Privacy and local data

The tool stores local state in one SQLite database:

${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/google-keyword-ai-mcp/gkai.sqlite3

Set GKAI_DATA_DIR to choose another directory.

Stored locally

• Parsed provider-response cache entries with provider, endpoint, account scope, parser version and expiry metadata.
• Saved research runs, results, stage checkpoints, budgets, errors and timestamps.
• A configuration snapshot for each run. Secret values are masked before storage.

Developer tokens, OAuth client secrets, refresh tokens and credential-file contents are not written to the database. Secrets remain in GKAI_... environment variables or credential files you manage. Raw HTTP responses from authenticated Google Ads and Search Console APIs are not retained by default; normalized cached results and saved research output may contain the metrics and query rows used by the tool.

To remove all cached responses and reclaim their unused database pages without losing saved run history, stop active writers and run:

gkai cache purge --all --vacuum

To remove all local cache and run history, stop active gkai processes and delete the gkai.sqlite3 file plus its -wal and -shm sidecars in the same directory. This is irreversible; credential files are separate and are not removed.

Data sent to providers

Autocomplete and Trends requests send keywords, locale, geography and timeframe to Google's unofficial endpoints. Google Ads sends seeds, customer/account context and market criteria. Search Console sends the property, date range, dimensions and filters using your credential identity. These requests are subject to Google's terms, logging, quotas and privacy practices; do not submit sensitive query seeds unless that disclosure is acceptable.

Edit on GitHub · 2026-09-04