Connect Your Own AI (MCP)

External AI access lets you use your AIdata properties from your own AI assistant - claude.ai, Claude Desktop, or any client that supports MCP (Model Context Protocol). Your assistant gets the same data tools as the built-in chat, and usage is covered by the AI subscription you already pay for. No API key involved.

Requirements

Your team is on a Pro or Business plan.
A team owner has enabled External AI Access in Team Settings. It is off by default.
For claude.ai, custom connectors require a paid Claude plan. Claude Desktop and other MCP clients work with whatever plan they normally need.

Setting It Up

1. Enable external access (team owner, once per team)

Go to Team Settings and switch on External AI Access. This is the master switch for the whole team: while it’s off, no member’s connector can reach that team’s properties.

2. Get your personal URL

Go to Settings → Connected AI and click Show my connection URL.

This URL is personal: it identifies you, covers every property you can access across all your teams, and enforces your permissions on each property. Each teammate gets their own URL - never share yours.

Treat the URL like a password. Anyone who has it can read every property you can access and write annotations in your name. If it ever leaks, click Regenerate token - every copy stops working immediately, and your teammates are unaffected.

3. Add it to your AI client

In claude.ai or Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Give it a name (e.g. “AIdata”), paste your URL as the server URL, and save. No extra login is needed - the URL itself grants access.

Other MCP clients: add a remote MCP server and paste the same URL.

4. Use it

In a chat, make sure the connector is enabled in the tools menu, then just ask. Good first prompt: “List my AIdata properties.” The AI will discover your properties, see which data sources each has connected, and pick the right one for follow-up questions.

What Your AI Can Do

Read everything the built-in chat can: traffic reports, search rankings, ad performance, CRM pipelines, Core Web Vitals, annotations, and the knowledge base of every connected property.
Run your skills: skills appear in your client’s prompts menu, and the AI can also list and fetch them itself - ask for a skill by name and it follows your playbook exactly.
Write annotations: on properties where you have write permission, the AI can create and update custom annotations, attributed to you and visible to your team in the app.
Save team memories: on properties where memory is enabled and you have write permission.

Everything else is read-only. The connector can never change anything in your connected platforms - it can’t touch Google Analytics settings, edit campaigns, or modify your WordPress site.

Permissions and Security

Your permissions travel with you. The connector only sees properties you can access, and property-level permissions (read/write/admin) apply to every call - the AI is told your permission level per property.
Team-level kill switch. A team owner turning External AI Access off instantly removes that team’s properties from every member’s connector, without invalidating anyone’s URL. Re-enabling restores access.
Personal rotation. Regenerating your token permanently invalidates your old URL everywhere you pasted it. Full lockdown for a team = every member rotates, owner disables.
Leaving a team removes its properties from your connector automatically.

Notes on Metered Tools

Some tools spend money when called - for example DataForSEO backlink lookups. These bill the team that owns the property the AI passes, and the AI is instructed to tell you which property’s connection it is using when it looks up a domain that isn’t that property’s own site. Connection admins can restrict lookups to specific domains in the DataForSEO and PageSpeed connection settings (allowed domains).

When the Built-In Chat Is Better

The connector is ideal for quick questions from wherever you already work. The built-in chat is still sharper for heavy analysis - it stores large results in a per-conversation database and runs real SQL over them - and reports, report history, and sharing all live in the app. See the announcement post for an honest comparison.

Troubleshooting

“External MCP access is not enabled for any of your teams” - no team you belong to has both a Pro/Business plan and the External AI Access setting switched on. Ask a team owner to enable it in Team Settings.
A property is missing - either its team has external access disabled, or you don’t have access to that property in the app. The connector never shows more than the app does.
The AI doesn’t use the connector - check it’s enabled in the chat’s tools menu, and ask explicitly (“use AIdata to…”) the first time.
Writes are refused - annotation and memory writes need write permission on that property; ask a team admin to grant it.