitemap sync completes, Workspace Admin › Site Sync shows a page count per sitemap and a total in the header. Site sync is the connection that keeps GrowthOS's copy of your site current; GrowthX configures it. Compare that total against what you believe your site contains. This is the whole verification step, and it takes 30 seconds. If your CMS says 4,000 pages and the header says 2,600, tell your GrowthX team about the missing 1,400 now, because nothing else will surface them.
You know your CMS; we don't. The common causes are all things only you can spot:
- a section published under a path the sitemap generator excludes
- a second sitemap nobody remembered, on a subdomain
- an index sitemap that lists children the server no longer returns
Common questions
Is this safe? The service account reads data, it never writes. In GA4 it holds the lowest role Google offers. Nothing about your analytics configuration changes.
We have an agency managing our GA4. Forward them this page. Adding a user takes them under a minute, and this is the single most common thing that holds up a workspace.
Can I revoke access later? Yes, the same way you added it: remove the service account from the property. GrowthOS keeps working, but the performance side of scoring goes blind.
Next: choose your zones, which decides how you'll read your site every day.
Last updated at August 13, 2026