Search Console data retention is 16 months for performance data, and the limit is absolute. Clicks, impressions, CTR, and position live on a rolling window: each day, the oldest day's rows are deleted, in the UI and the API alike. The limit hasn't moved since 2018, when Google raised it from 90 days, and Google has never said why it stops there.
There is no setting that extends it, no paid Google tier, and no recovery path once a date leaves the window.
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What the 16 months cover
The 16-month clock applies to performance data, which is the data SEO work runs on. Other reports keep their own, shorter clocks:
- Performance data (queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance): 16 months.
- Crawl stats: about 90 days.
- At the fresh end, new rows arrive with a lag of two to three days.
Retention by storage option
| Where the data lives | How far back it reaches |
|---|---|
| Search Console UI and API | 16 months, rolling |
| Looker Studio (GSC connector) | 16 months. It reads the live API on every refresh |
| BigQuery bulk export | From the day you enable it, no backfill |
| SEO Gets | Five years |
| SEO Stack | Ten years |
| Month17 | No limit, plus a 16-month backfill on connect |
Every row of that table shares one property: it only preserves data from the day you switch it on. The differences are how long the copy is held and how much of the existing window gets rescued at the start.
Why 16 months isn't enough
Comparing two full calendar years takes 24 months of data. Judging seasonality takes two or three cycles. Diagnosing a core update that rolled out more than 16 months ago takes a "before" that no longer exists. The longer write-up walks through each of these.
Extending your retention
Month17 turns the 16-month window into a floor instead of a ceiling. Connect a property and it backfills everything Search Console still holds, then syncs daily and keeps every row with no retention limit. The archive is served over MCP, so Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client can query all of it, not just the slice Google would have kept.
To see how this plays out for your own site, the data loss calculator shows exactly when the data from any date you care about gets deleted.