How to obtain the Google reCAPTCHA Site Key and Secret Key

Google reCAPTCHA is a popular service providing anti-abuse security to protect your site. For example, A2 Optimized for WordPress utilizes the reCAPTCHA feature as an additional layer of security for your site. To integrate Google reCAPTCHA in an application, the app or web domain is registered with Google’s reCAPTCHA service. After the domain is registered, Google provides reCAPTCHA keys.

There are two keys, the Site Key and the Secret Key. The Site Key and the Secret Key can also be known as public and private keys respectively. You can obtain these keys by registering your site with Google’s reCAPTCHA service. 

The Site Key is used to render the reCAPTCHA within a page and the Secret Key is used for performing server-side validation. The keys are unique to the domain they are registered to.

This article guides you through the process of obtaining reCAPTCHA keys from Google.

How to get Google reCAPTCHA keys

1. Head to Google’s reCAPTCHA site.

2. After opening Google’s reCAPTCHA site, click on Admin Console, the blue button on the upper right-hand side.

3. Sign in to your Google account to proceed next into the reCAPTCHA dashboard.

4. After signing in, the Google reCAPTCHA dashboard appears. If you have already generated reCAPTCHA keys the dashboard shows stats about your previously created keys.

5. To get a new Site Key and Secret Key, click on + , which is a button on the upper right-hand side.

6. The “Register a new site” form will open. Here, you will need to plug in information about your site in order to obtain the Site Key and Secret Key.

• Label – Create a label for the site’s keys.
• reCAPTCHA Type – There are four different types of Google reCAPTCHA available for use on your site. 
• Domain – The website URL where you will use these keys, e.g. example.com.
• Owners – You don’t need to change this, it’s set by default according to the Google account you logged in with. To register multiple owners, enter the relevant email accounts in the “Enter email addresses” field.
• Terms of Service - Accept the reCAPTCHA terms of service in order to utilize reCAPTCHA for your site. 
• Alerts – If there are any problems on your website like reCaptcha misconfiguration or increase suspicious traffic, alerts will be sent to the owner(s) of the site listed in the form.

6. After submitting the form the newly generated Site Key and Secret Key will appear:

Google reCAPTCHA Questions?

If you have any questions, A2 Hosting’s customer support team will be more than happy to help you along with this process. The support team can assist via LiveChat, by submitting a support ticket, or by phone.