In October Google announced they would be releasing Google Analytics 4, a new version of the industry-standard web analytics tool — Google Analytics. This is big news for digital marketers and any businesses interested in how users arrive on their website and what they’re doing once they get there.
It’s early days for Google Analytics 4, so let’s jump in and look at what’s new and what impact the new iteration will have on you, the business owner.
What is Google Analytics 4?
Rebranded from the App + Web beta version of Google Analytics introduced in 2019, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is now Google’s default experience for new analytics properties, and where any future developments and features will be rolled out.
GA4 is a forward-thinking take on how we use the web today — on websites and apps across multiple devices to purchase, learn and commune in an online environment with increasing privacy regulations and expectations.
What are the key benefits of GA4 according to Google?
In a nutshell, right off the bat GA4 has been designed with machine learning at its heart to give businesses and marketers helpful insights more readily. It aims to give a more comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with your brand across devices and platforms, i.e., mobile, desktop, website, app, etc. Google frame it as “customer-centric measurement, instead of measurement fragmented by device or by platform”.
Google also refer to GA4 as being “privacy-centric by design” and say it will help businesses keep pace with evolving technology standards for user privacy by better managing how you gather, store, and use your Analytics data.
They say it’s flexible approach to measurement has been designed to work in a digital future with or without cookies or identifiers, and machine learning-powered modelling will fill in data gaps where a user’s journey has been lost as they transition between devices, browsers and platforms.
Google Analytics 4 includes:
- Codeless event-based tracking for consistent data structure across web and app reporting.
- Machine learning models providing predictive metrics like potential revenue from a particular group of users, conversion probability, and churn probability. This data helps you anticipate future customer actions and export audiences to Google Ads to target higher value users, and re-engage users about to drop off.
- More granular privacy controls for ads personalisation allows you opt when to optimise your ads using your data, and when to limit data use to solely measurement.
Who is Google Analytics 4 for?
GA4 is the default Google Analytics experience going forwards, but that’s not to say everyone needs to jump on the bandwagon right now, or that historical data will be lost.
The new digital analytics tool will be more attractive and useful for some companies than others.
For example, companies with a more complex multi-platform and multi-channel digital presence will stand to better utilise GA4’s capabilities. In any case, Google suggest creating a Google Analytics 4 property to use alongside your existing Google Analytics property.
Do I need to switch to Google Analytics 4 now?
Your current Google Analytics property will continue tracking your website traffic as it always has, so the need to switch to GA4 isn’t dire.
Also, as your existing Google Analytics property can’t be upgraded to GA4, a new property will need to be set up, requiring some work to add new tags to your website.
Although the need to start using GA4 isn’t urgent, we’ll be working with our clients over the coming months to transition their analytics implementation and help them make the most of GA4’s new features.
Will I lose data when I switch to Google Analytics 4?
No data will be lost when a GA4 property is created for your business’s website. With your current Google Analytics tags present in your website and new tags added for a GA4 property, both properties will be receiving data from sessions on your site.
However, new features and reports present in GA4 are not backwards compatible with your pre-existing Google Analytics property.
How Limelight are approaching GA4
As with all new software releases, we’re taking a measured approach to GA4 here in the Limelight office. We’re keeping a watchful eye on early findings and staying abreast of the latest information released by Google.
We’re also creating GA4 properties for a few clients and running them alongside their existing Google Analytics properties as we and the wider industry tests, learns, and adapts to the new version.
I have a question…
If you’re coloured with questions, rest assured there is no cause for concern. With our clients’ best interests at heart, we’re aware of the Google Analytics 4 release and are staying up to speed with any new developments while carrying out our own tests and adaptation to the new tool.
For those of you who are existing Limelight clients, we’ll be in touch as and when a move to GA4 will best serve your digital and business needs. If you’re not yet a client and would like to learn more about what we do… let’s talk.
Google has ended the ability to connect Google Ads Auction Insights data to Looker Studio reports. In this post we’ll cover why this data is important for guiding optimisation decisions for Google Ad campaigns. We’ll also discuss our workaround for this new limitation and what it means for you as a business owner that is familiar with receiving this type of info each month in your reports.
What is Auction Insight data?
Simply put, it is a collection of metrics that compare how a business’s Google Ads perform in auctions against other competitors. This info can reveal increased efforts from competitors and signal when to adjust bids, examine quality score, etc, to regain that prominent ad positioning.
Why did Google do this?
The reason for this is a mystery. Google has not made any announcements to explain this decision. The data is still available in Google Ads. However, the ability to adjust how that data is presented is limited in their platform. For us this has reduced the ease at which a quick analysis can be completed. One can speculate that removing this data connection takes some pressure off their infrastructure required for these data exchanges. Perhaps also improving some of their systems from potential security breaches.
Where to from here?
The question we need to ask is is it useful for business owners to receive this level of info? When a decision needs to be made to increase a budget or steer away from a specific keyword then this info should be brought to light. Auction insight data can help clearly demonstrate why this action needs to be taken and provides comparative data to show that these actions had a positive impact. It can be argued that this data should only be accessed and interpreted by a specialist, and presented to business owners when appropriate, such as during a scenario mentioned above.
Our thoughts
While there has always been some PPC specialists on the fence whether to divulge this data each month. Google has forced our hand here. Fortunately we still have access to this important data set to help us steer our efforts. The positive outcome is that we will simplify our reports for you and let you know when and if there are any concerns around increased activity from competitor activity that impacts your ads performance.