@hkaya Thanks for getting in touch and explaining your experience so far with the plugin. We are sorry to hear you have been facing issues and would love to help you get Site Kit up and running.
Please could I ask you to open a new support topic with us and we will be happy to assist you there and troubleshoot this further with you. Please can you share your Site Health information when opening the topic. You can use this form to share privately if preferred.
Thread Starter
HKaya
(@hkaya)
This issue is there for years and your own analytics program advises to use a complete different plugin that is developed by “woocommerce”.
Here is a description from Google Analytics self
Instructions
- Sign in to your WordPress admin console.
- From the page menu on the left, click Plugins.
- On the “Plugins” page, click Add New.
- On the “Plugins” page under “Search Results”, enter “WooCommerce Google Analytics” and click Install Now.
- Once the plugin is downloaded and installed, open the “Plugins” dropdown and click Installed Plugins.
- Under “WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration”, click Activate.
- After the plugin is activated, the “Plugins” page will reload. Click Settings under the “WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration” Plugin.
- Click Integration, then click Google Analytics. Enter your Google tag ID into the box provided and confirm that “Use Global Site Tag” is checked. Click Save Changes.
This shows me that the Analytics team itself doesn’t trust this plugin as it doesn’t advertise with the “Site Kit” but a third party plugin. This can be easily solved by giving advanced options like manually enter the code or HTML file to the root or DNS verification. If the person who is building the site experiences issues from the start how do you expect that this will be used by an average user?
The error doesn’t give any insight at all why it failed, but like every product from google it refers to a help page that is generic as it comes. These generic help pages are outdated and it feels like there is no communication between the developers, support and the people who write these help pages.
Like this just a template answer maybe automated, the tekst havent been read at all, the stars are dropping
@hkaya I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy but would like to help you out with the issues you are facing. I appreciate that you are frustrated with this process but I would like to assure you that I am happy to help you through the issues you face so that you can get Site Kit connected on your site.
You can connect your Google Analytics account and property through Site Kit once you have completed setup. I understand that you have not been able to do this due to an issue with the verification process.
If you are having issues with verification then there is a potential workaround for the issue. You can verify your site on Search Console manually, before then attempting Site Kit setup once more. The plugin can use this existing verification method, rather than going through the full verification system via the plugin.
If you could try following the manual verification process I have shared and attempt Site Kit setup once more I’d like to hear how this goes. If you are still running into issues then we can continue to troubleshoot this together. In the meantime please do let me know if you have any further questions.
Thread Starter
HKaya
(@hkaya)
This should have been your first response. This process was much much easier and if you didn’t have any property you could create one from the plugin. This is not the first time I’m experiencing this issue. We would like to use the first-party plugin instead of using sketchy third party plugins just for analytics.
This plugin will be setup most of the time by someone with knowledge and we prefer some manual control so we can streamline our process, at this moment it is a hassle to use the Site Kit plugin all these extra steps shouldn’t be necessary. Even for someone without knowledge this is frustrating to them as they do not understand any of this, try to explain what caching exactly is.
I went back in time and did everything manual, With the customers gmail account I created a new property, give myself permissions to manage it, and added the code manually.
Improvement Points
– Let the user create a new property from the plugin if they don’t have one
– Give extra advanced options to power users
Like give them the html snippet to add it manually
Give extra options for verification
This issue is known at your team as this never really have been solved, see:
https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/problem-with-site-kit-authentication/
https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/google-site-kit-the-necessary-verification-token-could-not-be-found/
https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/site-kit-issues-caching-plug-in-verification-token-could-not-be-found/
https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/site-kit-error-verifying-site-with-meta-failed/
These links aren’t hidden and I found them in 5 seconds.
@hkaya I am glad you found that process worked for you. Could you please confirm that you have now managed to set up and configure Site Kit on your site after verifying your site manually?
We are always looking to improve the plugin and will absolutely take your points on board and will look into these instances. If there is anything else I can help you with please do let me know as I’d be delighted to help.
Once again, glad to have been able to assist you with this and hope you can now get the most from your site using Google Site Kit, thanks!
Thread Starter
HKaya
(@hkaya)
Please lets clear you question to other people who will experience the same BUG. By verifying Manually you mean go to search.google.com and register your domain from there. Yes we could do this easily with DNS verifying (or an html file)and in no time it was recognized. This is what the plugin should advice to do and give the necessary files/information. But keep in mind your average user won’t know how to do this, that you are an expert doesn’t mean that the average joe is on the same level.
Just creating a analytics.google.com property wasn’t enough to get verified by the plugin. I’m coming from the website itself so it can be confusing when it is not able to verify.
Thanks for the update @hkaya. You’re correct that users can manually verify a site on Search Console before connecting Site Kit. If doing so, Site Kit will use this existing verification as opposed to going through the verification system with them.
If Site Kit is used for verification, the plugin firstly tries to use a HTML file upload verification, without actually placing a physical file on a users file system. If that fails, the plugin attempts to place a meta tag for verification.
In some cases, depending on a users setup, these verifications can fail, in particular with plugin or hosting related configurations. I’m aware that in your case some sites didn’t encounter this issue, while some did, even without a caching plugin active. We’d be happy to help out with any individual site if you’d like to open a support topic and share your Site Health information.
Note also that based on the specific error you reported, this error may not be specific to verification. As per this guide on the plugin website, it can occur in the case of a headless set up, mismatching site URLs from your general settings (including http/https), or a plugin that overwrites your homepage.
Should the error remain once more and you don’t wish to open a support topic, you may wish to ensure the site is manually verified on Search Console first, while ensuring your websites homepage is using your standard templates files (ie. No maintenance mode plugin), your site URLs within your WordPress general settings match and you have redirection in place between the http and https versions of your site.
We’ll also pass on your feedback in relation to additional verification methods. User reviews are also important to us so if you do wish to open a support topic we’ll do our best to look at the circumstances with any particular site where you can’t complete setup. I’ll keep an eye out for your topic. Thank you.
