Why are the tools grouped into companions?
Most free tool pages are a flat list of unrelated utilities. You sign in four times, learn four interfaces, and still have to stitch the answers together yourself.
/tools groups modes under the platform they answer to. If the question came from Search Console, everything you need sits behind one door. If it came from GA4, the same is true on the other side.
What's on /tools?
- GSC Companion (/tools/seo) - STORY, LOCRA, VEXA, RAUM, KNOT, GATE, THINN, DRIFT, ATLAS, CONTAIN. For sitemaps, robots, Pages reasons, canonicals, request readiness, thin hubs, redirect drift and live checks on a batch of URLs.
- GA4 Companion (/tools/ga4) - VERA, DROP, LAND. For events you no longer trust, funnels that leak, and landers that waste traffic.
Standalone tools, no sign-in: GONE for removed pages, BOTCHECK for Googlebot in your logs, PAYBACK for what a fix is worth, and the Site CTR curve for your own click-through rate by position.
Not sure where to start? The start-here questions at the top of /tools turn your answers into a run sheet, in order.
Which tool should I start with?
- Traffic fell and you can name the week -> STORY in the GSC Companion, with a Search Console Performance export.
- You think it's a penalty -> read how to check for a Google penalty before you change anything.
- Pages were removed or redirected -> GONE, with your list of URLs and what each one should do.
- Googlebot might be blocked -> BOTCHECK, with a day of access logs.
- Pages aren't indexed -> RAUM, with the reasons from the Page indexing report.
- GA4 numbers look wrong -> VERA in the GA4 Companion.
- You need to agree the order of fixes -> PAYBACK.
How does sign-in work for the companions?
No platform OAuth. Every mode is free to use after sign-in. You give an email, you get a one-tap link, and that link opens every mode in the companion.
Email sign-in exists so we know who's using this. It isn't a lead funnel.
Read the companion guides
Start with GSC Companion - how it works or GA4 Companion - how it works, depending on which platform raised the question.
Once you know which tool you need, each mode has its own short note explaining what it checks and how it decides.