RIP Universal Analytics, Hello GA4 

Universal Analytics is dead. No, really. It’s just been given a deprecation date. Here’s what you need to know: Google has just announced (as of March 16, 2022) that Universal Analytics will stop collecting new data on July 1, 2023 for free GA customers. That means you have ~15 months to prepare. (Universal Analytics 360 (the paid version) customers will have until October 1, 2023 (~18 months) to switchover). For some months after that date, you will still be able to access your Universal Analytics data, but no new data will be added to your UA views. And then some months after that, Google will shut down access to Universal Analytics altogether.  Now that Universal Analytics has an official sunset date (July 1, 2023!), it’s time to get serious about
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Step-by-Step: Linking Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads

Linking Google Analytics to Google Ads can unlock a ton of new data in your GA property. Setting up this link will bring in data such as cost metrics, clicks and impressions, and so much more. On the flip side, you’ll be able to easily set up conversion tracking for your Google Ads because you’ll be able to bring in your Conversion events from Google Analytics to use for your Google Ads campaigns.  Setting up this link between Google Analytics 4 and Google Analytics is super easy. I’ll show you how in this 3 step guide.   Step 1: Initiate the linking under under the Product Links section in the Admin console In the Google Analytics 4 Admin console, under the Property column, scroll down to the Product Linking section and
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Where did my Bounce Rate go?? Meet Engaged Sessions in GA4

Bounce rate is a metric that’s mentioned a lot when discussing user engagement, but it’s not necessarily the beating pulse for a site’s health that it’s sometimes made out to be. This is in large part due to the fundamental changes with how websites are designed today (vs 10-15 years ago when GA was a much newer tool for website analysis) and how users interact with them. Google Analytics has recently replaced bounce rate with a new form of measuring user engagement. Here’s what you need to know. What Bounce Rate Represents A “bounce” is recorded whenever a user visits a single page on your site or app without interacting more deeply.  But Bounce Rate generally only tells you that there is a problem, while deeper digging is required to
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New Ecommerce Setup and Reporting in Google Analytics App+Web

The wait is over! Ecommerce reporting is finally here for App+Web properties in Google Analytics!  While the Ecommerce schema for App+Web was released back in March, reporting has only just now been released, so if you’ve been sending Ecomm events to A+W over the past several months, you’ll know that until now, the only way to see data on these events was either 1) raw event count in the Events table, or 2) in BigQuery. Full Ecommerce reporting, pre-aggregated into reports on things like Ecommerce revenue, Purchases, Promotions, Items, etc, similar to the out of the box reporting in Universal Analytics is now available for a more in-depth (and in-UI) understanding of how your Ecommerce flows are working on your site.  *Please note that access to this new reporting is
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Analyzing Reports in the new App + Web Property

Now that we’ve had data coming in to our new App + Web property for some time, I’d like to deep-dive on a topic near and dear to any analyst’s heart: Reporting. Being able to map what we see in an A+W property back to something we know in Universal Google Analytics is important to help us as analysts make (or rather, smooth) the mental transition. To do that, I’ll look at a few common reports from Universal Google Analytics and A+W for the same time period to compare and contrast. Keep in mind, they are collecting data in different ways, so it’s reasonable to see a difference in numbers for things like Users and Sessions. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to define some of the
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Step by Step: Setting up a GA4 Config Tag in GTM

As a follow up to my Step by Step post on setting up a GA4 property, in this post, I’ll show you how to setup your first tag for GA4 to start collecting data via Google Tag Manager. My friend and GTM expert Simo Ahava has also posted about this in his GA4 setup guide here, so be sure to check out that post as well.  Step 1: Select “Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration” from the new tag configuration pane in Google Tag Manager  The first thing to do once you’ve opened Google Tag Manager is to select “New Tag” and choose from a couple of new tag types you’ll now notice in the slide out window. In this case, we’ll select the “Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration” tag. The “Google Analytics:
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Step by Step: Setting up an App + Web Property

In this Step by Step guide, I’ll take you through the three steps you’ll need to go through to set up a new App + Web Property in Google Analytics. If you haven’t checked out my first post which goes into a detailed overview of this new property, I’d suggest stopping there first before continuing on with this article. First things first, for now (at least while it’s still in Beta), you’ll first need to create a Firebase project, and link to Google Analytics in order to get the new property to show up in Google Analytics. Step 1: Create a Firebase Project Start by going to console.firebase.com to either log into your Firebase account, or to get started creating your first project. To create a new project, Click ‘Create a
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New App + Web Properties in Google Analytics

The wait is over, the new App + Web property feature has officially launched to open public beta! Do keep in mind this is still a Beta – the product is early, doesn’t yet have all the features we all want, and is changing regularly. And, the team wants your feedback! I’m super excited for where this new Google Analytics release is headed, and know there is a lot more to come to continue to improve what’s there. What does this mean? You can now create a new property type in Google Analytics that will allow you to combine App + Web data in the same property. This new type of measurement uses the same data schema as Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F), and works hand in hand with GA4F,
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New Data Retention Policies in Google Analytics

This post reflects my personal thoughts (me = Krista Seiden) and in no way speaks on behalf of Google or Google Analytics. I’m not a lawyer and am not pretending to offer any sort of legal advice with the below post.   Now that the legal statements are out of the way, I want to be sure that my readers have the same understanding of some of the new settings taking effect in Google Analytics on May 25th, 2018 as I do. Starting May 25th, new data retention policies for Google Analytics will take effect. What is Data Retention you might ask? It’s the term used to describe the amount of time (in months in this case) that Google Analytics will retain property data beyond standard reporting. What is ‘Standard
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