In October of 2019, Google rolled out Google Site Kit plug-in tailored specifically to Wordpress websites. While this plug-in does not necessarily offer any new services, it provides a combined albeit simplified overview of all the connected Google services such as:
- Analytics
- Search Console
- PageSpeed Insights
- AdSense
- Optimize
- Tag Manager
These services certainly provide very valuable data but accessing them each in a separate tab of your browser could be cumbersome and in many instances the amount of available data a bit excessive to a regular person trying to establish a better understanding of their website’s performance.
There is nothing that you as Yakadanda client need to do. We already installed and configured the plug-in on your site and you will see it in the back-end directly under Dashboard.
I would like to explain the types of data the summary page provides:
Site Overview section provides a graph view of traffic sources to your site. Direct traffic indicates site visitors who typed your domain name into their browser window. Organic visitors found your site through a search engine and Referral visitors by clicking a link on another website. In the right top corner using a drop-down menu, you can change a time period between the last 7, 14, 28, and 90 days.
Data displayed within Search Funnel show how many people saw your site in Google Search results (Impressions), and how many consequently clicked on your site (Clicks). These metrics are generated by the Search Console. Data from Analytics will show how many Unique Visitors entered your site after finding it Google Search results. You can also set up goals and track how they perform in a defined timeframe.
The Popularity section provides you with data on Top Search Queries and Most Popular Content/ Pages on your site. The Top Search Queries are ranked by Impressions (see Search Funnel) and show you the most searched words/ sentences for which your site appeared in Search Results. Most popular Content lists the most visited pages including queries associated with them.
You can view the metrics for a specific page or post on your site by typing the title in the window about and clicking the view data button.
Speed tab is a good indicator to point out any issues with your site via PageSpeed Insights but the speed rating is rather misleading and should not be relied on as the sole measure of your site’s time loading performance. We instead focus on Perceived Performance which is a user-based perception of the website’s loading time. More on this topic in a separate article though.
Upon clicking on Search Console in the left-hand menu, the above metrics summary is displayed. Going over the data from left to right, Total Clicks refers to a total click count to your site from search results within a time period, Total Impressions provides a number of times your website (links, images) are displayed in search results again within a specific time period, CTR or Click-Through-Rate is a ratio of Total Clicks to Total Impressions and Average Position depicts average search result position across all search queries your site appeared in. You can click See Full Stats in Search Console in the right top corner to see all the queries and their corresponding search results position.
When you click on the Analytics link in the left-hand menu, you will see a summary like the one above. Whereas metrics in the previous window show the behavior of persons searching the web, Analytics window display data involving your website visitor behavior. Going again from left to right, the first number tells us how many Users visited your site. This number makes up unique users, both repeat and new in the predefined time period which can be changed from the main dashboard. Sessions refer to time periods site visitors actively engage on your site, Bounce Rate is a ratio displayed as percentage of single-page sessions compared to all sessions within a defined time period. Single page sessions are those in which a visitor makes no interaction with any content of the page visited. Session Duration average time of all Sessions during the time period.
