This claim can be a bit misconstrued, as Google Analytics 4 still uses cookies, but many of the cookies and tracking as we know it will soon fade by the wayside. 

A crucial component of GA4’s tracking mechanism is the use of cookies. We’ll dive into how GA4 utilizes cookies to enhance website analytics.

1. Identifying Unique Users with _ga Cookie

First things first, how does GA4 identify unique users? It can’t simply bucket all users together, as this would make reporting completely useless.

To identify unique users, GA4 sets a cookie named _ga. 

This cookie is created when a user first visits a website and assigns a unique identifier. This identifier is essential for tracking the user’s future visits, allowing website owners to understand repeated interactions on their site.

You can look into each user by using an exploration. This particular exploration is called the User Explorer.

While this User Explorer doesn’t contain the _ga, it does contain the full User ID. 

You can look at this in real-time by inspecting the page element, going to application, and filtering down the cookies by _ga.

Users can still opt out of this cookie tracking if given the option on the website via a cookie consent banner.

2. Tracking User Sessions via _gid Cookie

One of the most significant changes in GA4 was how it tracked sessions and new metrics such as engagement time and engaged sessions.

For this, GA4 uses the _gid cookie. Sessions are the bread and butter of web analytics reporting, helping us view insights and overall traffic trends.

The _gid cookie, which expires after 24 hours or when the user closes their browser, is vital in monitoring these engagement periods. 

Its other uses include:

• Pageview counting
• Distinguishing current users
• Session tracking

3. Enhancing Measurement with Advanced Features

GA4 goes beyond basic tracking with enhanced measurement features supported by cookies. These include cross-device tracking, enabling the monitoring of users across multiple devices (e.g., desktops, laptops, mobile phones), and user IDs, which link user behavior to specific accounts. These advanced features provide a more holistic view of user interactions.

Cross-device tracking is essential in today’s day and age. Rarely will one user stick to one device when visiting a website over time, often switching between a mobile and desktop device. 

GA4’s cookies allow web analysts to track a user’s behavior over multiple devices, which helps us better understand the conversion path, attribution modeling, and overall user behavior. 

These cookies also allow for more advanced analysis, such as a customer’s lifetime value, enhanced targeting, and predictive analytics. 

4. Compliance with Privacy Regulations

Last but certainly not least is the pressure and necessity for GA4 to adhere to privacy regulations worldwide. GA4’s first-party cookies are more privacy-conscious than third-party cookies since they’re directly set by the website you are visiting. 

On the other hand, third-party cookies are set from external websites and can track your activity throughout different parts of the web. 

GA4 has also made sure to adhere to stricter privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Conclusion

GA4’s use of cookies is integral to offering a detailed and accurate understanding of website visitor behavior. GA4 is equipped to be the next analytics tool that will consider the average user’s privacy concerns.

If you’re looking for additional analytics help, feel free to reach out!

How Does Google Analytics 4 Use Cookies is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

CRO, a strategic process of fine-tuning your website or landing page, is dedicated to elevating the percentage of visitors taking desired actions—whether it’s making a purchase or completing a form. It’s not a one-time fix; it’s a continuous journey of vigilant monitoring, analysis, and agile adjustments to enhance conversion rates. The ultimate goal is transforming mere website visitors into loyal customers or valuable leads by cultivating an environment that is both effective and user-friendly.

CRO is not just a component but an indispensable foundation of a thriving business. Beyond its cost-effectiveness in converting existing visitors, CRO propels revenue growth, boosts ROI, secures a competitive advantage, and enhances the overall user experience of your site.

This checklist is your all-encompassing guide designed to propel you toward the pinnacle of CRO success.

Understand Your Audience 

Gaining insights into your audience involves a comprehensive analysis of demographics and psychographics. Demographics encapsulate quantifiable data, including age, gender, location, income, education, occupation, and marital status. Meanwhile, psychographics dig into the psychological and lifestyle aspects behind purchasing decisions, such as attitudes, values, interests, and behaviors.

Applying demographics and psychographics in conversion rate optimization requires a multifaceted approach. Comprehending your audience’s motivations and values allows you to tailor strategies to meet their needs. This includes crafting relevant content, adjusting messaging and tone to resonate with target groups, and personalizing web designs, content, and product recommendations to enhance the likelihood of conversions.

Furthermore, this level of understanding informs strategic initiatives such as campaign segmentation and device optimization. Beyond transactional interactions, it establishes a foundation for cultivating trust and fostering a genuine connection with customers on a personal level.

Leverage Analytics and User Behavior Data

Understanding your users extends beyond basic demographics like age, gender, and location. A genuine user persona evolves through a meticulous examination of user behavior, often requiring direct methods such as requested feedback. 

Leveraging web analytics, like traffic channels, conversion tracking, heatmaps, exit pages, and session recordings, connects the dots between seemingly disconnected elements in the user journey. This approach enables you to observe users authentically in their online environment.

While user feedback may seem less accessible, it offers invaluable qualitative insights into user pain points and preferences. There’s no more direct route to identifying roadblocks than listening to the users themselves. Combining analytical tools and user feedback ensures a holistic understanding of user interactions and paves the way for more informed optimizations.

Outline Clear Goals

Establishing objectives is essential, whether to boost sales or increase newsletter sign-ups. Clearly defined conversion goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) serve as the framework for assessing success and monitoring progress over time.

Micro and macro conversion tracking is crucial for comprehending the user journey, particularly in pinpointing drop-off points and uncovering areas of potential improvement. For e-commerce sites, a macro conversion might manifest as a completed sale, while a micro conversion could be as straightforward as adding an item to the cart. On the other hand, lead-generation sites might qualify a newsletter sign-up as a micro conversion, while a submitted lead form marks a macro conversion.

Once your primary and secondary conversion goals are defined, it is crucial to establish thresholds of success. These Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) serve as benchmarks for improvement and function as metrics for quantifying success in your conversion rate optimization journey.

Improve Website Design and User Experience

Prioritize a seamless user experience with a mobile-responsive design, an intuitive site structure, and strategically placed call-to-action buttons to ensure an engaging and frustration-free visit.

Optimizing your website’s mobile experience is essential in an era where almost everyone has a smartphone. Elements often overlooked in mobile UX design include font size, image positioning, navigation structure, and page load speed. Optimizing these aspects ensures readability, prevents page jumping, and creates a smooth, frictionless design that guides users seamlessly from landing page to conversion.

It’s crucial to note that the need for intuitive design extends beyond mobile platforms. A conversion-optimized website demands an intuitive menu design, clear call-to-action buttons, and a clean web page layout. Incorporating clear, concise messaging, maintaining consistent colors and themes, and utilizing self-explanatory link text all help minimize user frustration and enhance the overall web experience.

Optimize Landing Pages

Crafting an effective landing page involves creating attention-grabbing headlines, visually appealing content featuring high-quality images, and persuasive copy highlighting the distinctive benefits offered by your product or service.

To grab the brief attention spans of web users, leverage above-the-fold optimizations to showcase the most compelling headlines and subheadlines that capture users’ attention and entice them to scroll further.

Images play a pivotal role in enhancing the appeal of a landing page. Visual elements are more quickly comprehended than text and can evoke instant emotions from your users. Ensure your images are relevant and high-quality and feature human faces when applicable. 

Equally as important, prioritize presenting clear and concise copy that underscores your value proposition. Use language that emphasizes the benefits without unnecessary fluff to create a focused and compelling narrative for your audience.

Streamline Forms and Checkout Process

Optimize the user experience by streamlining the checkout process—minimize form fields, integrate auto-fill options, and foster trust through SSL certificates and recognizable trust badges.

Whether your site focuses on e-commerce or lead generation, it’s crucial to prioritize a seamless user journey by reducing friction and eliminating potential roadblocks in the conversion funnel. When designing forms, ensure a user-friendly experience by keeping the number of required fields to a minimum and, whenever possible, implementing auto-fill options. 

In cases where your site involves a checkout process or gathers highly personal user information, trust signals become a priority. Enhance user confidence by prominently displaying trust badges and securing transactions with SSL certificates, reinforcing a sense of security throughout their interaction with your platform.

Enhance Load Speed

Enhance your website’s speed and performance through strategic optimization techniques, including compressing images, minimizing server response times, and aligning your website’s performance with user expectations.

A slow website is a major deterrent for users. If a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, users typically bounce back to their previous destination and explore alternative sites—resulting in a potential loss of conversions.

To effectively optimize page load times, pay particular attention to image optimization. Compress images to the maximum extent possible without compromising visual quality. Similarly, when dealing with scripts and files on your web pages, eliminate unnecessary code that could impede page speed, optimizing what is essential to lighten the load on your server. Prioritizing these speed optimization measures enhances user experience and increases the likelihood of retaining visitors and converting leads into customers.

Integrate Social Proof and Testimonials

Enhance credibility by incorporating customer testimonials and displaying social proof through reviews, ratings, and user-generated content, creating a sense of trust among potential customers.

Incorporating customer testimonials and social proof, such as reviews, ratings, and user-generated content, on a website is essential for building trust and credibility and influencing potential customers. 

Testimonials offer real-life examples of positive experiences, addressing objections and humanizing the brand. Social proof, on the other hand, provides broader validation through reviews and ratings, showcasing reliability and authenticity. 

Both elements contribute to a positive online reputation, engage visitors, and differentiate the brand from competitors. Displaying the genuine feedback and experiences of satisfied customers helps businesses build confidence in their brand and influence future purchasing decisions.

Perform A/B Testing

Harness the power of A/B testing to experiment with elements like headlines, call-to-action buttons, and color schemes. This process relies on data-driven decisions to continuously refine and optimize your website.

A/B testing compares different versions of a webpage or element to determine which performs better regarding user engagement or conversions. This approach involves presenting variations to separate groups of users, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions on design, content, or functionality. 

Identifying elements for A/B testing involves strategically selecting webpage aspects to improve based on user behavior and conversion goals. Common examples include testing variations in headlines, call-to-action buttons, form fields, images, page layouts, pricing strategies, navigation, and product descriptions. These tests help optimize elements for better user engagement and increased conversions.

A/B testing is crucial for conversion rate optimization as it enables data-driven design, supports continuous improvement, optimizes user experience, reduces guesswork, and maximizes the ROI in marketing efforts. Testing and refining elements using authentic user responses enables businesses to iteratively improve their websites to ensure ongoing optimization for maximum conversions.

Conclusion

E-commerce is constantly changing and evolving, meaning it is essential to master CRO to unlock your business’s full potential. This checklist is your comprehensive guide, emphasizing the continuous process of refining your website to convert more visitors into customers or leads.

CRO is more than just a cost-effective strategy; it catalyzes revenue growth, improves ROI, and enhances user experience. Following this checklist, from understanding your audience through demographics and psychographics to setting clear goals and optimizing website design and user experience, should set you up for a successful short and long-term conversion rate optimization strategy. 

As you implement this comprehensive CRO checklist, remember that optimization is an ongoing process, encouraging continuous testing, learning, and improvement for sustained success in the competitive online landscape.

The Ultimate CRO Checklist is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Keeping up with all the dimensions and metrics inside GA4 can be confusing. In everyday lingo, we need clarification on users and visitors. In Google Analytics 4, you might be looking at unique visitors to your website.

We’ve reviewed the different types of GA4 users, but what are unique visitors? While it’s yet another thing to keep up with, they are pretty easy to understand.

What are Unique Visitors?

Unique visitors are just like they sound: unique individual users who visit your website over a period of time. Google defines unique visitors as the “total number of unique users who logged an event.” 

The number of unique visitors is a crucial metric for any website. Knowing how many unique visitors convert, visit your site through a paid campaign, or track channel success will help determine future marketing efforts. 

Where Can You Find the Number of Unique Visitors?

Thankfully, it’s incredibly easy to find unique visitors in your GA4 dashboard.

Right when you log in, you’ll see a card highlighting “Users” which is Unique Visitors.

You can adjust the date range in the bottom left corner of this card to zoom out or in for recent performance. 

Users is also a standard metric for many reports, including Traffic Acquisition, User Acquisition, Pages and Screen, and Landing Pages.

How GA4 Determines a Unique Visitor

Let’s talk about cookies.

Whenever a user visits a site, GA4 will store the client ID in a first-party cookie, _ga. With the client ID assigned, this helps Google Analytics determine the difference between a new and returning visitor. 

You can edit your cookie settings inside the admin section of your property.

Go to your Data Stream, Configure Tag Settings, and then Click on Override cookie settings.

The default timeout for this cookie is two years. This means that if a user returns to your site at any time within the next two years, they will not be tracked as a unique visitor.

You may have to adjust cookie settings depending on local regulations. Inside the options tab, you can set the cookie expiration date anywhere from immediately (expires when the session ends) to 25 months.

Where Can I View Client ID Information in Google Analytics 4?

To view client ID information inside your GA4 property, you will have to create an exploration. Explorations are powerful, customizable reports where you can view almost anything you want. 

When you go to Explorations, you will see several options at the top. Scroll over to the right until you find User Explorer.

When you open that, you can see the ‘Effective user ID’ immediately pop up for your specified date range. 

From there, you can drill down into their event activity over their visitor lifespan.

Unique Visitor Drawbacks

In a privacy-focused world, our GA4 data can run into some issues when looking at total unique visitors.

Here are some of the most common reasons.

Ad-blockers

Ad-blockers are known to cause a number of issues for other platforms, such as Shopify and eCommerce websites. Ad-blockers can also restrict GA4 from assigning a client ID to a user, thus potentially double-counting them over time.

Web Browsers

Some web browsers have built-in or customizable privacy settings, which also limits your ability to track unique visitors. 

Data Collection Regulations

While GA4 applies the standard 24-month expiration date for its first-party cookies, local or national regulations may force you to decrease that expiration window, meaning that users are likely to be recounted as unique visitors quicker. 

Conclusion

Tracking unique visitors is pretty easy inside your GA4 dashboard, but you may encounter some issues when trying to count the exact number of unique visitors across your site. 

Keeping track of these numbers can help you make critical decisions on marketing campaigns and follow your website’s progress and performance.

If you’re looking for analytics help, feel free to reach out and get started today!

Google Analytics 4: What are Unique Visitors? is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

It’s doubtful you’ll ever use all of those within the same GA4 property, but there are some dimensions and metrics you’ll want to use regularly.

One of these is Users. But wait! Google Analytics 4 has FOUR different types of users (technically more, but we’ll explain later). What are these different types of users, and how can you use them? Let’s run through them all. 

The Different Types of Users

Let’s quickly run through the different types of users in GA4 and how they work in your GA4 setup:

• Active Users
• New Users
• Returning Users
• Total Users

When looking at users, you might be thinking something like this:

Let’s break down each user with Google’s definition. 

• Active Users: the total number of active users.
• New Users: The number of users who interacted with your site or launched your app for the first time, triggering the event first_open.
• Returning Users: Users who have initiated at least one previous session.
• Total Users: The total number of unique users who have logged an event.

Now that we’ve got the basic definitions down, let’s jump into how to use them.

Active Users

Google’s definition breaks the golden rule of definitions: don’t use your own word to define the word itself. 

Active users is the primary user metric used in Google Analytics 4. Active users are any users who have an engaged session or when GA4 collects the first_visit, first_open, or engagement_time_msec event when interacting with your website or app. 

If you are looking for total numbers, it is under “Users” in all standard reports.

An engaged session is any session that completes one of the following:

• A session that lasts 10 seconds or more
• Involves 2+ page_view events
• Involves at least one conversion

Here is what qualifies as an active user:

• Someone who converted but only viewed one page
• Someone who viewed 5 pages but never converted
• Someone who stayed on the site for 2 minutes and only saw one page

Here is what does not qualify as an active user:

• Someone who left the site after 8 seconds
• Someone who viewed only one page under 10 seconds

For many, 10 seconds isn’t long enough to establish an engaged session. That means a user could visit a page on your site, stay there for 11 seconds, and be classified as an active user.

This is a setting we recommend changing. To do so, go to Admin→Data Streams. Once inside, click on Configure tag settings.

Once inside, click on the blue ‘Show More’ button. After clicking there, click on Adjust session timeout.

We recommend changing that to 30 seconds. This seems more realistic. Someone who spends less than 30 seconds on your website may not be really engaged or may not have the time to view more than one page. 

New Users

This one is a bit easier to understand. New Users are users who have interacted with your site or app for the very first time. New Users is the sum of users logging the first_visit or first_open event.

You can break down new vs. returning users in Looker Studio to get a breakdown.

New user numbers can be found in almost all standard reports. 

Returning Users

Similar to new users, returning users are users who have been to your site or app before. 

Unlike the other types of users, Returning Users have their own special section inside your Google Analytics 4 dashboard. 

In your standard life cycle report, you will see a lone wolf section titled “Retention”. 

Here, you can see the Retention Overview, breaking down New Users and Returning Users. It can provide some interesting insights into how often users are returning and any specific trends.

Here, we can see Returning Users are more likely to visit the site during the week while weekend activity drops off considerably. 

If you’re looking for additional insight into your returning users, you can always create a custom audience to track their activity. 

Total Users

Total users is a bit different from what you might expect. It WAS the primary user metric for Universal Analytics, but now that responsibility lies with Active Users. 

New Users, Returning Users, and Active Users may show up immediately under any Pages/Landing Page report. Total users is going to be found in your Conversions and Events report. 

Total Users measures the number of users who performed any kind of event on your website or app. With everything being an event in GA4, any event will count towards your total number of users.

Total users is used to count Event count per user. For this account, we can see the average number of events per user is just under 8.

We can see here that most users average 2.84 page_view events. 

Total Users is also used for the User Conversion Rate metric, calculated by conversions by total users.

Conclusion

As we can see, the different user types may be confusing at first, but all serve unique purposes for tracking user and overall web activity. Understanding how they work can help you unlock insights into overall user experience and performance. If you’re looking for analytics help, feel free to reach out and get started today!

Google Analytics 4: Different User Types is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Summer 2023 is just about over. It’s time for people to swap sunscreen for bug spray, bathing suits for light jackets, and maybe a good time to start saving on the AC bill.

This summer has also been a busy time for GA4. Even before the official July 1 launch, Google was busy pushing out some vital updates for the new analytics tool.

In this blog, we’re recapping the summer of updates and tell you how you can use them.

Business Objectives Collection

Date Released 

June 1st

What is it? 

The business objectives were a small surprise for many, becoming the default collection when users created a new GA4 property.

While business objectives didn’t bring anything new to the table, it does reorganize the regular reports you regularly see in your GA4 dashboard.

Many users were familiar with the standard acquisition, events, and monetization reports. Business objectives took those reports and put them in more “business” style language.

How can you use it?

Just like you would the regular reports section, except with cool, sweet business words. Here’s the breakdown:

• Generate leads
  • Audiences
  • User acquisition
  • Traffic acquisition
  • Landing page
• Drive online sales
  • Ecommerce purchases
  • Promotions
  • User purchase journey
• Raise Brand Awareness
  • Demographic details
  • Pages and screens
• Examine user behavior
  • Events
  • Conversions
  • Pages and screens

You can keep it, run it in tandem, or remove it. 

Personally, I think it makes the dashboard look cluttered.

To remove it, go to Library and find the Business objectives card. Press the three vertical buttons and hit unpublish. Voila, back to normal.

New Dimensions

Date Released

June 5th

What is it?

Five new dimensions and one new metric were added.

Dimensions:

• Country
• Manual term (UTM term)
• Mobile device info
• Minute
• New vs. Returning

Metric:

• Session duration

Probably the most notable thing here was the addition of session duration. A staple in Universal Analytics reports, users can now track session duration.

How Can You Use It?

Nothing special to note here. If those dimensions and metrics are important to you, go wild!

New Search Console Recommendation

Date Released

June 9th

What is it?

If GA4 notices that your GA4 and GSC accounts are not linked, a notification will appear telling you to link them. By following the instructions, you can link up a vital tool for organic performance. 

Once you do so, make sure to publish your GSC report so it can appear in your GA4 dashboard.

How Can You Use It?

If you don’t have the notice, you’ve already done this. If you want to link it up, feel free. It takes about 25 seconds to do.

Improvements to reusing analytics.js tags for GA4 Properties

Date Released

June 14th

What is it?

When you first set up your GA4 property, you likely just used your existing analytics.js tag to pass data to your GA4 property.

However, this tag did not provide tracking for items such as enhanced e-commerce, custom dimensions, and custom metrics. Now, this tag will be able to push those items through.

How Can You Use It?

If you’ve been paying close attention to your GA4 property, you might have noticed some additional dimensions or metrics appear in your account during this time. 

In case you haven’t used it yet, Google provides some lengthy instructions on configuring the tag to push additional information to your GA4 property.

If you’ve already set up your GA4 account, you likely won’t have to worry about such an issue. You do, however, need to make sure that you’re not double-tracking events across your site.

You can do this by entering GTM’s preview mode and navigating throughout your site to check for double event tracking.

GA4 Integration with AdSense

Date Released

June 15th

What is it?

GA4 already had a number of product links available in the admin section. This simply added another one. 

How Can You Use It?

For some products, you can link to them through the GA4 dashboard. For AdSense, you have to go through their dashboard. Here are the instructions on how to do so. 

Updates to Conversion Credits

Date Released

June 20th

What is it?

This Google Ads update allows you to change your attribution settings in either GA4 or Google Ads. In order to do so, you must link your Google Ads account to your GA4 account.

If you’re not using Google Ads, then you don’t need to worry about this update.

How Can You Use It?

GA4 conversions can be linked and imported to Google Ads. With these conversions, you can choose whether or not these they receive credit through other channels.

There are two options here:

• Google Paid Channels: Only Google paid channels can receive credit for a conversion.
• Paid and Organic channels: This means that conversions can be attributed to either paid or organic channels, but only the paid conversions will show up in your Google Ads dashboard. 

By focusing your conversion on Google Paid channels only, you can dive into the ROI of certain campaigns and better understand your ad spend and performance. 

Audience Export API

Date Released

June 26th

What is it?

This API allows you to export the user ID and device ID, whereas users were limited with such an option before.

How Can You Use It?

This one is pretty developer-heavy, you can find the lengthy instructions here. 

Import Conversions Recommendation

Date Released

June 28th

What is it?

A new recommendation will pop up telling you to import your GA4 conversions into Google Ads.

How Can You Use It?

If you haven’t done so, you’ll see the notification. If you have already done so, you won’t. Pretty novel, right?

New Ecommerce Metrics and Conversions

Date Released

July 20, 2023

What is it?

This was a HUGE update for those with ecommerce sites. Google finally added a number of metrics and dimensions that could be used in your custom report builder. 

The list is pretty long, but some of the biggest updates included:

• Item name
• Item revenue
• Purchase revenue
• Refund amount
• Tax amount
• Shipping amount

Having these broken out gives users a better understanding of the purchases and returns happening on their website.

How Can You Use It?

If you’re looking to build ecommerce reports of explorations, you’re going to need some of these metrics and dimensions. 

One of the biggest updates here was being able to create a detailed item report or exploration, looking at specific ecommerce metrics item by item.

GA4 Audiences in Google Ads

Date Released

July 27th

What is it?

When you have your GA4 and Google Ads linked, Google Data signals turned on, and ads personalization turned on, GA4 will automatically export audiences to Google Ads. 

How Can You Use It?

This was a long overdue feature that now allows you to take your GA4 audiences and examine their performance within the Google Ads dashboard. You can analyze their performance or use these custom audiences for targeting. 

Default Conversion Value

Date Released

July 27th

What is it?

Two updates in one day!

While ecommerce conversions will already have their value assigned by way of purchases, value for other sites, such as lead-generation, may not be so obvious.

This feature allows you to set a default value for a conversion, whatever that conversion may be. 

How Can You Use It?

Navigate to your admin section and go to conversions. On the same line as your conversion, click the three vertical dots.

From there, select “Set default conversion value”. 

You’ll then be able to set a value for each conversion.

To see the value of those conversions, go into your Conversions report. Click on the pencil in the top right corner and then click on metrics. You’ll need to add the metric “event value” to start tracking the total value.

You will have to work with your internal team or the client to determine the value of each individual conversion, but having this will be able to provide better insights into your marketing efforts. 

New Audience Report

Date Released

August 1st

What is it?

For those that have audiences, the audience report is a new way to look at them in the aggregate. This is a nice little addition to get a snapshot of your different audiences.

How Can You Use It?

The new audience report is a little hidden. To find it, go to the User Attributes section and open the report where you’ll see “Audiences”.

Just like other reports, you can edit the metrics in the report. 

RegEx in GA4 Reports

Date Released

August 4th

What is it?

Another long overdue update, GA4 finally introduced regex match types in reports. Before, users were stuck using a checkbox method which was fine if you only had to select a few values, but a huge pain if you were trying to filter down to a certain folder.

While regex was the big highlight, ‘begins with’ and ‘exactly matches’ were also added.

How Can You Use It?

If you’ve ever edited a GA4 report, you might have already noticed this change.

To see this in action, head to any report and click the pencil icon in the top right corner. For this example, I am in the landing page report and want to filter down by a few folders. 

You can read more about the various match types here. 

Modeling in Funnels and Path Explorations

Date Released

August 17th

What is it?

Behavioral modeling has been a part of GA4 since its launch. Used to combat those who opt out of analytics tracking, behavioral modeling will “fill the gaps” of data to give you a better idea of your overall website performance.

Now, behavioral modeling is available for a few explorations: funnels and path explorations. This also applies to the User Purchase Journey report and any custom funnels you create.

How Can You Use It?

Unfortunately, behavioral modeling is not available for all properties. There are a few thresholds you must hit before it applies to your account:

• Your property must collect at least 1,000 events per day with analytics_storage=’denied’ for at least 7 days (meaning people opted out of tracking)
• Your property must have at least 1,000 daily users sending events with analytics_storage=’granted’ for at least 7 of the previous 28 days. 

This means that smaller traffic sites likely won’t benefit from behavioral modeling.

You can check if your site is eligible by going to your Admin section and choosing Reporting Identity.

By default, all properties have the Blended Reporting Identity selected. For this particular property, we can see that Modeling is inactive because it does not meet the minimum thresholds.

So if your site is eligible, you can start to see some of your explorations populated with additional data. 

Unfortunately, this is not retroactive.

View and Delete AdSense Links

Date Released

August 31st

What is it?

GA4 will now let you delete links between your property and AdSense. 

This can be done under the Admin page titled AdSense Links.

How Can You Use It?

You can now delete links, nothing much to see here. 

Wrapping Up

This certainly has been the summer of updates for GA4, and we don’t expect it to stop anytime soon. Remember, you can follow all GA4 updates by tracking their updates page. 

If you have any questions or need help with your GA4 setup, reach out today!

GA4 and the Summer of Updates is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

While WordPress has some analytical tracking tools such as MonsterInsights, you’re more than likely going to want to connect your site to Google Analytics 4. 

Thankfully, doing so is incredibly easy and we’ll walk you through how to add Google Analytics 4 to your WordPress site.

Related Articles:

• Website Analytics Agency
• Google Analytics 4 Agency
• Conversion Rate Optimization Services

How to Add Google Analytics 4 to WordPress

Getting started with setup is simple, here are the steps you need to follow after going to your GA4 account. If you need to set up GA4 from scratch, check out our GA4 setup guide. 

Step 1: Look at Your Data Stream Details

First, you’re going to want to head into your data stream to find the necessary details to get your GA4 account up and running. 

To find it, start by clicking on the settings icon in the bottom left corner.

From here, look in the middle of your admin settings and find Data Streams.

Click on Data Streams and then your property name.

Once inside, you will see a top section with your Measurement ID. It has the ‘copy’ emblem next to it.

This is your ID for your GA4 account and you’ll need it for tags you decide to create in Google Tag Manager or adding it with any GA4 plugins.

Step 2 Find the GA4 Tag

If you’re looking to hardcode the GA4 snippet onto your website, follow these instructions.

While still in Data Streams, look near the bottom under Google Tag. Click on Configure Tag Settings.

After you click this, select the Admin tab. Then, select Install this Google Tag.

Once inside, you can see there are two options:

• Install with a website builder or CMS
• Install manually

Install with a Website Builder or CMS

GA4 makes it easy to connect to your WordPress site through a number of different plugins. By opening up the platform list, we can see a few listed for WordPress:

• MonsterInsights plugin
• Site Kit plugin
• WooCommerce plugin

For the majority of users, MonsterInsights or Site Kit is going to work just fine. These two are trusted, easy-to-use plugins that can easily connect GA4 to your WordPress dashboard.

If you’ve got an eCommerce site, then you should go down the WooCommerce plugin route. This will allow you to collect valuable eCommerce events and data you need for reporting. 

Install Manually

This will require a bit of developer help, but you can install your Google Tag manually.

To do this, you’ll want to copy the code on every page of your website, immediately after the head element. You can find the code here.

What Plugins Can I Use?

We have already mentioned a few easy-to-use plugins for WordPress, but here are some others you can use:

• Integrate GA4 Google Analytics
• GTM Kit
  • Also great for integrating your GTM container
• GA4WP

Once you have those connected, you should start to see data pulling in real-time.

Step 3: Test your GA4 Connection

There are a few ways to test your connection and make sure everything is working as planned.

Use the Realtime View

Open your website in another window (preferably incognito) and wait to see if your location/page pops up in the real-time view.

Use the Debug View

The second, and more reliable, option would be to open your website with GTM’s preview mode and check the status using GA4’s Debug view.

To do this, head to your Debug view in GA4.

You’ll also need to open up your GTM container and enter Preview Mode.

Once you do this, your website will enter a ‘testing’ area per se where you can check and see if data is flowing and events are working properly.

If everything is worked as intended, you should be able to see something like this:

Once you see these events pop up, you’re golden.

Conclusion

While GA4 may be daunting, connecting GA4 to WordPress is one of the easiest things you’ll have to do. Both Google Analytics 4 and WordPress offer a number of integration options. 

Just remember to check and make sure data is flowing whenever you choose one specific route!

Now you’re ready to go and start examining your site behavior. If you need additional analytics help, reach out today!

How To Add Google Analytics 4 To WordPress is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Despite such rapid growth and a strong foothold in the world wide web, Shopify was slow to roll out Google Analytics 4 integration, certainly making your web analytics goals a little tougher to track.

The Shopify-GA4 connector finally debuted in May 2023, less than two months before UA’s sunset. 

Below, we’re going to walk through how to get your connector set up and what additional steps you can take to ensure your Shopify site is ready to go.

Related Articles:

• Website Analytics Agency
• Google Analytics 4 Agency
• Conversion Rate Optimization Services

What does the GA4 Channel App Do?

The GA4 Channel App makes it easy to connect your Shopify site to your GA4 account. It will send all the ‘basic’ GA4 metrics to your GA4 account for data collection, such as sessions, page views, user counts, etc.

It will integrate with some additional GA4 eCommerce events such as:

• view_item
• add_to_cart
• begin_checkout
• add_payment_info
• purchase

It will also collect additional parameters about the events, such as:

• ecomm_pagetype
• ecomm_prodid
• ecomm_totalvalue

These parameters will be added to those eCommerce events listed above.

Step 1-Remove Existing Tracking Codes from Shopify Settings

This first step is an ‘it depends’. Before the Shopify connector was released, there were a few workarounds to get Shopify eCommerce events and conversions to start working on your site. 

If you installed such a code, you’re going to need to remove that code so you avoid double-counting across the site. If someone were to make a purchase, the purchase event would fire twice on the site, and revenue would be misrepresented.

If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, you can ask your developer to remove and test the code. 

First, go to your Shopify dashboard and click on ‘Online Store’. 

If you haven’t implemented the GA4 connector, you can check the existing code by going into your Shopify Admin area and going to ‘Settings’ in the bottom left corner.

Then on the left-hand side, click on Checkout.

Scroll down to the bottom and see if there is any code in the Additional Snippets area. You will want to check for any code being sent to your current GA4 account. There might be some additional code in there for other applications like HotJar or Microsoft Clarity. If you’re not sure what to delete, check with a developer.

If it’s blank, then you’re good to go, and you don’t have to worry about anything. 

If not, then you’ll want to remove this code. I recommend copying and pasting it to a place where you can easily access it again, like Visual Studio or even a simple notepad.

Removing Code From Shopify Theme

You’ll also want to make sure and remove the existing tag from the Shopify theme. A developer will have to do this part, but the code they’re looking for should look like this:

<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) --> <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXXXX"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX'); </script>

The new Channel app will manually insert the tracking code here so you don’t need to keep this.

Step 2-Setup the Google Channel App

Now that we’ve cleaned up your Shopify dashboard, it’s time to set up the Google Channel App. 

Go back to your dashboard, click on Online Store, and then click on Preferences.

Once inside, you’ll see a yellow box in the Google Analytics section.

Click on Google Channel app (of course). 

From here, you’ll be taken to a setup screen where you’ll see a big green button to ‘Add Sales Channel’.

After clicking here, you’ll be taken to another screen to connect your account. 

Go ahead and click on “Connect” to get set up.

Then, you’ll be asked to choose the right Google Account to connect Shopify and your website. Choose whichever email has the highest level of access to your GA4 account. 

You’ll then have to choose your GA4 property. If you’re managing one site, then that should be a breeze (unless you are very lost).

Once you’ve connected, you’re finished here!

Step 3-Test to Make Sure It’s Tracking

With everything connected and settings saved, it’s time to test and make sure it’s working.

Google Tag Manager

To do this, head to your Google Tag Manager (if you have one installed) and enter the Preview Mode.

Here, you’re going to double-check and ensure that nothing is double-counting. If you see events double counting, you’re going to want to go back and find that extra tracking code. You can ask a developer for help.

Then, you’ll want to navigate to your shopping area and click on an item.

Once you do, you should see view_item pop up in your GTM preview mode.

Great! It’s only popping up once and not double-counting.

If you have a test account to use, you can go through the entire purchase funnel. 

While we’re at it, let’s test and make sure events are popping up in our GA4 DebugView.

GA4 Debugview

Head to your GA4 account, click on the Admin icon at the bottom left, then click on DebugView.

If you’ve already completed the events, then items should have already begun populating inside the DebugView.

Here, we can see that our view_item event popped up right after we viewed our item, excellent!

We can also see the parameters previously listed populate the parameters tab.

Analytics Debugger

If you don’t have Google Tag Manager installed on your site, you can use a third-party tool called the Analytics Debugger. 

You can use this tool to actively debug your site and ensure everything is loading properly. I can vouch for this tool, as it’s incredibly useful.

Once you add the plugin to your browser, use the Inspect tool by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+I on Windows or CMD+SHIFT+I on Macs.

At the top of the window, you will either see the Analytics Debugger available or have to use the two right-facing arrows to select the plugin. Click on the tool and then hit the Start Debugging button under the fashionable duck.

Once you click debug, it will refresh the page and you’ll see events pop up.

Success! We can see our view_item event pop up. You can go through the same steps in the purchase funnel if you want to see all steps populate, but it looks like we are ready to go.

Step 4-Wait 24-48 Hours

GA4 tends to be on the tortoise side of things when it comes to reporting, so wait 24-48 hours before you check and see if additional information has been collected. 

After you’ve done so, head back into your GA4 account and go to the Monetization report.

From there, you’ll see a list of reports to zero in on.

If you’re looking for simple eCommerce reporting, Overview and Ecommerce purchases will be your go-to.

Overview is just what it sounds like, a general overview of your eCommerce performance. You’ll be able to see total revenue, purchases, top items, and more by scrolling through this page.

The purchases section is where you can dive in a bit deeper and see a more detailed view of your items.

Downsides of the GA4 Connector App

While this app certainly makes things easy for implementation and configuration.

It lacks some events that would be handy to track for any eCommerce website. Some of these key events are:

• refund
• remove_from_cart
• view_cart
• view_promotion
• add_to_wishlist

It would be handy to have these, but unfortunately, the Connector App doesn’t include them. This could change at a future date, but right now, we’re stuck with what they’re giving us.

If you want to add these events, that could mean looking for an additional third-party app or doing some custom configuration on your own. For those that go that route, it would be great to loop in a developer.

Conclusion

The Google Analytics 4 connector app is an easy setup for anyone looking to connect their Shopify site with their GA4 account. It has some shortcomings, but it is a great first step if you’re looking to dive into the data behind user activity and eCommerce purchases.

How To Install Google Analytics 4 On Shopify is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

On July 1st, 2023, all non-360 Universal Analytics Properties will stop collecting data. 360 users get a whole extra year.

So for the vast majority of users, you will finally have to start using GA4 to dive into your website analytics. Maybe you’ve poked around in the dashboard or used it sparingly. Maybe you have half of it set up. Maybe you have nothing set up.

If you fall into any of those categories, use this guide to help you figure out your next steps.

Related Articles:

• Website Analytics Agency
• Google Analytics 4 Agency
• Conversion Rate Optimization Services

Step 0: Checking To See if a Google Analytics 4 Property Already Exists

In case you haven’t set up your GA4 property yet, you’ve probably been bombarded with Google emails warning you to do so. If you’ve ignored those, then it’s likely Google went ahead and created a GA4 property for you.

If you’re not sure, then you should go into your Universal Analytics Property and click on Admin.

Then, click on GA4 Setup Assistant.

If you see a button that says “Go to Your GA4 Property” then you’re all good! If you see this, then you can skip to Step #2.

If you don’t see this option, go down to Step #1.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Google Analytics 4 Account

If you have to set up your GA4 account from scratch, you’ll want to follow the steps above to get to the below options. 

Go ahead and click on the ‘Get Started Button’.

A window may pop up asking if you want to enable collection from an existing tag. Click yes. This will may your tracking setup much easier.

That’s it for the initial setup! Let’s go to the next steps.

GTM Setup

If you have a GA4 account set up or you don’t have an existing gtag, you can take your Measurement ID and place it in your Google Tag Manager container.

To do that, go to Admin, Data Streams, and then click on your Data Stream. You will see your Measurement ID next to your Data Stream name and copy the ID.

The Stream ID is completely different from your Measurement ID and won’t be able to track anything!

From here, go to Google Tag Manager. Once inside, click Add New Tag in the top left corner.

You can name your tag whatever you want, I chose to stick with something simple like GA4-Measurement ID. 

Copy your Measurement ID and make sure the ‘Send a page view event when the configuration loads’ is checked (it is checked by default).

Once you create a tag, you need to go about adding a trigger. Click Edit Trigger and select All Pages. That way, your Measurement ID will fire on all pages. Here’s what the final product looks like.

Even if you don’t use GTM to track page views, you can keep the Measurement ID as a variable for any future events you want to create.

Step 2: Audit Your UA Property

Events and Conversions

You’re moving into a new analytics house and while it won’t be the same, you want to make sure everything is as close as possible.

First, you’re going to want to collect your list of events and conversions. We have used this Event Migration Spreadsheet to help keep us organized when moving items over.

No longer are you bound by the 20-event limit present in Universal Analytics. Everything in Google Analytics 4 is an event which means you can bring as many of your events over as you want.

This is important for users who are using different views and may have split up events or conversions across views.

Conversions, however, do have a set limit. You can only have 30 conversions for your website. When it comes to setting up events, you can skip to Step #5.

Property Settings

There are a couple of items you’ll want to check in your UA account and then duplicate them in your GA4 account.

Filters

In your UA account, go to Admin and then click on filters in the right-hand column.

Here, you’ll want to mark down any filters you may have, such as excluding traffic from certain websites, internal IP filtering, and more. 

You’ll also want to collect any URLs on your Referral Exclusion List which can be found in the middle column under Tracking Info:

Let’s start by filtering out our internal traffic.

First, go to Data Streams, click on your Data Stream name, and then click on Configure Tag Settings.

Once inside, click on Show All on the right-hand side.

Halfway down the list, you’ll go to Define internal traffic. From here, you can enter the IP addresses you want to exclude.

However, this step won’t be complete until you’ve turned on the Internal Traffic filter.

To do this in GA4, go to Admin, Data Collection and Modification, and then Data Filters.

Internal traffic will already be an option for you to click on. Once inside, you can switch the Filter state from Testing to Active.

Step 3: Set Data Retention

Once you’ve finished with some basic UA items, you’ll need to make some changes to your GA4 account.

The first would be to change the Data Retention settings inside your GA4 profile. Go back to Data Collection and Modification→ Data Retention.

By default, the setting is set to two months. You want to change this to 14 months. This will ensure your event data is, you guessed it, retained for up to 14 months.

360 users have the option to set their data retention to even greater lengths.

Step 4: Connect Your Products To Google Analytics 4

GA4 makes it easy to connect to a number of Google products. By going back into the Admin Menu and scrolling down, you will see a number of options.

From here, it’s as easy as clicking a button to get everything set up.

Obviously, you can decide what you want to connect here but if you have any of the available tools, it’s a smart idea to go ahead and connect them.

You do, however, have to have admin-level permissions on both tools to be able to establish a connection. So, if you’re trying to connect to Google Search Console for a client and you don’t have admin-level permissions on GSC, you will not be able to connect.

Step #5: Start (Re)Creating Events and Conversions

One of GA4’s biggest advantages is that you can track everything. With Universal Analytics, you were ultimately hindered by UA’s 20-event limit on views, forcing you to create multiple views if you had a plethora of events to track.

As Ultron once said, “I had strings but now I’m free, there are no strings on me.”

So, where do we get started?

Collect Your Events

In Step 1, I had a spreadsheet that can be used to track your event and conversion migration. It’s helpful to have a list and check them off one by one as they’re ported into GA4.

Once you have your entire list ready, you can start moving them over or recreating them.

Automatically Collected Events

Thanks to GA4’s Enhanced Measurement, there are a number of events that are automatically collected. Some of them are connected to apps, but for web users, the most important ones are:

• click
• file_download
• form_start
• form_submit
• page_view
• scroll
• session_start
• user_engagement
• video_complete
• video_progress
• video_start
• view_search_results

On top of this, there are some recommended event names that Google has kindly given. Now, you don’t have to follow these guidelines but it is helpful to play by Google’s rules here.

Let’s talk about creating some events.

Destination Events

Destination events are just like they sound: they will trigger when a user reaches a destination. 

To create a destination event, go back into your admin space, click on Events, and then click on Create Event.

Once inside, hit Create. You’ll be taken to a new screen after this with the information you want to input.

Let’s say you wanted to create an event named contact_us and it triggered when users reached the /thank-you page.

Here’s how that would look:

Remember, everything in GA4 is an event so you have to set the event_name to equal page_view here as you are trying to track a certain page view. 

If you wanted to switch that event to a conversion, go back into the Admin menu and select Conversions which is conveniently located under Events.

Click on New Conversion Event and type in contact_us.

That’s it! You’re finished.

Event-Based Goals

If you have any UA goals that were event-based, such as clicking on a button, clicking on a link, opening a chat window, or something else entirely, you most likely set this up through Google Tag Manager.

The good news is that it’s incredibly easy to move these events and goals to GA4.

Go to your Google Tag Manager, find your container, and open it.

Look for any of the UA tags you have. 

Click on the first tag name and in the top right corner, you’ll see three dots.

Click on those dots and press Copy. GTM will automatically create a new, identical copy of your UA tag.

Now, we need to switch it over to GA4.

Click on the Google Analytics: Universal Analytics bar. That will open up a number of options, so select Google Analytics: GA4 Event.

Select your GA4 configuration tag if you have one. If not, you can manually enter your GA4 measurement ID by selecting New Tag. From here, you can enter your GA4 measurement ID once and use it for all your GA4 events.

If you added your Measurement ID through GTM in earlier steps, it will already be here. 

I usually name it something simple like GA4 Tag.

Now, you can use this tag for all GA4 events you need to create.

Go back to your previous event and enter the name of this event. Once you have the name, you’re all set.

We don’t need to change the trigger unless you are making some big site changes. The trigger will work for both your UA and GA4 events, so leave it be!

What if They’re Conversions?

If you’re creating conversions in GTM, then proceed as if you were making an event. You’ll just need to make some quick GA4 changes ahead of time. Simply go to Admin, Conversions, and create a new conversion. Enter the name exactly how you have it in GTM. GA4 will see Contact Us, Contact_Us, Contact_us, contact_us, and cOnTaCT_uS as five different events, so make sure you copy it right over.

Testing Your Events

Measure twice and cut once. Or in this case, set up events once and test aplenty.

Now that you’ve set up your events, it’s time to make sure they actually work. Even if you didn’t change the trigger, you want to make sure your event will show up in GA4.

To do this, click the white Preview button in the top right-hand corner.

Once you land on your site, you will also have the Tag Assistant pop open.

Follow the steps to complete your event. Once you do, you will see the event fire in GTM’s Tag Assistant. Great!

Now, you need to make sure GA4 is collecting the event.

Go back to your GA4 property, go to Admin, then click on DebugView at the bottom of the Data Display menu.

It may take a minute or two for the DebugView to load but events will start popping in.

Once you go through the event steps, you’ll see your event pop up. If you changed it into a conversion, you will see your event accompanied by a green flag.

Once you see this, it will take about 24-48 hours before your GA4 property starts collecting event and conversion data.

Above all, don’t forget to publish your GTM container when it’s ready to go!

What About Categories, Actions, and Labels?

In case you didn’t notice, those have disappeared from GA4 events.

Let’s say you have a number of different forms on your website and you wanted to track each individual form. You will now have to use unique parameters in GTM and Custom Dimensions in GA4.

You can set up individual triggers for those each event and create separate names. Or, you could create one basic event and have unique parameters for each submission.

How can we do this? 

Start by creating a new GA4 event. I named mine form_submit.

Under the Event Name, I added Event Parameters and created a Parameter Name form_type,

For the trigger, you could create an individual trigger for each form submit. 

You could do this for every single form submission which is fine if you only have two or three. But what if you have over 20? By making an event and subsequent conversion for all 20+ forms, you’re going to be hitting the conversion ceiling pretty quickly. 

Instead, you could create a lookup table. 

To do this, go to variables on the left-hand side.

Scroll down to the bottom and hit New.

Name your variable something easy to remember, like Form Submit Types. Hit configure in the middle.

That will bring you to a long list on the right-hand side. Scroll down to where it says Lookup Table.

From here, you will have to choose an input value. Let’s say all your different forms had unique Page URLs. Select {{Page URL}} from the dropdown list.

Then click on +Add Row. Add as many rows as you need. 

In the left-hand column, enter the input, i.e. the Page URL where the form lives. In the right-hand column, enter the output. It could be something like this.

Once you’ve saved this, you need to go back to your event and add this as the Value for your previous parameter. Instead of typing in an individual value as we did earlier with Quote Request, we’re going to add the variable here.

Now, whenever your trigger fires, GTM will pull the correct form and fill it in for form_type. Pretty neat, right?

But wait, there’s more!

In order for GA4 to understand this parameter, you need to use the other item we talked about earlier: Custom Dimensions.

To create one, go back into your GA4 property and choose Custom Definitions in the admin menu.

From here, click on Create custom dimensions.

Just like with conversions, you’re going to need to enter the name exactly how it is in GTM.

So if you used form_type, you should enter that in the Event parameter.

Now, when you collect form_submit events, you’ll also be able to see the type of form that was submitted.

Final Words

Setting up Google Analytics 4 can seem like a gargantuan task, but it doesn’t have to be. By creating an organized chart with your events and conversions, you can quickly migrate your past items into your new property.

GA4 has its ups and downs but provides plenty of benefits as we move into a new method of collecting web data and information.

How To Migrate To Google Analytics 4: The Ultimate Guide is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

One of these new features is Explorations. Previously a 360-only feature, explorations became a feature for all GA4 users. After undergoing a recent facelift, explorations are cleaner, easier to use, and much more user-friendly.

In today’s blog post, we’re going to be talking about four explorations all SEOs need for their GA4 accounts.

Related Articles:

• Website Analytics Agency
• Google Analytics 4 Agency
• Conversion Rate Optimization Services

What are Explorations?

It’s hard to really use one or two words to describe explorations, but here’s how Google describes them: 

“Explorations is a collection of advanced techniques that go beyond standard reports to help you uncover deeper insights about your customers’ behavior.”

That’s about as general as you can get, but in short, they are custom-built reports to track, well, anything.

Google has a few standard explorations you can check out, but their goal is to be flexible and custom for you and any stakeholders. Those familiar with Looker Studio may see this as Diet Looker Studio.

One of the biggest advantages here is the ability to export data directly into Google Sheets. Currently, you cannot export data from the GA4 reports into Google Sheets, only into a CSV file.

Accessing Explorations

Before we start creating explorations, let’s talk about how to access them.

From your primary GA4 dashboard, look to the left where you see the squiggly arrow.

Click on that, and you’ll be greeted with a new menu with different options for explorations.

There are a number of options here:

• Free form: The ‘blank canvas’ of explorations. Most commonly used to create a table.

• Funnel Exploration: Allows users to track funnel progress.

• Path Exploration: Similar to UA’s behavior flow, tracks users’ progress through pages and events.

• Segment Overlap: Compare where custom segments overlap in terms of site behavior. 

• Cohort Exploration: Compare users grouped together by similar characteristics.
• User Lifetime: Analyze a user over their specific lifetime.

Each one of these provides unique features and pros. As an SEO and digital marketer, you’re probably just going to be sticking to the first three.

1. Top Pages by Channel

GA4 has this built into the regular reports, but the basic report is clunky and has metrics you probably don’t care about. Creating a top pages exploration allows you to customize your report as you see fit.

To do this, go into Explorations and click on Blank. You can name this Exploration “Top Organic Pages”.

From there, you’ll need to create a Segment to segment out your organic users. Click the ‘+’ sign next to segments then hit Session Segment.

Let’s assume you’re wanting to look at your overall organic performance so start by naming your segment Organic Traffic.

Then, you’ll want to set the conditions for your segment. Click on ‘Add new condition’ and select ‘Session default channel group’. From here, set the condition to ‘exactly matches (=)’ Organic Search. It will look like this:

Hit ‘Apply’ and you’re finished.

From here, we’re going to want to start importing our dimensions and metrics. Dimensions are attributes or characteristics associated with user interactions or events that provide context to the data you collect. 

Examples of dimensions are age, country, session medium, session source, first user source, or page title.

Metrics, on the other hand, are the numbers and statistics you’ll see. Those are views, session duration, conversion, revenue, or event count.

Click on the ‘+’ sign with dimensions. When the window pops up, search for the Landing Page. You will see ‘Landing page + query string’ appear. Tick the box then hit import.

Next, we’ll want to import our metrics. This is where you can customize things. Click the ‘+’ sign next to metrics and a similar window will appear. Follow the same step as above, searching and checking all boxes before hitting import.

For this report, I usually like to pull in some basic key metrics such as:

• Sessions
• Session Conversion Rate
• Conversions
• Average Session Duration
• Views per session

You can also bring in additional metrics such as:

• New Users
• Total Users
• Active Users

Explorations can become overwhelming with too many metrics, making the screen look scrunched if you add too many at the same time. Anything beyond about 6 (depending on your screen size) can start to make your exploration look smushed. If you’re making one to export immediately, feel free to add up to 10!

Now, we’ll need to start building it.

Click and drag the Landing page dimension into rows.

Nothing will appear in the exploration itself, but don’t worry, that’s because we haven’t added any values.

Take your metrics and drop them into the values area.

Here, we’ll start to see data fill up your exploration.

Having this exploration makes it easier to see the top pages and the metrics you care about, it’s a must for any SEO.

2. Exploration with 3+ Dimensions

Let’s say you want to examine your top pages by both channel and device. In the standard GA4 reports, you are limited to just two dimensions.

In explorations, you can have multiple dimensions to dive into data a bit further.

Using our above exploration, let’s check out how we would do that.

Go back and click on the ‘+’ sign next to Dimensions. From there, let’s bring in ‘Session default channel group’ and ‘Device Category’. Once again, hit import in the top-right corner to bring in those two dimensions. 

What does that look like?

You can even play with filters to remove certain dimension values, such as removing ‘tablet’ from the device category dimension or referral traffic from the session default channel group dimension.

When it comes to adding additional dimensions, you could look to substitute the following,

If you’re wanting a geographical breakdown:

• Country
• City
• Region

Ecommerce activity:

• Item name
• Item ID
• Item brand
• Category
• Date

Demographics:

• Age
• Gender
• Interests

These are just a few of the possible explorations you could make to help give a detailed breakdown of website activity. 

3. Path Exploration

For those that used Goal Flow in Universal Analytics, this is similar but provides a lot more flexibility. 

For starters, you don’t have to have your ending or starting point set to any particular conversion, it can be any page or event you want (that receives meaningful traffic).

Go back into your explorations dashboard and click on Path Exploration. This will pull up a default exploration created by GA4. It is a solid starting point, but you can easily erase it and start over.

To do that, click on (surprise) the ‘Start over’ button in the top-right corner. You will then be greeted by a screen that asks you to choose your starting or ending point.

For this exercise, let’s choose the Starting Point.

Let’s say you’re interested in seeing user activity after they land on a blog page on your site. Click on Starting Point and then select ‘Page path and screen class’. 

When you click on it, you will be shown a number of page paths to choose from. You can either find the one you want to start with or simply search in the top-right corner. 

From there, you can click on the blue nodes to see how users navigate throughout your site.

But what if you wanted to have your entire blog or certain category pages in the same path exploration?

To do this, hit Start Over in the top right corner. Choose the event name and then choose session_start.

In the second node titled ‘Step +1’, hit the pencil icon. Here, you can select the page paths or page titles you want to be included in the exploration. In this example, I chose the top 3 that have ‘Google+Redesign’.

After doing that, hit apply. You’ll notice that the items you clicked will appear in Step +1. 

There is also an ‘X+ More’. DO NOT CLICK ON THAT UNLESS YOU WANT TO RESET YOUR FILTERED SETTINGS. You can see it in the screenshot below where it says ‘+17 More’.

Without clicking on that, you can have your three, four, five, etc. pages set and ready to explore.

Ending Point

What about going the other way and choosing an ending point?

For this, I want to see how people arrived at a certain product page. After selecting end point, I choose the page I want to view.

This is incredibly useful if you’re looking to track specific events or how users arrive at certain pages on your site. Ecommerce site owners may use it to track how users arrived at making a purchase while lead generation site owners might be interested in seeing which content pieces led users to convert.

4. Funnel Explorations

Perhaps one of the most important explorations, funnel explorations can provide a look at how users are behaving across your intended funnel.

To make one, let’s go back to the explorations dashboard and click on funnel exploration.

Once again, GA4 will pull up a default funnel, but it’s helpful in understanding how funnels work.

The standard funnel has the following steps:

• First Visit
• Session Start
• Page View/Screen View
• Purchase

This is tracking the path of first-time users who make a purchase.

As far as funnels go, this is about as vanilla as you can get.

Let’s make an example funnel that shows how users navigate through a Contact Us form.

To do this, click the pencil icon next to Steps. Once inside, you can either delete the standard steps or add steps if you’re starting from scratch.

In this example, I am starting on the Contact Us page and finishing on the Thank You page.

I named my first step Contact Us.

For the parameters, I made the event page_view. Then, I had to tell GA4 which page to start the funnel. I added a condition page_location and said ‘contains contact-us-start’.

There are a number of ways to do this, such as including the full URL or going by page title, but this is to make it simple for this example.

From there, I added the next steps to the funnel to have it look like this:

Once you’re finished, go ahead and hit apply.

Funnel Options

You may have noticed there are some additional options spread throughout the funnel dashboard. Let’s explore those options.

Indirectly/Directly Followed By

This is exactly what it sounds like. You choose to have the steps in your funnel be directly or indirectly followed by the next step. So if you need to have Step 3 of your funnel immediately followed by Step 4, you would select ‘is directly followed by’.

The Timer

Next to that option, you will notice the timer. This allows you to set a time limit between steps. If a user doesn’t complete the next step within the allotted time, then they will not be counted in the funnel statistics.

Open/Closed Funnel

You will find this option in the main dashboard of your funnel.

This will give you the option to make your funnel open, as your funnels are closed by default.

An open funnel means a user can enter the funnel at any stage, it is not necessary for them to enter at Step 1 of your funnel.

This can be useful to track some of the most popular touchpoints in your funnel and see where users are entering and leaving throughout the process.

Final Words

Explorations are a great feature for GA4 and one that may be daunting at first glance. With so many options, it’s almost overwhelming to see the number of options available.

But by starting out small with the explorations above that meet your needs, you can start to build out successful reports, gain insights into user behavior, and track overall web activity and performance. 

GA4 for SEOs: 4 GA4 Explorations all SEOs Need is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Now, we can add BigQuery to the mix. Back in February, Google announced that users could export their Google Search Console data to BigQuery. Google has always pushed users to use its Google properties (remember Google+?), and this is no different.

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While some might roll their eyes at Google this time, BigQuery has a number of advantages you can’t find with other Google tools (or can find as easily).

In this guide, we’ll go over BigQuery, how to get it set up, and how you can use it with Google Search Console.

What is BigQuery?

Let’s let Google explain that:

“BigQuery is a fully managed enterprise data warehouse that helps you manage and analyze your data with built-in features like machine learning, geospatial analysis, and business intelligence. BigQuery’s serverless architecture lets you use SQL queries to answer your organization’s biggest questions with zero infrastructure management. BigQuery’s scalable, distributed analysis engine lets you query terabytes in seconds and petabytes in minutes.”

The TLDR version of that is BigQuery lets you process a lot of information quickly. Plus, it can be an integral part of your analytics overview, helping you dive deeper into website metrics and user behavior.

Have you ever been in Excel or Google Sheets and tried filtering through a worksheet with hundreds of thousands of rows? Processing that much data through those programs is tough, and your computer probably froze.

BigQuery doesn’t have that problem.

What may take minutes of waiting in Google Sheets would take just seconds in BigQuery.

Eagle-eyed readers probably also spotted this line:

“BigQuery’s serverless architecture lets you use SQL queries to answer your organization’s biggest questions with zero infrastructure management.” So, what is SQL and what are SQL queries?

What is SQL?

SQL (pronounced ‘sequel’) is ‘structured query language’ used for processing, storing, and retrieving data from a relational database. In short, it lets you access what you want from a database.

On the outside, SQL is pretty easy to read and understand.

A basic SQL query follows the SELECT FROM WHERE order.

SELECT the information you want to see.
FROM the table you are using.
WHERE certain conditions are met.

Here’s a quick and very basic example:

SELECT all my web pages

FROM the dataset/table mywebsite.table

WHERE pages received more than 5000 views after March 1st, 2021.

There are countless SQL clauses and statements, but it doesn’t take too long to wrap your head around the basics.

How To Connect BigQuery and Google Search Console

Connecting the two Google tools is pretty easy, but it will take you a bit of time depending on where you are in the process.

1. Set up Billing

To connect BigQuery and Google Search Console, you should start by making sure you have billing engaged on your BigQuery account.

To do this, head over to BigQuery and select Billing from the side menu.

From there, you can either choose Link Billing Account or Manage Billing Account. If someone at your agency or organization already has a billing account, check with them and go through the Link Billing Account option.

If not, choose Manage Billing Account and walk through the steps.

Wait, I have to pay?

Just because you’re setting up a billing account doesn’t mean you will have to pay anything. It depends on how much you will be using BigQuery. If you plan on connecting a few sites from Google Search Console, your pay will likely be close to $0.

Here at Go Fish Digital, we run keyword tracking through a third-party tool into BigQuery for 100+ sites, have a handful of websites connected from GSC, and process over 5GB of queries daily.

Our total cost?

Now, this does wildly depend on your circumstances. But for now, BigQuery pricing is fairly cheap. Processing 5 TB of queries per month is just $5.

For storage, it’s about $.02 per GB.

You can read more about BigQuery pricing here.

2. Set up the API

Go back into your side menu and go to APIS and Services→Enabled APIs and Services.

You’ll want to make sure BigQuery is enabled in order to connect to GSC.

You can scroll down and if you see BigQuery API in the list, you’re good to go.

If not, click on Enable APIS AND SERVICES at the top. Search for BigQuery API, select it, and then enable it.

3.Set up the Necessary Permissions

In order for Search Console and BigQuery to connect, you have to give BigQuery permission to access GSC data.

Go back to your side menu and click on IAM and Admin→IAM.

At the top, click on GRANT ACCESS.

Here, select New Principals and paste the account name:

search-console-data-export@system.gserviceaccount.com.

You’ll need to give it two new roles, BigQuery Job User and BigQuery Data Editor. Once you do that, hit save.

4. Connect Search Console To BigQuery

Almost to the end!

Go to Settings→Bulk Data Export.

Here, you’ll want to insert your Project ID which you can find here. This is case-sensitive, so copy it as you have it.

For the dataset name, you can leave it as searchconsole. Many online tutorials and queries have left it like that, making it easy to follow along.

Finally, click Continue, wait for it to confirm, and you’re finished!

It will take up to 48 hours for it to show up in BigQuery, but I’ve seen some data start populating after just 12 hours.

Navigating the SQL Workspace Dashboard

Once you start collecting data, now what?

Before we dive into some queries that we can begin using, let’s do a quick walkthrough of the SQL workspace dashboard.

On the left, you’ll see your project names, and that’s where you’ll find your project name. Under your project name, you’ll see your datasets and tables.

To start querying, you’ll want to click on one of the tables. When you do, you’ll see the table’s schema.

You can select Preview and see some of the information you’ll want to start querying.

Above this, you’ll see a number of options, from Query to Export. To start a query, go ahead and click on Query. You can select ‘In new tab’ or ‘In split tab’.

Helpful SQL Queries for Google Search Console Data

Now to the writing queries part. As stated above, you don’t need to understand the ins and outs of SQL to make the best use of BigQuery.

Google has already published a few helpful queries that will get you started. These queries are simple and will help you start analyzing your data quickly.

Let’s go over a few basic ones before we dive into some unique queries.

All Web Stats for the Last X Time Period

SELECT
data_date AS date,
sum(impressions) AS impressions,
sum(clicks) as clicks,
sum(clicks) / sum(impressions) AS ctr,
((sum(sum_top_position) / sum(impressions)) + 1.0) AS avg_position
FROM searchconsole.searchdata_site_impression
WHERE search_type = 'WEB'
AND data_date between DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 day) and CURRENT_DATE()
GROUP BY data_date
ORDER BY date desc;

This query will select all your web stats over the last two weeks. It will display the date, impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position.

This is a modified version of the first query from the list above because the one Google has will actually throw up an error in BigQuery.

I also removed the LIMIT so we can get more than 1000 results.

If you want to go back even further, you can change the number after INTERVAL to however many days you want. The INTERVAL will set the number of days from the CURRENT_DATE. So if you wanted to go back 30 days, you would change it to ‘INTERVAL 30 day’. If you wanted to go back 300 days, change it to ‘INTERVAL 300 day’.

All Traffic By URL

SELECT
url,
sum(impressions) as impressions,
sum(clicks) as clicks
FROM searchconsole.searchdata_url_impression
WHERE data_date between DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 day) and CURRENT_DATE()
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 3 desc;

This is another Google-suggested query that was modified. This is an easy way to look at your clicks and impressions by URL.

Here’s what the report will look like:

While this looks almost identical to what GSC would export for you, this is handy for a few reasons:

• You can easily bypass the 1000-row limit GSC often puts on your exports.
• By creating this query, you can send it to Looker Studio “pre-filtered”. Too many filters can slow down Looker Studio reports.

Traffic by URL and Queries

SELECT
query,
url,
sum(impressions) AS impressions,
sum(clicks) AS clicks
FROM searchconsole.searchdata_url_impression
WHERE data_date between DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 day) and CURRENT_DATE() /*can change the interval number and type for more or less data*/
AND query IS NOT null
GROUP BY 1,2
ORDER BY 2,3 desc;

One of the main frustrations with Google Search Console is that you can’t export all queries and their URLs together. If you want to look at keyword performance by page, you have to select the individual page over and over again. No more! Here is the query to select all keywords and their URLs for clicks and impressions.

This easily allows you to look at URL performance in batches instead of just filtering down to each individual URL.

URL and Query Traffic Comparison Over Time

SELECT
query,
url,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 DAY) AND CURRENT_DATE() THEN impressions ELSE 0 END) AS impressions_14d,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 DAY) AND CURRENT_DATE() THEN clicks ELSE 0 END) AS clicks_14d,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 28 DAY) AND DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 DAY) THEN impressions ELSE 0 END) AS impressions_14_28d,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 28 DAY) AND DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 DAY) THEN clicks ELSE 0 END) AS clicks_14_28d
FROM searchconsole.searchdata_url_impression
WHERE query IS NOT NULL
AND data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 28 DAY) AND CURRENT_DATE()
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY 2, 3 DESC;

This query will do the same thing as the above query and pull comparison data over the previous period.

In this particular example, it’s pulling data from the last 14 days and the preceding 14-day period.

If you want to adjust the time, you need to change the INTERVAL DAY number. For example, if you want to go back and review performance over the past 50 days and the 50-day period before that.

SELECT
query,
url,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 50 DAY) AND CURRENT_DATE() THEN impressions ELSE 0 END) AS impressions_14d,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 50 DAY) AND CURRENT_DATE() THEN clicks ELSE 0 END) AS clicks_14d,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 100 DAY) AND DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 50 DAY) THEN impressions ELSE 0 END) AS impressions_14_28d,
SUM(CASE WHEN data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 100 DAY) AND DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 50 DAY) THEN clicks ELSE 0 END) AS clicks_14_28d
FROM searchconsole.searchdata_url_impression
WHERE query IS NOT NULL
AND data_date BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 100 DAY) AND CURRENT_DATE()
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY 2, 3 DESC;

Top Stories

SELECT
COUNT(CASE
WHEN is_amp_top_stories=TRUE THEN 1
END
) AS top_stories,
data_date
FROM
`searchconsole.searchdata_url_impression`
WHERE
url IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY
data_date
HAVING COUNT(CASE WHEN is_amp_top_stories=TRUE THEN 1 END) > 0
ORDER BY
data_date DESC;

If you run a news site, then you’re probably interested in top stories. Unfortunately, GSC does not provide an easy way to look at Top Stories.

With BigQuery, you can look at how your Top Stories are performing. This query allows you to see how many times a story appeared in Top Stories.

The one drawback here is that it only tracks AMP top stories but can still provide a look into how your site is performing overall!

Here is an example of the results:

You can also modify this query to look at which URLs are appearing the most in Top Stories.

SELECT
url,
COUNT(CASE
WHEN is_amp_top_stories=TRUE THEN 1
END
) AS top_stories
FROM
`brobiblegsc.searchconsole.searchdata_url_impression`
WHERE
url IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY
data_date,
url
HAVING top_stories>1
ORDER BY
top_stories DESC;

If you want to see data on your Top Stories, you can use the following query:

SELECT
url,
sum(impressions) AS impressions,
sum(clicks) AS clicks,
sum(clicks) / sum(impressions) AS click_through_rate
FROM searchconsole.searchdata_url_impression
WHERE search_type = 'WEB'
AND is_amp_top_stories = true
AND data_date between DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 14 day) and CURRENT_DATE()
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY impressions DESC;

This will show you the clicks, impressions, and click-through rates of your articles that are appearing in top stories.

In fact, you can run similar queries using any of the snippet options BigQuery has.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of options for using BigQuery and GSC. You can grab a lot of data in just a few clicks, export it to your reports, and gain better insights into your organic performance.

Any questions? Be sure to reach out so we can talk about your digital marketing strategy and goals.

How To Export Search Console Data To BigQuery is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.