Most owners I talk to have a website. Far fewer can tell me how people found it last month. The gap is usually a handful of free Google tools, and whether anyone connected them.

In short:

Google Business Profile: how you show up on the map and in local results.
Google Search Console: what people searched before they found you.
Google Analytics 4: what visitors did once they arrived.
The link between Analytics and Search Console: both views in one place.
Google Tag Manager: optional, a toolbox for tracking codes.

And one that isn't Google: Bing Webmaster Tools.

Think of them as the gauges on your dashboard

A website without these is a car with the dashboard taped over. It still drives. You just can't tell how fast you're going, how much gas is left, or whether last month's tune-up did anything.

These tools are also how Google, and the AI assistants that lean on search engines, see your business. When they're missing, nobody can read the gauges, including anyone you hire to help.

A quick story

A professional services firm relaunched its website. Nice new design, and the page names changed along the way. Nobody redirected the old addresses to the new ones. (A redirect is a forwarding address: anyone who visits the old page gets sent to the new one automatically.)

So every link pointing at the old pages, from Google results, directories and other websites, now landed on an error page. And the site had no Analytics and no Search Console. Nobody could see the traffic drop, find which old links were breaking, or measure the recovery once the redirects went in. There was no "before" to compare against.

The redirects took an afternoon. The missing baseline can't be recovered.

Google Business Profile: the map

Search "accountant near me" on a phone and the map with a few businesses under it usually shows up near the top. Your Google Business Profile is what puts you on that map. It's where people tap to call you, get directions or visit your site, and the profile counts each of those for you.

One thing worth checking: your business name, address and phone number should match exactly on the profile, the website and every directory. Mismatches confuse Google and AI tools alike, and that's how wrong details end up in an AI answer.

Google Search Console: what people searched

Search Console shows the searches where your site appeared, how often people clicked, and which pages Google can or can't read. It's also where Google tells you about problems, like pages it won't index or signs of a hacked site.

Two things matter most:

Set it up sooner rather than later. Google's documentation says Search Console starts collecting data for a site when the property is added, and it keeps a rolling 16 months. I wouldn't count on seeing much from before you set it up. Every month you wait is a month you can't compare against later.
I'd go with a domain property, verified through DNS. DNS is the settings page at the company where you bought your domain name. You add one line of text there to prove the domain is yours. A domain property covers every version of your address: with and without www, http and https. The other kind, a URL prefix property, only covers the exact version you typed in.

Google Analytics 4: what visitors did

Search Console stops at the click. Analytics picks up from there: how many people came, where they came from, which pages they read, and whether they called or filled out the form.

Two settings most installs skip:

Raise data retention from 2 months to 14. Analytics keeps 2 months by default for its detailed reports, and 14 months is the longest a free account offers. Your everyday reports aren't affected, but the detailed ones are, and those are where you'd dig into anything older than two months. Raising it also applies to data you've already collected, as long as it hasn't already aged out.
Mark the actions that matter as key events. A key event is Google's name for an action that's particularly important to your business: a form submitted, a phone number tapped. Without them, Analytics counts visitors but can't tell you which ones turned into leads.

Link Analytics and Search Console

This is the one most installs I see skip. It's free and takes a few minutes, under Admin, then Product links, then Search Console links. Once they're linked, you can see which pages people landed on from Google search and what they did once they got there.

Google Tag Manager: optional, but handy

Tag Manager is a container for tracking codes: Analytics, ad conversion tags, a chat tool's tracking. Without it, every new code means someone editing the website. With it, adding one is a settings change. A simple site can do without it. Once you're running ads, it starts to earn its keep.

Not Google, but worth five minutes: Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing is Microsoft's search engine, and Bing Webmaster Tools is its version of Search Console. It matters more than Bing's market share suggests. OpenAI says ChatGPT's search draws on third-party search providers, and Bing is widely reported to be one of them. If Search Console is already set up, Bing can import your site and verify it for you.

A quick self-check

Could you say how many people searched for your business last month?
Do you know how many calls or form submissions came from the website?
If you changed something on the site today, could you show in three months whether it helped?

If any of those is a no, the fix is usually an afternoon of setup, not a new website.

Full disclosure, setting these up is part of what I do for small businesses around Portland, so I'm not neutral. Happy to be a resource if you'd like a second set of eyes. The first consult is free.

Which Google tools does my website actually need?