Step 3: Install, build, and run your first inspection

You've got sa.json from the service-account setup. Now let's build the tool and get your first INDEXED result.

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25 or newer installed. Check with:

  go version
  

  If that's missing, install Go 1.25 or newer from go.dev/dl.

• Your sa.json file from the previous step.

Install

The fastest way is go install — it builds the tool and drops the gsc-indexer binary into $GOBIN (default ~/go/bin):

go install -v github.com/toolsura/gsc-indexer@latest

Make sure $GOBIN is on your PATH. If it isn't, add this to your shell profile:

export PATH="$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin"

Once that's set you can run gsc-indexer from any directory.

Build from source (alternative)

Prefer to compile from a clone?

git clone https://github.com/toolsura/gsc-indexer.git
cd gsc-indexer
go build -o gsc-indexer .

That produces an executable named gsc-indexer in the folder. There's no separate installer.

Tell it your credentials

Pass the key file directly:

gsc-indexer -creds /path/to/sa.json "https://www.toolsura.com/"

Or use the environment variable (set it once per terminal session):

export GSC_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/sa.json
gsc-indexer "https://www.toolsura.com/"

Read the output

A successful first run looks like:

[1/1] • https://www.toolsura.com/  [INDEXED]
    coverage: Submitted and indexed | fetch: SUCCESSFUL | robots:  | last crawl: 2026-07-18T07:05:51Z
→ inspection submitted for all URLs; Google will re-crawl on next pass.

• [1/1]. position in this run.
• [INDEXED]. Google already has the page.
• The coverage/fetch/robots lines are GSC's inspection details.
• The last line means the re-crawl request was submitted.

If you see [NOT INDEXED] or an error instead, don't panic. that's covered in understanding your results and the troubleshooting guide.

Next steps

• Decode the verdict: understanding results.
• Have many URLs? Batch files, stdin, and sitemaps.

Sources

• Google Search Console
• URL Inspection API documentation
• Google Search APIs overview
• Service account OAuth (Google Identity)
• About service accounts (Google Cloud IAM)
• Verify site ownership
• Property types: URL-prefix vs Domain
• URL Inspection tool help
• Indexing API (JobPosting/BroadcastEvent only)
• Request indexing / inspect a URL