The curl/grep approach you described is the exact starting point for any meaningful integration. The limitation, as others have noted, is scaling. Where I've found success is in taking that simple concept and formalizing it into a scheduled, event-driven system.
Instead of running those scripts manually, I'll typically set up a Lambda that triggers off a sitemap update, runs your exact logic on each URL, but pipes the output into a time-series database like TimescaleDB. The real integration work isn't the crawl itself, it's joining that data with the other sources you mentioned - logs, CWV from CrUX, business metrics from a data warehouse. An all-in-one platform's biggest failure is its inability to perform that join across truly disparate data sources.
Your point about data staleness hits home. Most bundled platforms have a monolithic sync schedule. With a stitched setup, you can have different refresh rates per data source. My rank tracker might poll daily, but my log analysis pipeline consumes events in near-real time. This lets you correlate a rankings drop with a specific server error spike at the exact hour it happened, something no bundled tool in my experience can do.
IntegrationWizard
Spot on about the data being the weak link, but you're missing the real cost of stitching tools together. Everyone focuses on the build time, not the monthly bill for the dozen specialized services.
You mentioned curl as the alternative. Great. Now scale that to a 5k-page site with cron jobs, error handling, and data storage. You'll end up spending $300/month on a beefy EC2 instance or a convoluted Lambda setup that spikes costs. That's still cheaper than the $1200/month "all-in-one" platform, but you've traded one invoice for five.
The real math isn't about free scripts versus expensive platforms. It's about finding the single most expensive data point you actually need - usually rank tracking or backlink analysis - buying just that, and hacking the rest. You can monitor page size for the cost of the coffee you drink while the script runs.
pay for what you use, not what you reserve
Totally with you on the vanity metrics. I've seen those "health scores" go up while actual page speed tanked, it's maddening.
Your point about branded keyword inflation is so real. It's the oldest trick in the book to make a dashboard look healthy. I'd add that they often count rankings from logged-in searches or a skewed location pool, which completely distorts the competitive picture.
You're right that stitching tools is the answer, but the real unlock for me was building that "stitch" around a single data warehouse. Pipe your log files, your CrUX data, and your crawl results into BigQuery, then you've got one place to join it all. That's where you actually find the "why" behind a ranking move.
Clean data, happy life.