Google "Site Kit" for WordPress Sites

[engine]

If you have a WordPress site you may want a handy way to aggregate different data. Google has announced a plugin called "Site Kit" for WordPress sites. The official Google plugin allows publishers to obtain insights to Google Search Console, Google Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, AdSense in one dashboard.





[webmasters.googleblog.com...]

[mcneely]

Thought to give it a go

I've got a few sites I'm willing to let Google horn in on just to see how it all might play out.

[bwnbwn]

I have no trust in a Google plug in. Many might but from watching being involved with Google for the last 21 years.
Do no evil.
My aching ass.
Google can not be trusted. Nothing on my one site gives them any data unless the user is using there browser.

[skaterpunk]

Like all WP plugins, the idea seems interesting and good, but the balance between a useful plugin and the negative speed impact of adding more scripts and http requests is a fine line. Especially for small websites that aren't a household name and people may easily dismiss and hit the back button if slow to load.

[not2easy]

The Yoast SEO plugin has offered a way to connect your WP site to the GSC info for a few years now. It is an option I have not bothered with. This plugin adds views into GA which some might find tempting.

I looked at the Site Kit plugin [wordpress.org] in the WP Plugins area and it showed 30,000+ live (active) installs as of last Friday, and checking it today - 5 days later, it still shows 30,000+ with only 22 reviews averaging 3+ stars.

Those reviews (at https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-site-kit/#reviews ) show only nine 5-star ratings, some say it needs more work.

[bears5122]

Playing around with it, it just seems to give info readily available on their own site. Except they don't appear to be as detailed.

If you want everything in one place, it seems fine. I don't trust Google having even more access (although this likely is not a big deal). But I think the biggest negative is it adds another plug-in that may slow down your site and add excess strain. With speed being such a high priority, I like running Wordpress as lean as possible.

[JoeHart]

Some webmasters are as of now saying goodbye to plugins they use for each help, while others have promptly installed the Google Site Kit plugin (beta version) and are trying it together with the competitors. What I believe is that it could be a game-changer for webmasters.

[not2easy]

Hi JoeHart and Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

I don't think anyone is using a beta version, the plugin was last updated 6 days ago and is currently at v1.0.1 and claims to have resolved 33 out of 91 support issues. It is a work in progress, but not listed as a beta version.

[mcneely]

I mentioned before that I was willing to give it a go on a few sites ... minding the fact that I'm just not a huge fan of Google in the first place, I was mostly interested in how the plugin would arrange ads as they might relate to page layout both static and dynamic when an adsense account was linked in.

So I rolled up my sleeves, turned my ad blockers off, and got busy.

So far, I'm seeing twice as many ads. Some of the sites I let Google into didn't have ads, while other sites already had placed ads.
With or without previously placed ads, all of the sites whether they be static or dynamic, now have 4 ads per page. The ads that Google places are huge and interupt the page flow. The ads that I placed myself are still in their place and don't interupt the page flow.

On the dynamic sites, at least one of the Google placed ads are set to appear only when Google detects the visit as being unique -- The only way I can see the ad is if I go into the site as a first time visitor. On the static sites, all of the ads show all of the time regardless of how many times you visit, unique or otherwise.

Back in the day as I recall, it seemed that Google was always harping on webmasters about possibly having too many ads on their site pages ... a site with too many ads was supposedly not a good thing and the site would be supposedly demoted in the serps.

I'm pretty sure that allowing Google to place ads isn't really something that new, but in this case, I allowed for it to happen through the plugin.

I also set about to allowing analytics through the plugin -- I've never even once ever used Google Analytics until now, and just only for the sake of the plugin test in order to see how it all worked out. Analytics is pretty much just as useless as it's always been -- I run off of server logs mostly because in my world of tracking, they are the most informative and the most accurate --

As far as the overall dashboard in general? Well, so far, it's as could be expected - Just an extension of what we already might see over on the webmaster tools site though dumbed down a bit with relation to serps placement.

Aside from how one might be listed in the Google serps, server logs are still the best and the only way to accurately gauge your traffic IMO.

I'll run with the plugin for a bit still on a few of these sites. If Google doesn't come up with something that might be totally brilliant over a period of time with this thing, then I'll have no other reason but to imagine that this plugin is just another attempt on Google's part to try and stay relevant.