Getting to Know Google's Official WordPress Plugin: Site Kit by Google

Site Kit is a WordPress plugin owned by Google that allows you to see how visitors
use your site and how they find it. 

Knowing that 35% of the internet is built with WordPress, Google also knows that these WordPress sites make use of its own applications. Google
Analytics and Google Adwords are among the most well-known of these. For this reason, to make the lives of these web administrators easier, Google has created an official plugin called Site Kit. 

Site Kit can help you analyze the performance of your WordPress site with PageSpeed Insights, which is related to the work we do in WP Rocket. But you can accomplish much more than that with Site Kit.

What Does Google’s Site Kit Plugin Do? 

Site Kit helps you easily connect to six different Google services. It also helps you display data from
most, if not all, of these services in your WordPress dashboard. You can connect to the following Google services with Site Kit, and view the first four directly in your WordPress dashboard. 

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

If you’re wondering how you’ll interact with these services: you can view your site’s performance in PageSpeed Insights, and view Google Analytics and Search Console data for your entire website or
specific pages. AdSense makes it easier to view your earnings and even add ads to your sites. For the last two services — Optimize and Tag Manager — Google Site Kit helps you add integration scripts to your site. However, you’ll still need to use the external website
to create and manage A/B tests and tags.

Site Kit doesn’t perform any of the mentioned operations on its own, but it makes it easy to connect with Google’s applications that carry out
these functions — in other words, it simplifies the integration process of these applications with WordPress. For example, if you haven’t manually added Google Analytics to your site, Site Kit can help you add the tracking code. 

Once your services are integrated, Site Kit gives you access to key metrics from within your WordPress dashboard. For example, while you could previously browse your homepage or any page’s traffic with
Google Analytics, Site Kit now lets you see this data directly in your WordPress dashboard. 

Under normal circumstances, you don’t need a plugin to connect any of these services to
your WordPress-built website, but Site Kit makes the process much easier. You simply need to grant the necessary permissions to Site Kit. 

How to Install the Google Site Kit
Plugin

Some users encounter issues during the Google Site Kit installation, but if you follow the steps carefully, you’ll likely have no problems.

Install and Authorize the Google Site Kit Plugin

To get started, install and activate the Site Kit plugin. You can find and
download the plugin from the WordPress dashboard. You will then need to authorize your WordPress site with your Google account. After activating the plugin, you’ll see a blue button that says ‘Start Setup’. Clicking this button will take you outside your WordPress
site to the Google Site Kit website. You’ll need to press ‘Sign in’ with Google to begin the authorization process. At this point, you’ll need to go through the standard Google authorization interface. Select your Google account and click the button that says
‘Allow’. After that, a ‘Continue’ button will appear. 

If you haven’t set up Google Search Console for your website yet, you can also have Google automatically add your site to
Search Console as part of this process. When you’ve completed the basic Site Kit setup process, you’ll see a prompt to return to your WordPress dashboard. 

Connect Additional
Services

At the point where you’ve done the above, your WordPress site is only connected to Google Search Console. To connect additional services, you need to open the Google Site Kit
plugin settings by going to Site Kit → Settings. 

Then, click the ‘Connect More Services’ tab to access additional services. To connect a service, click the ‘Set up’ option below
the name of each service. 

Some products may require additional authorization and setup steps, but essentially what you need to do is as simple as clicking a few
buttons. 

Once you’ve completed these steps, you will have finished installing the Google Site Kit plugin. 

Is Google Site Kit Worth Using?

In general, there isn’t much negative to say about using Google Site Kit for WordPress. At most, if you only plan to connect a single Google
service, Google Site Kit might be a bit overkill for you. However, if you plan to use several different Google services at the same time, this application will save you an enormous amount of time. The ease of integration is nearly unmatched by any other plugin — as
explained above, just a few clicks is all it takes for each one. 

Another positive is that Site Kit doesn’t pressure you to connect more services at any point. For example, if you
only want to use Search Console, you can do so without annoying pop-ups in your dashboard suggesting Analytics. 

Additionally, Site Kit won’t slow down your load times because it
won’t add any new content to the front end of your site (even if you’ve chosen to manually connect Google Analytics to WordPress). 

One downside of using Site Kit is that it doesn’t
offer configuration options for the services you’ve connected. Going to Site Kit > Settings will show whether the plugin is working and give you the option to send tracking data to Google, but that’s essentially the extent of the
drawbacks. 

How to Use Site Kit

After connecting to all available services, you can use the newly
opened Site Kit tab in your WordPress dashboard to view them all. The Dashboard and Main Dashboard will present you with high-level data from all your connected services. 

After
entering the Site Kit tab, you can also use the toggle button to change the time period you’re looking at. 

If you use AdSense, you’ll also see your earnings data here. And if you
scroll to the bottom, you can also see performance data from PageSpeed Insights for your homepage. If you want to view information about a specific piece of content on your site, you can use the individual page search or the info publish box to search for a piece of
content by name. 

If you’re using these services for the first time, it may be better to visit each service’s own website. This is because you don’t have the chance to observe each
service separately to customize data in Site Kit. Site Kit provides you with more of an aggregated and easy-to-read data presentation.

However, some of the services you’re connected to
also have their own dedicated tabs under the Site Kit menu. You won’t find much new information here — for example, the only new data in the Analytics tab is an overview of your audience. But there’s a useful addition you might not immediately notice: the Site Kit
plugin provides you with direct links to open more information in the relevant service. For example, you can click to open a specific report directly in the full Google Analytics interface. 

You can also view statistics for a specific page on the front end of your website via the WordPress toolbar. 

Abdullah Altunbaş

Content Writer

Netinternet Bilişim Teknolojileri A.Ş.'de teknik konularda liderlik yapıyorum. 15 yıldır bu alanda çalışıyorum ve özellikle sistem yönetimi, ağ teknolojileri ve yazılım geliştirme konularına odaklanıyorum.