How to Verify Your Site with Google Analytics

Many analytics tools and third party services ask for verification. Setting this up can be time-consuming. Our guide will take the pain out of Google Analytics verification.

Verification is crucial. It guards against security risks, both for the companies behind the tool and the website owners who use them. Google has found a way to streamline its own verification process.

If you use Google services, or plan on using any in the future, you need to implement Google Analytics code and provide your account information. There’s no need to add new code or DNS entries to your site for every service you wish to verify with, which is good news.

How to Verify Your Site With Google

Verification is relatively straightforward.

1. Register for Google Analytics: Set up your Google Analytics account and add your site.
2. Grab the Asynchronous JavaScript Code: You need to grab the pre-formed web tracking code for Google Analytics (or upgrade, if you’re using an older version).
3. Verify Using the Code: Follow the instructions to install the code on your website. Once it’s working, you can go on to verify any Google service that requires site verification, such as Google Webmaster Tools. Simply select the code from the verification methods and ensure that you are logged in to the correct Google account.

This simple code verification method works with all the Google services you’re likely to need. As long as the Google Analytics code is in place, you’re all set: just remember not to remove it.

Going Further With Google Verification

Google verification is really easy. One has to wonder if the same code could be used to verify third party service.

Google offers an Analytics API that lets developers use Google’s data in other applications. It may be possible to allow other services to verify sites via the API without requiring webmasters to use more complex methods. There may be security issues, but given that some of the current site verification methods can be exploited, using the API may actually be safer than many of the alternative approaches.

Our Google Analytics code to wind up being the ‘key’ to wherever we wanted to go.

The Benefits of Verification

This kind of streamlining and simplicity is what Google is best at. After all, when you look at Google’s home page versus that of its competitors, you see quickly that it believes in clean, simple and efficient processes. This change is simply another example of Google doing what it does best in a simple, effective and efficient way, and our guide should help you make the most of Google’s joined up approach.