What is Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and traffic sources. It is free to use for websites with up to 10 million page views per month. Google Analytics tracks all types of traffic, including visits from search engines, social media, direct visits, and referrals from other websites. It also provides data on user engagement, such as time on site, pages per visit, and bounce rate. This information can help website owners understand what content is most popular and how users are interacting with their website to create a better user experience. Google universal analytics will stop recording data on the 1^st July 2023, if you currently rely on Universal analytics then it is a must to start preparing to switch to Google Analytics 4.

What is Google analytics GA4

Google Analytics 4 is a completely rebuilt version of the Google Analytics software that was released in 2019. It is focused on cross-channel data, meaning that it allows website owners to track users across apps, software, and websites. The main goal of GA4 is to shift the way data is shown so that it focuses on users instead of individual interactions. Additionally, GA4 uses machine learning to fill in gaps where businesses don’t have complete customer data due to users who opt out of cookie usage and data collection. Overall, GA4 is an updated and improved version of Google Analytics that offers more insight into customer behaviour and activity.

The new GA4 tool measures the customer journey better by providing more in-depth insights into how users interact with your website. This helps you to better understand the steps they take on their way to a conversion and optimise those steps for better results. Additionally, the GA4 tool can help you work backward from a conversion point and see the whole route that was taken by the visitor. This provides valuable insights into how users interact with your website and can help you improve your conversions.

There are some terminology changes and the new interface comes with some pre-set reports. One of the biggest changes is now you have to decide what is a conversion and set it in the interface until you know how it can be a nightmare. Tag Manager can also be used for setting conversions.

If you currently build audiences in the universal version then the facility is still there but again needs to be built as it’s a different code.

With the launch of GA4, Google has introduced powerful new ways to measure audiences and create more powerful ads. With its enhanced integrations and analyst tools, GA4 allows marketers to target their campaigns more effectively and achieve a better return on investment from their ad spend. By understanding how users interact with their site across different devices and platforms, businesses can fine-tune their campaigns to ensure that they are reaching the right people with the right messages.

This makes GA4 an essential tool for any business looking to maximise its online marketing potential to target their campaigns more effectively and achieve a better return on investment from their ad spend. By understanding how users interact with their site across different devices and platforms, businesses can fine-tune their campaigns to ensure that they are reaching the right people with the right messages. This makes GA4 an essential tool for any business looking to maximise its online marketing potential.

Most accounts can see the new G4A button to add the property and in doing this nothing changes in the Google analytics interface both can run simultaneously for now but there is a new tag that needs installing to your website.

For anyone creating a Google analytics property after October 2020, the property has been automatically added.

If you change you have your google ads account connected to analytics this will also need upgrading.

We would recommend that if you are serious about measuring the effectiveness of your website and advertising campaigns that now is the time to start making the changes so the data can be gathered before the turn-off of universal analytics.

If you need help making the change please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Google has released a video that explains the differences and looks at the reporting.

Watch the review of Google Analytics 4