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Google Site Kit Review: Is This Plugin Help You Master Website Analytics?

Last Updated on August 31st, 2023

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Google Site Kit was in closed beta for a long time. In November 2019, the plugin was publicly available to all WordPress users and listed for free at WordPress.org.

As WordPress users are likely using at least one of the services in Site Kit, we thought it would be useful to take a detailed dive into Google Site Kit for WordPress.

In this article, you’ll have a deeper understanding of what Site Kit does, how it helps, a detailed look at the Site Kit dashboard on WordPress, and the step-by-step process on how to set up the Site Kit.

This is a review about a new helpful plugin, Google Site Kit.

Google Site Kit

Google Site Kit is an official plugin from Google that helps you integrate data and features from multiple Google tools into your WordPress dashboard. It works as a mediator between the WordPress site and the marketing tools of Google. If you want to dig in more and improve the performance of your site, this will absolutely help you in any way possible. Google Site Kit is made for convenience per se – without the need to install more plugins or switch to different services. 

Overall, it’s a really convenient tool for letting you access all the main Google services from right inside your WordPress dashboard.

Another good thing about this plugin is, Google Site Kit is available for free. You don’t need to pay or subscribe to use its services. 

Key Features

Google Site Kit helps you connect your WordPress site to six different Google services:

  • Search Console – see keywords the people use to find your website which can improve your site’s search engine rankings
  • Analytics – it displays how the users activity to your website
  • AdSense – this is where you can track the paid ads and campaigns 
  • PageSpeed Insights – track your website’s loading speeds on devices such as desktop and mobile. 
  • Tag Manager – allows you to track a variety of marketing tags on your site which requires coding
  • Optimize – A/B testing is present to be able to experiment your site

Pros

  • Search Console, Analytics, Adsense, and PageSpeed Insights can view the basic data for your site through the WordPress dashboard.
  • 100% free to use and supported officially by Google
  • The setup process doesn’t need any codes which makes it simple and easy

Cons

  • Tag Manager and Optimize still requires to use the website’s tool to perform actions
  • Lacking on details when it comes to its services
  • No configuration on access for users

Google Site Kit Installation & Setup

As soon as you install and activate the Site Kit plugin from WordPress.org, you should see a prompt to start the setup process:

Google Site Kit - activate

This will take you outside your WordPress dashboard to the Google Site Kit website, where you’ll be prompted to sign in with Google and verify your site:

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Google Site Kit - setup

You’ll need to give Site Kit the permissions it needs to manage your sites:

Google Site Kit - sign in with google

Then, you’ll need to verify your site with Site Kit, which Site Kit will automatically do for you via the WordPress plugin. That is, you don’t need to do anything beyond clicking the button.

Google Site Kit - verify site ownership

If you haven’t already, Google can also automatically add your WordPress site to Google Search Console with the click of a button:

Google Site Kit - setup search console

Then, you’re all set up with the basic Site Kit!

How to Connect Additional Services

When you first set up Site Kit, it will automatically connect Google Search Console for you. But as you learned above, Site Kit can also help with:

  • AdSense
  • Google Analytics
  • PageSpeed Insights
  • Google Optimize
  • Google Tag Manager

You’ll see a prompt to set up these services in your main Site Kit dashboard. Or, you can also see a list in Site Kit Settings:

Google Site Kit - setup completion

The process is basically the same – all you do is click on the service that you want to connect to and go through the Google auth process. There’s nothing technical – all you need to do is click a few buttons for each service.

Using the Google Site Kit Dashboard in WordPress

To manage Google Site Kit from your WordPress dashboard, you can use the new Site Kit area in your WordPress dashboard.

In the main Site Kit dashboard, you can see a summary of data from the services that you’ve connected.

For example, at the top, you can see a basic breakdown from Google Analytics:

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Google Site Kit - site overview

Below that, you can see your search funnel, with basic data on impressions, clicks, and queries:

Google Site Kit - search funnel

And at the bottom, there’s an option to search for data on a specific page, as well as information on your site’s performance from Google PageSpeed Insights on both mobile and desktop:

Google Site Kit - search for individual page

If you want to see more detailed data, you’ll also find sub-menus for each service…

Search Console

If you go to Site Kit Search Console, you can see data for your site as a whole, as well as the individual queries that drive traffic to your site over different time periods:

Google Site Kit - search console overview

AdSense

If you use AdSense, you can view basic performance data from the Site KitAdSense area.

Analytics

If you go to Site Kit Analytics, you can see more detailed Google Analytics data like your…

  • Overall visits, bounce rate, and session duration over the last X days
  • Top content over the last X days
  • Top acquisition sources over the last X days
Google Site Kit - analytics

Verdict

Overall, the Site Kit is easy to set up and quite convenient. The functionality is nothing mind-blowing, it’s just a little bit more convenient than doing things the other way.

In all actuality, we didn’t experience a single issue setting it up. The setup process was quite simple and just involved clicking a few button clicks to grant permissions. After that, it started working right away.

After setting it up, it’s quite nice that you can access the data and features from so many Google services without leaving your WordPress dashboard.

It won’t completely eliminate the need to visit those services because the data in your dashboard is not nearly as complete as what you can get from each individual service. But it’s great to be able to, for example, quickly see the most popular search queries for your site over the past week.

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Plus, Site Kit is 100% free, so it’s not like you’re risking anything. Try getting Google Site Kit by following through the article.

Try Google Site Kit

A team of WordPress experts that love to test out new WordPress related software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes.