Every external tool, console, API, and data source the book references, grouped by job. One line each: what it's for, where it lives, what it costs. Free tiers noted as of 2026-08 — pricing and quotas drift, so re-check before building automation on any of them.
The first-party truth source for Google visibility: clicks, impressions, position, index coverage, sitemap submission. Record baselines here before any change
Automate GSC: list properties, query performance data, submit sitemaps — drivable by a service account with siteOwner permission (works on sc-domain: properties)
Fast recrawl requests — for JobPosting and BroadcastEvent pages only. Off-label use on normal pages risks revocation; the old sitemap-ping endpoint is dead (removed 2023)
Validates whether a live URL or snippet is eligible for Google's visual rich results. Shows only Google-rendered types — Service/OfferCatalog/DefinedTerm parsing silently passes elsewhere
The local-business listing behind the map pack and AI local recommendations. Manage in the browser; the Business Profile API is approval-gated (default quota 0 — apply weeks early)
Bing's console — disproportionately important because the Bing index feeds ChatGPT search and Copilot. Can import verified properties straight from GSC. Its AI Performance report is the only place to observe Copilot/ChatGPT-side reception
Push protocol: POST changed URLs (with a self-hosted key file) and Bing, Yandex, Seznam, and Naver pick them up. Google ignores it. Accelerates crawl, does not rank or cite
The DNS ground-truth tool. dig NS example.com before assuming who can write records; dig TXT, MX, +dnssec for the rest
Ships with BIND utilities (preinstalled on macOS/Linux)
Free
Cloudflare DoH (JSON)
dig substitute that works anywhere HTTPS does: curl -H 'accept: application/dns-json' 'https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query?name=example.com&type=TXT'. Status 3 = NXDOMAIN; the AD flag shows DNSSEC
Send a test email, get a 0–10 deliverability score with SPF/DKIM/DMARC breakdown. Send a realistic body — short image-heavy test bodies get docked on content ratio
Registrar-side automation (NS changes, records). Record-write endpoints are entitlement-gated on some account tiers — verify access before you script against it
The one-line crawlability probe: fetch your site with each crawler's User-Agent and compare status codes (full pattern in the crawler registry). Finds bot walls that make a site invisible while browsers see it fine
The zero-budget triangulation stack from Measurement and baselines — no single source is trustworthy; agreement across them is.
Tool
What it's for
URL
Cost
SimilarWeb free endpoint
https://data.similarweb.com/api/v1/data?domain=example.com — no auth, returns ~3 months of estimated visits, top keywords, and CPC. Unofficial and undocumented (as of 2026-08), so treat as fragile; also pull known competitors through it to calibrate
Domain rank buckets, traffic and bot-share trends from Cloudflare's vantage point; its verified-bots directory doubles as a crawler-verification reference
The canonical upstream listing for MCP servers — publish server.json once (via the mcp-publisher CLI + DNS namespace verification) and the community directories mirror it
Reference implementation for DNS-AID: publishes and verifies the SVCB/TXT/_index._agents/TLSA record set (pip install "dns-aid[cloudflare]", then dns-aid publish / dns-aid verify)