22 Dec
Last Updated on
Earlier we took a deep dive in to a free tool known as Google Search Console in our search console beginner guide. In order to view more detailed reports about our site performance, we need to enable Google Search Console data in Google Analytics. Google Search Console is a great tool for SEO beginners and specialists. It will help you monitor how well your site is performing. GSC updates about pages with any potential errors, traffic coming through devices & countries and much more.
Whereas Google Analytics is also a free tool to analyze traffic on your site. Analytics is huge and it shows the real time stats and reports of traffic. Analytics is enriched with vast features and it collects data on multiple levels. According to BuiltWith, around 30 Million websites use Google analytics.
So what do you think if we enable or associate a site in search console with a property in analytics? Well not only we can see our console data in analytics reports but we can directly access all our site link pages in search console. Therefore, it is highly recommended to enable google search console data in google analytics.
In short, by linking a search console site with analytics property, all our console data will be imported in to analytics and included in GA reporting.
As Google says itself:
Linking is important to get the most out of our data
Let’s do it!
Requirements
- A site in Google Search Console
- A property in Google Analytics
So you need to have both properly set up before we associate them.
Step# 1
Login to the Google Analytics dashboard, get down to the bottom left and click on the settings symbol. It will show us all the possible settings of analytics dash including account, property and view. So under property, click on all products.
Step# 2
The all products option in analytics show us all our linked or unlinked products. There is a button under each product to link it with analytics like Link AdSence, AdExchange, Ads and Postbacks. Down at the very bottom is a button to link Google Search Console with Google Analytics, so just click on that button.
Step# 3
A new tab will open that will ask us to add our site in search console settings. But since I have mentioned above in the requirements, we have a ready to use site. If you have not created a site before in console, no worries, you can add it here. The Add link will take us to the Google console platform to add a site.
Step# 4
There will be a new tab with just a message that we are directed to console. So just click on the OK button.
Step# 5
It will automatically bring up our site to associate with analytics web property. One very important thing to keep in mind that if you don’t see your console site here, please check the protocol of the site. The sites with https:// will be imported. Check the radio button and click save to save the site.
Step# 6
It’s a green signal. We just need to confirm the association of our site. We didn’t have any association before, just click OK to move forward.
Boom! Our Google Search Console site has been enabled to Google Analytics Property.
Step# 7
We can confirm if our site is enabled. Just go to the dashboard of analytics and click on the settings gear. Go to all products again to confirm the linking. Our linked console site should be at the top just shown below
Congratulations! our site is actively linked. Furthermore, we get a confirmation email about that as well.
So these were some very basic steps and I’d highly recommend to do so. I’ll be covering how to link other products with analytics. You will have a more powerful data from console and analytics and obviously it will help us a lot to view the performance of the site. It will also update us about the in-depth traffic stats. Last but certainly not the least, as Google says, more verified and linked site will be more resilient .
Please share in your network!
