A Conductor User’s Guide to APIs
You wear a lot of hats, help out with all kinds of tasks, and now they want you to know about APIs?
Don't I do enough already? I'm a marketer, not an engineer, dang it!
Don't worry—we're here to help.
APIs and Conductor
You already know that your Conductor data can help you and your organization make informed decisions. And with Conductor's APIs, you can extend that data—and even other functions—to get more from your existing investment in the Conductor platform.
What exactly *is* an API?
An API—"Application Programming Interface"—is a way to connect different software applications together. For Conductor, that means that your organization can use our APIs to connect our data and services into other applications you might use. Instead of manually exporting data from one system and importing it into another, an API can automate that process, ensuring seamless data flow and saving you time.
So, with access to this data through APIs, engineers at your organization can build connections into platforms like data warehouses, business intelligence tools, identity and access management systems, and more.
This sounds awfully technical 😬
Yes! For most Conductor users, you'll need to work with engineers at your organization to build connections into other platforms—especially if other teams own access to those other platforms.
That said, it's important to know what you can get from Conductor's APIs so that you can tell your engineers what you want. The rest of this guide will cover each of our APIs, and give you some basic ideas for how they might be used.
Working with Your Engineers
To get started working with an API, your engineers will typically need the following:
-
API Keys and Secrets: These are unique credentials that authenticate your API requests. You can generate these in the Conductor platform. Note that Conductor Intelligence and Conductor Monitoring use their own API keys.
Where can I find my API credentials?
If you have access to APIs in Conductor, you'll find them:
For Conductor Intelligence APIs:
Integrations > APIFor Conductor Monitoring APIs:
Account > Account tab > Integration tokens - API Documentation: Conductor provides detailed documentation for each of its APIs, which your engineers will use to understand the available endpoints and how to structure their requests.
- A Clear Understanding of Your Business Goals: The more your engineers can understand what you're trying to achieve, the better they'll be able to build a solution that meets your needs.
By working together, you and your engineering team can unlock the full potential of Conductor's APIs and drive real results for your business.
Looker Studio Integrations
For lower-effort connections, we also offer out-of-the-box integrations to our Conductor Data Platform API and Conductor Monitoring Reporting API with Google's Looker Studio business intelligence platform. These connections can help you extend your data into a familiar and popular reporting platform that you might already be using:
Hey! Don't sell yourself short.
Despite requiring some technical expertise, you can still learn to pull data for research, spot-checking, and simple ad hoc analysis through Conductor’s APIs without engineering assistance. This can be useful if you want to understand the format of the data pulled out of your account or do your own initial analysis of the data on a smaller scale before creating connections to your other internal repositories or platforms.
(Note that it’s still recommended—and probably necessary—for you to work with your engineers to connect Conductor data into your organization’s other internal systems.)
To do this, you can use API platforms like Postman and some simple python scripts to start pulling data from Conductor’s API directly onto your computer.
Not sure where to start? There are lots of courses out there, but if your organization approves the use of an AI engine like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, you can work with it to create scripts that can pull data—along with guided instructions for doing so.
Just remember: API Keys and Secrets should always be stored and used securely. You should NOT share these directly with an AI engine.
Doing this kind of work on your own can really help you feel comfortable with how APIs work, and help you think creatively about how your organization might use data from our APIs to learn new things and discover new insights!
Below we'll cover each of our current APIs and cover some use cases our customers might use them for. Have any creative ideas? Share them with our Community
Available APIs in the Conductor Platform
Conductor's Data Platform API (v1)
The Data Platform API is your gateway to integrating Conductor's rich search and traditional insights directly into your existing data ecosystems. This API allows you to connect Conductor's vast universe of foundational raw data points—and even curated data sets—with the tools your teams use daily.
How is this API different from the Conductor Intelligence Reporting API below?
Conductor built this API on our rearchitected data platform, which we built to enable new insights reporting in reports like Keywords and Pages. The data platform includes data sets for AI search, traditional search, your integrated website data, and more.
However, currently, the Data Platform API does not include endpoints for:
- Website data, like your integrated web analytics.
- Configuration data, like lists of your account's web properties, keyword groups, and other resources you've built in Conductor. Note that you can access configuration data from the Conductor Intelligence Reporting API describe below.
Use Cases
- Pull keyword ranking data into your internal dashboards to track performance alongside other marketing metrics.
- Integrate AI search performance data to understand your visibility in the evolving landscape of AI-powered search.
- Combine Conductor's market share data with your sales data to identify new growth opportunities.
Conductor Intelligence Reporting API
This API provides programmatic access rank data in your Conductor accounts, allowing you to build custom reports and automate data retrieval. This API includes account configuration data—like configured web properties, tracked keywords, keyword groups—as well as keyword rank and monthly search volume data.
By automating the process of pulling data, you can save time, reduce the risk of human error, and gain deeper insights by combining Conductor's data with other data sources.
How is this API different from the Conductor Data Platform API above?
The Conductor Intelligence Reporting API was built on our legacy data infrastructure rather than our newer data platform. You can access endpoints for:
- Rank and monthly search volume data for your tracked keywords
- Account configuration data, like lists of your account's web properties, keyword groups, and other resources you've built in Conductor.
In the future, we anticipate providing all of this data in our Data Platform API.
Use Cases
- Create a custom dashboard that tracks your keyword rankings, search volume, and traffic from Conductor alongside your website's conversion data from Google Analytics.
- Build a report that monitors your brand's visibility in AI-powered search engines over time.
- Integrate Conductor's data into your business intelligence tools to create a holistic view of your marketing performance.
Conductor Monitoring CMS API
The CMS API allows you to trigger priority auditing of your website's pages directly from your content management system (CMS).
By integrating the CMS API into your publishing workflow, you can ensure that your content is optimized for search engines from the moment it's published.
Use Cases
- As you make changes to a webpage in your CMS, you can trigger an immediate audit in Conductor Monitoring to check for any on-page SEO issues.
- Ensure that your content is structured in a way that is easily understood by AI-powered search engines.
- Improve your website's overall health and performance by catching and fixing issues in real-time.
Conductor Monitoring Reporting API
This API allows you to extract data and metrics from your Conductor Monitoring account, enabling you to streamline your reporting tasks and integrate Conductor Monitoring into your client portal.
This API provides the flexibility to create custom reports and dashboards that meet the specific needs of your business.
Use Cases
- Create a report that tracks your website's health over time and identifies any new issues that need to be addressed.
- Monitor your website's performance in AI-powered search engines and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Integrate Conductor Monitoring's data into your other reporting tools to create a comprehensive view of your website's performance.
Conductor Monitoring Data Enrichment API
The Data Enrichment API allows you to create custom enrichment fields in Conductor Monitoring and populate them with your own data.
By enriching Conductor's data with your own, you can gain a more complete understanding of your website's performance and identify new opportunities for optimization.
Use Cases
- Add data about your website's internal linking structure to Conductor Monitoring to identify opportunities to improve your site's architecture.
- Add data about your products and services to Conductor Monitoring to ensure that your website is providing the most relevant information to users of AI-powered search engines.
- Add data about your customers to Conductor Monitoring to gain a deeper understanding of their behavior and preferences.
Conductor's User Management API
The User Management API provides a way to create and manage users in the Conductor platform through an API.
This API allows for centralized management of user accounts and access control, improving security and streamlining user management.
Use Cases
- Integrate Conductor's user management with your organization's existing identity and access management systems.
- Ensure that your team members have the appropriate level of access to the Conductor platform, based on their roles and responsibilities.
How do I get access to Conductor's APIs?
Your organization's access to Conductor's various API products depends on the API, your plan, and your specific account subscription.
Contact your Conductor representative to learn whether you already have access, and—if not—how to gain access to this data.
- For Conductor Intelligence APIs: Integrations > API
- For Conductor Monitoring APIs: Account > Account tab > Integration Tokens
- For Conductor Intelligence APIs: Integrations > API
- For Conductor Monitoring APIs: Account > Account tab > Integration tokens