Since the day Google was launched, things have changed a lot around us. It has come on stage and literally Googlized the world and the way we perceive it. We now look at things through Google, as it has expanded its technologies and services in such a way,that has influenced every aspect of our life.
From writing simple emails, to more complex online mapping, voice search, news delivery, academic libraries and resources, these services make our lives way much easier.
Google has its influence on the blogging as well. Its partnership with WordPress has brought out great opportunities for bloggers and website owners to use Google services on their websites. The number of plugins offering integration of Google services to WordPress is impressive, however, there are quite a few of them that can truly stand out. And this short list of 10 plugins is all about them.
1. Google Analytics WD
Google Analytics WD is the most feature-rich WordPress Google Analytics plugin available in the WordPress directory. It’s the official member of Google Analytics Technology Partners Program, and comes equipped with advanced custom reporting, custom tracking, data filtering and goal management functionalities. You can get detailed information about your website audience, site speed, traffic sources, and also your AdSense, AdWords and Ecommerce accounts.
Its alert and pushover notifications will keep you informed about the sudden drops or ups in traffic, or the number of sessions, bounces or session durations on your website. Tracking reports come in easy to figure out charts and are possible to export to PDF or CSV files.
2. Google XML Sitemaps
Trusted by millions of WordPress users, Google XML Sitemaps plugin comes with the most advanced XML sitemap generating functionality. It generates special XML sitemaps that help search engines better index your website, which ultimately leads to a better site exposure.
The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages and custom URLs. It also immediately notifies search engines about the new content that you add to your website. The plugin works out of the box, and has zero effect on your site loading speed.
3. Google Maps WD
No complicated configurations needed to add Google maps to your website, if you’re using Google Maps WD. With its intuitive and easy to use interface this WordPress Google Maps plugin allows you to add unlimited Google maps to your website with custom marker icons, customizable map themes and skins, advanced marker listing options and multiple map layers, such as circle, rectangle, polygon and polyline. The plugin comes with a store locator functionality, which highlights several locations within a specified radius.
Your website visitors will highly benefit from its get directions functionality, which allows them to get directions between two locations with driving, walking, bicycling or transit modes. The maps are highly customizable, and you can see all the changes you make to the maps with the live preview.
4. Easy Google Fonts
Easy Google Fonts plugin has an impressive number of downloads in the directory, and there is a quite obvious reason behind it. It’s simply the best. It adds over 800 Google font families and styles to your site theme and seamlessly integrates with WordPress customizer to enable you to instantly see the applied changes in the typography.
5. The Google+ Plugin
With The Google+ Plugin you can post directly from your G+ account to your website and add +1 button to the posts. It seamlessly integrates with Google posts and pages and enables your readers to vote for your posts and add you to their G+ circles. You can select +1 button’s size and position, and choose to display the +1 counts. The plugin is Google analytics integrated which allows you to keep the track of +1s of your posts.
6. WP Google Search
Supercharge the searching functionality of your website by replacing it with a search engine powered by Google. With WP Google Search plugin you can provide fast and relevant search results to your visitors with better presentation.
There is a number of search configuration settings that you’ll find useful. You can choose this free search plugin to search for results only on your website or on the entire web. Also, there are various options to customize the look and feel of the search box to best match your website design.
7. Google Adsense
Google AdSense is the plugin developed by Google, which allows you to make money by adding AdSense ads to your website. It is one of the best ad management plugin which lets you off the hassle of manually generating ad snippets and inserting them to the posts or the site PHP. With its point-and-click interface you can insert ads to various locations and easily manage them.
The plugin comes with mobile specific ads option that helps you better serve site visitors using mobile devices. It also allows you to disable ads from specific pages.
8. Google Apps Login
If you are security aware, Google Apps Login plugin can be your best partner for WordPress. The plugin uses the latest OAuth2 authentication recommended by Google, and allows existing WordPress user accounts to login into your website.
Meaning, if a user is already logged in to his Gmail account, he’ll be easily granted access to your website without any need to type in the username or password. Isn’t this cool? As an admin you’re required to have an access to any Google apps domain to get a couple of codes from Google for the plugin setup.
9. Google Website Translator
With Google Website Translator plugin you’ll be able to translate your website content into more than 90 languages. Its easy setup and simple settings allow you to choose between the available display modes and select the languages for translation. You can also display the translation tab as a widget on the sidebars of your website. The plugin comes with all the features of the original Google Website Translator and is sure to help you to extend your reach.
10. Google Drive Embedder
Google Drive Embedder WordPress plugin lets you access the files on your Google drive from the WordPress dashboard, and embed them directly to any of your posts and pages. The plugin comes with several options for the document viewing.
You can embed the documents in-line, to view them using Google’s read-only interactive viewer, place them as a links that open as an editable file, or enable your visitors to download the docs. You’ll have to configure document sharing settings for your visitors, or else anyone with the link will have access to them.
Conclusion
This list contains 10 high quality WordPress plugins that make Google integration with your website as easy as possible. Each of them targets a specific Google service and comes with wide range of customization option to best fit your website needs.
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