I tried to set up reCAPTCHA, on my page by following the instructions here. I signed up for an API key pair and was issued a public key and a private key. It was not clear, to me, how the private key should be used and I could not find more information about it. It does not appear to be used on the page where reCAPTCHA is called.
I edited my page and put
<script src='https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js'></script>
before the closing </head>
tag on my HTML template.
I also put
<div class="g-recaptcha" data-sitekey="my-public-key"></div>
where I want my reCAPTCHA widget to appear.
When I load my page, I get the message
Cannot contact reCAPTCHA. Check your connection and try again.
I also see the reCAPTCHA widget with the text
ERROR for site owner: Invalid site key
I have checked similar questions such as this, where the answer says the key is probably invalid but I have just generated it. I also saw this but I did not disable
Verify the origin of reCAPTCHA solutions