Google recently announced that, from July 1st 2023, standard Universal Analytics properties will no longer process data… but what does that mean and why does it matter to your business?
What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
Your business’ traffic is currently being tracked using Universal Analytics, this has been the standard for the past 10 years. However, Google Analytics 4 is the next generation of Analytics; it comes with more accurate and powerful data tracking which will be highly beneficial to us and to you during our SEO efforts.
The key new features of GA4:
- We will be able to track a lot more data compared to Universal Analytics
- We can gain so much more insight about what users are doing on your site
- More integrations with Google Ads
- Updated more secure tracking
- Analytics tracking that complies with GDPR and User Privacy
Why do I need to switch to GA4?
Since Google will no longer track any further data come July 2023, we would no longer have access to newly tracked data if you choose to not switch. This means that we could no longer report on the number of visitors who view your website, or how they access your website.
What is required to update from Universal Analytics to GA4?
First of all we need to update the tracking codes across your website, with new tracking codes provided by google after creating a GA4 profile. This is then added to the website using the below process.
- Create a google tag manger account and add ga4 code via this tag manager account.
- Setup conversion tracking on the new ga4 platform to tracking user events that generate user conversions. This can include:
- Contact form submissions
- Phone call clicks
- Website sales
- Exclude internal traffic for us and yourself, so that we don’t track data from our usage on the website.
We then need to create bespoke reports on the GA4 platform to generate the data that is important to you, as GA4 doesn’t have the same kind of standard reporting that universal analytics has.
More information on this change from google can be found here.
