The essentials
- The free foundation: Google Analytics 4, Search Console, Tag Manager, Business Profile and Looker Studio cover measurement, visibility, local and presentation with no licence.
- The action tools: Google Ads (Search, Shopping, YouTube, Performance Max), Merchant Center, the Keyword Planner.
- The advanced tools: BigQuery to store the history, Trends for seasonality, PageSpeed Insights for technical performance.
- The order to turn them on: Search Console and Business Profile, then Tag Manager and GA4, then Ads, then Looker Studio or a marketing platform.
Google supplies most of a small business's measurement and visibility chain with no paid licence, provided you know which tool does what and how to connect them. The confusion is frequent: Search Console and Analytics are often taken for each other, Tag Manager gets ignored, Looker Studio discovered late. This overview presents the eleven useful tools in 2026, by use, with their cost, their limits and the logical order of implementation.
Measuring: what happens on the site
| Tool | What it does | Cost | The limit to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | Measures visits, behaviour and conversions on the site and the app, by source | Free (the paid 360 version beyond tens of millions of events) | Data subject to consent; detailed retention limited to 14 months; see the GA4 guide |
| Google Tag Manager | Deploys the measurement tags (GA4, Ads, Meta) without touching the site's code | Free | Requires a measurement plan; a badly configured tag distorts everything |
| Search Console | Shows the queries the site appears on in Google, the clicks, the indexing and the errors | Free | 16 months of history, data sampled beyond 1,000 rows; see Google Search Console |
| PageSpeed Insights | Assesses a page's speed and Core Web Vitals | Free | Measures page by page; useful for diagnosis, not for tracking |
Being visible: search, local and advertising
| Tool | What it does | Cost | Who for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | The business listing in Maps and the local pack: hours, reviews, photos, posts, call and direction statistics | Free | Any business with an address or a service area |
| Google Ads | Ads on the search network, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Performance Max | Per click or per impression; the budget is free, in practice from €300 to €500 a month for usable data | Businesses with existing demand to capture |
| Merchant Center | The product feed powering Shopping, the free listings and Performance Max | Free (excluding Ads clicks) | E-commerce |
| the Keyword Planner | Search volumes and cost estimates per keyword | Free with an Ads account | SEO and SEA; wide ranges with no active campaign; see Google Keyword Planner |
| Google Trends | The relative trend of interest in a query over time and by region | Free | Seasonality, comparing brands, measuring awareness |
Presenting and storing: Looker Studio and BigQuery
Looker Studio turns the Google tools' data into shareable dashboards, with free native connectors to GA4, Search Console, Ads and YouTube. Its limits: no history of its own, slowness on large volumes, paid connectors for Meta, LinkedIn or a CRM. BigQuery is Google's data warehouse; the GA4 to BigQuery link, free to turn on, is the only way to keep raw data beyond 14 months and cross-reference it with the CRM. For a small business, the monthly cost of storage and queries stays at a few euros. The comparison between Looker Studio and an integrated marketing platform is in GreenRed against Looker Studio.
How these tools connect
- Search Console to GA4: the link shows the organic queries in the GA4 reports.
- Google Ads to GA4: the link imports the costs into GA4 and exports the GA4 conversions to Ads to steer the bidding; see connecting GA4 to Google Ads.
- Tag Manager to everything: the container deploys GA4, the Ads tag and the Meta pixel, and handles consent in one place.
- Business Profile to GA4: through a link with UTM parameters on the listing, to separate that traffic from direct.
- Merchant Center to Ads: the product feed powers Shopping and Performance Max.
- GA4 to BigQuery: a daily export of the raw events.
The order of implementation for a small business
Week 1: verify the property in Search Console and claim the Business Profile listing; both start collecting with no configuration. Week 2: install Tag Manager and deploy GA4 through it with the conversion events and consent handling. Week 3: create the Google Ads account in the company's name, link it to GA4, import the conversions, even with no active campaign, so you can use the Keyword Planner with precise data. Month 2: build the presentation, in Looker Studio or in a marketing platform that connects these sources and keeps the history. The detail of the initial setup is in setting GA4 up properly from the start.
What the Google tools don't do
- Tracking SEO positions on a list of keywords day by day (Search Console gives averages, not readings).
- Consolidating Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok or a CRM without a third-party connector.
- Measuring visibility in AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity), which appear in no Google tool.
- Keeping a long history without BigQuery.
- Alerting automatically on a gap beyond GA4's limited custom insights.
How GreenRed helps
Rather than juggling several tools, GreenRed's Overview module brings these metrics together in a single dashboard, compares them over time and tells you which actions come first. You can try it free, with no card, from the Pricing.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Google Analytics and Search Console?
Search Console measures what happens in Google's search results before the click: queries, impressions, positions, indexing. GA4 measures what happens on the site after the click, across every source: visits, pages, conversions. The two complement each other and both are free.
Do you need Google Tag Manager if you only have GA4?
Yes, as soon as the site has to measure more than pageviews: forms, phone clicks, purchases. Tag Manager lets you create those events and handle consent with no developer, and makes adding the Ads or Meta tags later easier.
Is Google Analytics 4 GDPR-compliant in 2026?
It can be used with a consent management platform, Google's consent mode, anonymisation on by default and a justified retention period. The French regulator has set out its expectations; a default configuration with no consent doesn't meet them. The detail is in the GA4 and GDPR article.
Is Looker Studio enough as a marketing dashboard?
For a scope limited to the Google tools, yes, and free. As soon as social media, the CRM or rank tracking come into scope, you have to add paid connectors and maintenance time, or choose a marketing platform that integrates those sources and keeps the history.