Two Google services feed Astus, and they have nothing to do with each other. Confusing them is the most common mistake, so let us name it straight away:
- PageSpeed Insights measures the speed and accessibility of your pages. An API key is enough.
- Search Console tells you what your pages do in search results. That is not a key but a service account, and it needs your authorisation.
Both are free. No credit card is asked for.
Everything is set in one place: Components → Astus, Options button, Google tab.
1. The PageSpeed key
Optional. Without it Astus still measures, but Google heavily limits how many measurements you get per hour — you will notice at the first "try again in a few minutes". With it: 25,000 measurements a day.
Two clicks, once and for all:
- Enable the PageSpeed Insights API on your Google Cloud project.
- Create an API key — Create credentials > API key.
Paste the key into the PageSpeed key field and save.
Careful. A Google AI Studio key — the AI one — is refused here. It is not the same API. If Astus tells you Google refused your key because it is an AI key, that is what happened: you need a key created on
console.cloud.google.com, in a project where the PageSpeed Insights API is enabled.
2. Declaring your property in Search Console
This is the foundation of search visibility. Without this declaration Google works for you but tells you nothing: no figures, no queries, no positions.
Four steps.
Step 1 — Add the property
Open Google Search Console and click Add property.
Step 2 — Choose the type, the one moment that needs thought
Domain — covers your whole site, www and subdomains included. Verified through a DNS record at your host. Choose it if you know how: it is the most complete, once and for all.
URL prefix — covers one exact address only. Careful: http and https, with and without www, are four different properties as far as Google is concerned. On the other hand, Astus can verify it for you, with no DNS and no FTP. Choose it otherwise.
Step 3 — Verification, done by Astus
For a URL prefix Google offers several methods. Choose HTML tag.
Google shows a tag along these lines:
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="AbC123...xyz" />Copy the code — the long string of letters after content= — and paste it into Astus's Google verification code field, then save. You can also paste the whole tag: Astus finds its way and keeps only the code.
Astus then places that code in the head of your public site, which proves to Google that the site is yours.
Go back to Google and click Verify.
Keep that code after verification. Google re-checks periodically, and a site that loses its tag loses its property.
Step 4 — Wait
Google only starts showing figures from the declaration onwards, and with two to three days of lag. It does not backfill. This is the one step with nothing to do, and it is also why it pays to declare your property early, even if you only look at the figures later.
3. The service account, so Astus can read your figures
Declaring the property lets you see your figures on Google's own site. For them to appear inside your Joomla, Astus needs a robot account authorised to read them.
Three steps, once, free.
Step 1 — Enable the API
Enable the Search Console API on your project.
Step 2 — Create the service account and its file
Create a service account, open it, Keys tab: Add key > Create new key > JSON.
A .json file downloads. Drag it straight onto Astus's "Service account" field: no need to open it in a text editor. You can also paste its entire contents, from the first { to the last }.
Save.
Step 3 — Authorise the account address — the one everybody forgets
After saving, Astus displays the service account address just below. It looks like
That address is what you must authorise in Search Console.
In Search Console: Settings → Users and permissions → Add user. Paste that address, permission Viewer, on this site's property.
Without this step Google answers "access denied" and nothing appears. It is by far the number one cause of readings that do not work.
Come back to Astus and save again. The checklist shown under the field tells you where you stand, step by step:
- Service account file recognised.
- The account is authorised in Search Console.
- This site's property recognised on its own: …
Three green lines and you are done.
The property: leave the field empty
Astus recognises this site's property on its own among those Google gives it. Only fill the Property field to force a different one: sc-domain:example.com for a domain property, or the exact address with its trailing slash for a URL prefix.
If Astus tells you it finds no property matching this site, it usually means the account was authorised on a neighbouring property — www instead of no www, or http instead of https. Astus then lists the ones it can read: copy the right one across.
Reading your figures
Components → Astus → Report, Read my figures button. About ten seconds.
You then choose the period: 7 days, 28 days or a year. Each period is read and stored separately — reading a year does not replace your 28-day reading.
Three curves appear: visits coming from Google, impressions, and your average position. On the third, lower is better: the curve is inverted so that "it goes up" always means "it is getting better".
These are not visits. Search Console reports what happens in search results: how many times your pages were shown, how many times someone clicked. It is not a visitor counter, and the figures lag by two to three days.
In summary
| What you want | What it takes |
|---|---|
| To measure my pages comfortably | A PageSpeed key |
| Google to collect my figures | Declare the property (HTML tag placed by Astus) |
| To see those figures inside Joomla | A service account authorised to read |
| The Astus chat | An AI key — see What costs, what costs nothing |