Research & Integrations settings

Settings > Research & Integrations covers local business data (Places), Google Search Console, and the diagnostic test buttons.

Places: real local business data

When you write a local-intent article ("best restaurants in..."), SEOBetter looks up real businesses so the article names places that actually exist. Several sources feed this, and every key is optional:

• OpenStreetMap + Wikidata: always on, no key. This is the free baseline and works well for larger cities.
• Perplexity Sonar (via OpenRouter): broad worldwide coverage at about $0.008 per article. If you already added an OpenRouter key on the AI Provider tab, SEOBetter reuses it here automatically; you don't need to paste it twice. You can pick the base sonar model or sonar-pro (deeper search, better for small cities).
• Foursquare and HERE: free keys (about 1,000 calls a day each) that improve coverage in smaller cities, especially outside English-speaking countries.
• Google Places: the strongest single upgrade, and strongly recommended if you write about towns under about 50,000 people. Google's $200 per month free credit covers roughly 5,000 articles, so in practice it costs nothing, but it does require a Google Cloud billing account (card on file).

The plugin works through the configured sources and stops at the first one that returns at least 2 verified places. Unconfigured sources are skipped. If nothing returns enough data, the article is written as a general informational piece; the plugin never invents business names.

One accuracy note: for very small towns, Sonar can occasionally surface a plausible-sounding business that doesn't exist. Google Places never fabricates, which is why it's the recommended key for small-town content.

Privacy: these Places keys are sent to SEOBetter's cloud so the lookup runs server-side. They're used only for your lookups and not stored. If you'd rather they never leave your site, leave them blank; articles still generate, just without the local-business grounding.

Google Search Console

Connecting GSC pulls your last-28-day clicks, impressions, and position per article into WordPress. Connecting and viewing the data is free on every plan. GSC-driven refresh prioritization (which stale post to update first) is Pro+.

The trap: verify your property first

Do this before clicking Connect. If your site isn't a verified property in Google Search Console, the connect will appear to succeed, but syncing fails with "User does not have sufficient permission for site". This is a Google requirement, not a SEOBetter one.

1. Open search.google.com/search-console with the same Google account you'll authorize.
2. Add property > URL prefix > paste your exact site URL (including https:// and the trailing slash).
3. Verify with the HTML tag method: paste Google's meta tag into your SEO plugin's Webmaster Tools section (Yoast, Rank Math, or AIOSEO) or your theme header.
4. Once Google confirms ownership, come back and click Connect Google Search Console.

Access is read-only; SEOBetter never writes to your GSC account, and you can Disconnect at any time.

After connecting

The card shows your account, property, last sync, and how many URLs are tracked. The first sync runs within an hour, or click Sync now. If the auto-detected property is wrong (staging sites, agencies with many properties), use the property picker to switch to any property your Google account can access.

The test buttons and WP_DEBUG

The tab includes three diagnostics: Test Sonar Connection, Test Places Providers, and Test Research Sources. They run live calls and show exactly which sources returned data.

For security, these test endpoints only exist while WP_DEBUG is enabled in wp-config.php. If you see a notice instead of a button, add define( 'WP_DEBUG', true ); to wp-config.php, run your test, then turn it back off. Normal article generation doesn't need WP_DEBUG; only the test buttons do.