LISI’s Director of Technology + Operations Dan Martin and Director of Client Success + Marketing Taryn Elliott in this episode of “Ask Me Anything,” to discuss Google Analytics 4. They will cover topics like the differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics, data collection methods, privacy implications, alternatives, and more.

Taryn:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to LISI’s weekly, or near weekly, LinkedIn Livestream. This week it is, “Ask Me Anything,” and we are covering the topic of Google Analytics 4, or G.A.4., as we call it. I am Taryn Elliot. I am the Director of Client Success and Marketing at LISI, and I would say I’m the host, but mostly I am just here as the question answerer or asker, the question asker because I am joined by Dan Martin, the Director of Marketing Technology and Operations at LISI, who is also our go-to for all things Google Analytics and Google Analytics 4. So, welcome, Dan.

Dan:

Thank you, Taryn. I’m excited to get into Google Analytics 4.

Taryn:

I am too. It’s a big topic, because, as some people may know, if they’ve been following some of what we’ve been sharing about Google Analytics and Google Analytics 4 over the past several months, on July 1st, Google Analytics as we knew it for the last several years is going away and your only Google Analytics option will be Google Analytics 4. So, it’s really coming up for people who haven’t made the transition yet. And, there seems to be a lot of questions around it. Like this isn’t just a normal upgrade, like we changed a couple things — iPhone operating system like 16.1 versus 16.2. This is… This is pretty monumental.

Dan:

Yeah, exactly. It’s a big shift kind of in the way things are measured, how things look, and it might take a little bit more time to get used to it, but I figure, as the years go on here, we’ll all settle into the same familiarity we had with the previous version of Google Analytics.

Taryn:

Yep, yeah. It always seems like it’s just getting over the hump of change. And, then once you settle in you’re like, oh, I don’t even remember what it was like before this.

Well, I’m gonna jump right in. We have some questions that were submitted in advance and I know there’s a lot of questions around Google Analytics, but, also, if you have questions, drop it in the comments, and we will do our best to get to those as well. So, my first question that I have here that was submitted, but that seems like a really good starting point, is what is G.A.4.? Or, what is Google Analytics 4?

Dan:

 Yeah, so I think the accepted term is G.A.4. now. I think that’s kind of where you’ll see everybody referring to it as, but…

Taryn:

It’s a lot less of a mouthful. Google Analytics 4 feels like a lot to say repeatedly. So, let’s just go with G.A.4. for the rest of the conversation.

Dan:

Yeah, so G.A.4. is the latest version of Google Analytics. It was introduced on July 31st, 2019. And, basically, Google decided that they were going to combine what they had in place for app measurements and website measurements into one system. So, that’s kind of the origin story for G.A.4.. A little history lesson here though, is that kind of see where it falls in the timeline is, way back in the day, in 2005, Google bought this company called Urchin, which is where Urchin Tracking Module comes from. Taryn, you’ll be familiar with U.T.M.

Taryn:

Yep.

Dan:

So, that was in 2005.

Taryn:

You learn something new all the time. I had never put that together.

Dan:

So, that, that’s in 2005. So, then as they slowly kind of phased that out and made Urchin a Google property, in 2007, they introduced what it was Classic Google Analytics, and then they… That kind of went on for a couple years, and then 2012, what we all know now and love as Universal Analytics has been in place since 2012. So, that’s kind of the history lesson. And, then here we are in 2019, and now 2023. We’re onto G.A.4. So, the version that you probably have on your site right now is Universal Analytics. G.A.4. is just the new version.

Taryn:

Well, and that brings us to our next question. Nice little segue there. What is the difference between G.A.4.? Like how does G.A.4. measure analytics differently than what I currently have to measure analytics?

Dan:

Yeah, absolutely. I think we could probably do a whole other live stream on just the specific differences and perhaps we should write a blog post about that or something. But, there’s a lot of differences. And, most people, cosmetically, when they log into G.A.4 .will be like, this looks nothing like Universal Analytics. So, but putting aside the interface changes, the largest difference that is really the most important in my view, is the data model that both are built on, right? So, under Universal Analytics, everything was measured through the lens or in the context of a session. So, if I landed on your website, which is usually like a 30-minute window, right? So, if I land on your website, I browse a couple pages, maybe I fill out a form, right? All that happened in that one session that I was on your website. Where G.A.4. differs in that is that everything is now measured through the lens or context of an event.

So, take that same scenario where I land on your website, that page you, that’s an event. If I click your navigation to go to your practice area page, for instance, the click on the navigation is an event, the navigation to the next page is an event. If I went and filled out that same form I did under Universal Analytics, all the form-filled interactions are an event. The scrolling is an event. The form submission is an event. The thank you page view is an event. So, everything is kind of through the lens of an event, which may seem innocuous at first, but if you really think about it, it kind of allows us to measure things more flexibly. We can view things through how we want to view them and what’s important to our business, rather than trying to be put into a box, whereas, which is what universal analytics kind of put us under.

Taryn:

Okay, and that makes a lot of sense and for people who wanna visualization of that, we also just have a blog post that we put up this week about Google Analytics that also covers that with a little visual. So, that might be helpful. So, I’ll put a plug in there right now for that blog post as well as some of the other blog posts Dan has been working on over the last several months on the Google Analytics 4 transition. Which, speaking of transitions, the next question that I have submitted was, what do I need to do to set up G.A.4.?

Dan:

Yeah. So, I would recommend reaching out to professional analytics professional, or your web developer, or somebody who knows their analytics really well to help you set it up. That’s not to say that you can’t do it by yourself. Google does have a handy G.A.4. setup assistant, if you log into your Universal Analytics, and you go under the settings wheel, you’ll see that G.A.4. setup assistant, and that’s fine. And, that will give you the base installation of what G.A.4., that’s just telling you that, okay, we got data flowing in here and that’s it, which probably doesn’t fit your use case, right? You wanna measure more things, you wanna define the things you wanna measure, the things that are important to your business, the K.P.I.s, and things like that. So, you really wanna get in there and configure that. So, that’s where I kind of would recommend that people get some additional help in kind of further fine-tuning and configuring G.A.4.

Taryn:

Well, and I think great caveat there too, like some people who’re in their analytics all the time will have a really good grasp of it, but, for a lot of people, they just kind of go and look surface level. So, this transition really is a big change that can be a lot to take in, and if you can get some assistance at the start that really just sets you up for success versus a guess-and-check method that you’re having to use. And, July 1st will be here before we knew it… Know it. It is what? Just over, I think, two months away. Two months and, like a week I think away.

Dan:

Yeah. So, yes, if you’re just now looking to convert to G.A.4. and you’re not really well-versed in the Google Analytics universe, there are plenty of people out there, ourselves included, who would be happy to do what we can to assist you to get that set up to meet your needs for your firm and for how you’re measuring your key performance indicators.

Taryn:

What happens if someone chooses not to make the transition to Google Analytics 4 or G.A.4.?

Dan:

Okay, so what happens is, you talked about that July 1st, 2023 deadline. So, the first thing that’s gonna happen is your old version of Universal Analytics, that Google is shutting that off, it will no longer collect any data, any information from your website. So, that’s the first thing that’s gonna happen. You won’t… It’s not like you’re gonna lose access to that. In fact, Google hasn’t given us a specific date on when they’re kind of deleting everybody’s for instance, I imagine it’ll be something like we’ll have a whole year to kind of go back historically, and download all our data, and they’re probably gonna make that easier as things get a little bit closer here to July 1st, but…

Taryn:

And, I imagine they’ll publicize that as well.

Dan:

Yes, yes, yes.

Taryn:

People will know like, hey, you have six months, or, hey, you have three months, or like this is happening next week.

Dan:

Yeah, the same annoying red bar at the top of your U.A. that’s telling you to upgrade to G.A.4., after July 1st, it’ll probably say, hey, this is six months before being deleted. But, the… It’s interesting that you ask what kind of happens is because Google is… As of March 2023, is slowly rolling out automatic upgrades to G.A.4. So, whether or not you do it, they’re kind of enticing you to kind of get in there and use a new version, right? And, that automatic upgrade doesn’t mean that they’re just copy and pasting your Universal Analytics and whatever. No, they are just giving you… They’re basically just turning the light on, right? They’re just giving you the base installation of G.A.4. and you still need to go in and configure it the way you want it, and your K.P.I.s, and things like that. So, that is what will happen if you don’t do anything pretty much.

Taryn:

Okay, so Google will just transition you by July 1st if you do nothing. But, I guess this is also a good time to ask this question, and I think I know the answer to it, but wanna ask, because I have this question, I’m sure some other people do too. If we go into our Google Analytics accounts and see that we have been politely upgraded, unknown to us, whether that’s tomorrow or July 1st, what should we do?

Dan:

Yeah, so that’s a great question. So, if you go in there, and all of a sudden you see a G.A.4. property, and you go around in your team, no, nobody upgraded us? Okay. So, Google probably upgraded. So, what you should do is compare it against UA just to kind of make sure that, at a base level, like the data’s flowing, traffic’s flowing. Okay, great, it’s working. And, then what you wanna do is kind of delve in a little bit more, make sure all the privacy settings are in line with what your privacy policy is and things like that. And, just kind of get in those settings a little bit and just make sure at a base level that you’re kind of complying with everything that you need to comply with. And, then after you go through that, and make sure everything’s kind of working, and it all passes the privacy test and things like that, then you really need to look at your universal analytics, the goals, and the events, and the things that you had set up. Maybe, you’re running Google Tag Manager and you want to go in and copy and paste all the events that you had, you can transition them into G.A.4. You just need to do it with a little bit of care and a little bit of attention. And, something you can certainly undertake yourself, but I imagine the process will be a little bit easier with a consultant or somebody who’s a little bit more well-versed than your… Than a law firm. Well, practice manager or whatever it might be.

Taryn:

Definitely. So, somebody had submitted the question, “Is there a deadline?” Which we’ve covered several times.

Dan:

Yes, July 1, 2023.

Taryn:

But, how soon do people need to make that change? Can they do it on June 30th or do they need to do it today? Or, yesterday?

Dan:

Yes. So, to answer your question, yes, they can do it July or June 30th, I would absolutely not recommend doing that. My hope is that you’re listening to this to just get a little bit more information about G.A.4., and that you’ve already upgraded, and you just wanna know a little bit about it. But, my advice is if you haven’t upgraded already, and Google hasn’t automatically upgraded you, after we end this webinar, go upgrade. Just ’cause you want your Universal Analytics and your G.A.4. to be running for a little bit, so you can have something to compare to make sure everything’s working. And, then you want to have at least the earliest possible date that you’ll be able to go a year from now, you’ll able to have year over year comparisons and just do kind of that time intelligence and things like that.

Taryn:

Yeah, because, from what you’ve said, Universal Analytics and GA4 are not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Dan:

Correct.

Taryn:

So, I know coming from the marketing and the content side of things, and that being kind of where I live and what I do every day, having that year over year, month over month, quarter over quarter comparison, that is the same exact comparison is really helpful. So, I imagine for the next 12 months or so, 15 months, a lot of marketers will kind of be having to piece together their year-over-year information from, well, this is what Universal Analytics said, and this is what G.A.4. is telling us. So, these are the conclusions that we’re making knowing that we’re not exactly comparing the same things. So, as a marketer, yes, I agree that the sooner you can get to the point when you’re comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges, the better.

Dan:

Yeah, we’re all gonna become Excel advanced super users over the next 12 months as we try to piecemeal Universal versus GA4.

Taryn:

Yes, I was just talking to one of my kids this week about how I use math in my job and why–

Dan:

Math’s important.

Taryn:

Yes. Well, what do I need math for, mom? Do you use math every day? Yes. Yes, I do. Let me name all of these careers where you will use math in some way, shape, or form. Also, Excel. So, if there’s a chance for you to learn Excel while you’re in school and become an Excel master, very beneficial for a lot of careers, including marketing.

Okay, so let’s say we have everybody on board, and, yes, like we haven’t made the transition yet, but you have sold me on making the transition to Google Analytics 4. The question I have that is next on my list is how long will it take to make the transition?

Dan:

Yeah, so I know a lot of people are probably gonna roll their eyes at this answer, but it depends. So, there’s kind of two ways to answer this question. How long will it take to just get the lights on essentially to get the base configuration of G.A.4.? Honestly, it really shouldn’t take you longer than a half hour, because they have the handy G.A.4. setup assistant, they lay out exactly how to do it. Boom, done. Great, awesome. However, how long does it really take to set it up to get the things that you need? It really just depends on what you’re measuring. Maybe, you will have a lot of forms on your site that you need to track all these events and things like that. For instance, I know we’re talking about law firms and things like that, but if we were an e-commerce business for instance, right? That configuration might take 300 times longer than Taryn who runs a personal blog and doesn’t have any events. You know what I mean? So, it just kind of depends on what you’re measuring and how detailed you want to get with it.

Taryn:

I… I know someone who has an e-commerce business, and a big one at that, and I am now thinking through this, and thinking, man, that sounds like a big undertaking for them. But, luckily, for most of the businesses we work for, there are not quite as many things going on as e-commerce, but, still, you definitely wanna make sure you put in the time to have it set up. Because, again, that July 1st date is coming and we wanna be comparing those apples to apples, not those apples to oranges. So, it’ll take a little bit of time to settle into that too, I imagine.

Dan:

Yep.

Taryn:

How much will it cost to transition from Universal Analytics to G.A.4.

Dan:

Okay, and this is where people might get a little scared, but it’s free. Google Analytics 4 is free. You don’t need to pay for it. There’s some interesting things that Google is trying to get people to pay for, like BigQuery, which is a kind of data warehouse essentially. And, if you process a lot of data, you might have to pay for that. And, that’s a direct connection to G.A.4., but G.4. as it stands…

Taryn:

Okay, we lost Dan for a moment. Hopefully, he will be back, but I can finish answering, or I think we lost him, and for his first minute, but I can finish answering that. It will cost $0 to upgrade and then there are some add-ons that you can look at, as always, with any product, that would cost more than $0.

Dan:

Yeah.

Taryn:

You froze for a minute, I’m assuming.

Dan:

Yes.

Taryn:

So, I just went through and said what I knew you were gonna say is it costs $0, but that if, like any product, like any application, especially any free application, there are always add-ons if you wanna go above and beyond what the free product is offering. And, do you wanna just run down the names of those real fast in case we lost that in the livestream? The add-ons to Google Analytics 4?

Dan:

Yes. Yeah, so essentially Google Analytics 4 provides a direct integration to Google BigQuery, which is a data warehouse. You can kind of more easily manipulate data. There’s no data sampling. Just kind of dumping everything into, imagine like a giant Excel table, and then you can just kind of manipulate the data however you want it. Google BigQuery does have thresholds for data processing. So, every time you run a query or every time data’s imported into it, there’s a threshold for it. Now, luckily, for most of the businesses that we work with, the threshold’s relatively high, and I don’t imagine… I think it’s like a 100 megabytes or something, which is pretty… Or, gigabytes, sorry, not megabytes. And, for like e-commerce, it’s one terabyte. So, the floor is pretty high and I think you… I would encourage people to get in there, and use it for free, and kind of explore around, but, if you do choose to do a lot of data processing, and do a lot of SQL, and querying, and things like that, just keep that in mind that there will… There might be a cost associated with that.

Taryn:

Okay, good to know. But, in general, just making the transition, $0.

Dan:

Correct.

Taryn:

Okay, the next question I have, is it going to be better for my business if I use G.A.4.?

Dan:

So, there are some inherent pros with Google Analytics 4. So, like enhanced privacy options, for instance, Universal Analytics allowed for the storage of IP addresses, and G.A.4., and you had to turn that off in Universal Analytics. G.A.4., they’re just not even storing them. So, that’s one less thing for you to worry about. So, that… That is an… That is a benefit to your business, because privacy is a main focus in today’s digital landscape. And, that’s something that’s a big pro. Other things that are better for your business, it’s based on events that allows us to be a little bit more flexible in terms of the things that we’re comparing against one another. Use that great example of apples to apples or apples versus oranges.

So, just comparing like things to like things and just kind of being a little bit more flexible in terms of what’s important for your business, rather than through a lens and a box that Universal Analytics was putting you under. What I’ll say kind of as my final answer to this question is whether or not it will be better for your business is it really just depends on the time investment you’re gonna put into your G.A.4., right? You mentioned earlier, there are some people who are in there half hour a day, they’re really getting their hands dirty with the analytics and things like that. And, those people will probably see a lot more benefit than the people who are gonna go in once a month and just not really understand the metrics.

Taryn:

Well, and I mean, I think the other benefit is G.A.4. will exist on July 1st, 2023.

Dan:

Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Taryn:

And, Universal Analytics will not. So, if Google is your analytics tracking, will it be better for your business if you use G.A.4. after July 1st? The answer is yes. Because, it will at least be doing something.

Dan:

Yes.

Taryn:

Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about making this change, and for people who are really interested in doing it, and doing it right, and really getting the analytics set up for their business and the metrics that they wanna measure, this is gonna take some work, and it’s not go in one day and spend 30 minutes to 90 minutes doing it, and then being done with it. As with many things, there’s not a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing. So, there’s a pretty big time commitment that people could be seeing in making the transition, so the data is the way they want it. So, the question I have here is, is this all going to change again soon? Like will we have to do this again in 12 months or whatever range of time people find soon to be.

Dan:

Yeah, so I think you actually had a little bit of foresight when you did your intro, because the way I’m gonna answer this is the example that used earlier. So, I’ll say I haven’t seen any plans from Google or anything under documentation that they’re gonna make such a drastic change like this in the near future. Which makes sense if we think about it, because, at the beginning, we talked about how Universal Analytics and G.A.4. are built in entirely two different data models, right? So, I don’t imagine Google will say after a year of G.A.4., “Ah, you know what? That didn’t work. We’re gonna build a whole new data model.” They’re probably invested in this data model. So, what I’ll say is, are there going to be new versions of G.A.4.? Probably. And, you mentioned earlier about how you have iOS 16.01 or whatever, right? I imagine that’s kind of what we’ll see with G.A.4. We might get G.A.4.1, G.A.4.2, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc. But, I don’t think we’re gonna see a whole entirely new different data model and go through this enormous change again. I would… I think I’m safe in saying at least in the next three to five years, I don’t think something like this is gonna change this drastically.

Taryn:

I think that’s a good answer. And, I mean, and to kind of put that in perspective, we want there to be incremental changes as we go along, as legislation changes around privacy, as vlogs become more popular, or videos become more popular, or online shopping becomes more popular, or things decrease in… Whatever it is, how we track what is important to us is constantly changing as well. I mean, not to mention that there’s always bugs or kinks to work out in the system. So, I would imagine we all want there to be some changes, make sure that you’re subscribed to whatever places can give you that information. But, yes, I think kind of like new cars, it doesn’t make sense to design something from the ground up once a year. It’s usually just a couple small changes and then you’ll get something really cool and new that really is designed to meet where you are today, every few years. So I agree with that assessment as well, even though I am not the Google Analytics expert, but, I mean, I can tell you that it doesn’t make sense for any business to roll out something that big every single year, I guess, unless you’re the iPhone, in which case they do roll out a new phone about every year it feels like. Maybe not. Maybe it just feels like every year when I’m like, ooh, there’s a new phone. Do I need the new phone?

Dan:

Exactly.

Taryn:

Okay, so the final question I have here, we have talked about Google Analytics, both what currently or previously existed, depending on where you are in your journey as Universal Analytics and GA4, which is either here or coming depending on where you are in your Google Analytics journey. But, what if I’m like, I don’t like Google Analytics. Are there… I still want analytics, but are there other options to just say, you know what? I’m out of the Google Analytics game, let’s find something else. Because, maybe, if you have to make a change anyway, maybe now is the time to make a big change.

Dan:

Yeah, absolutely. And, that’s a great question, and certainly there are plenty of alternatives nowadays. I think the one that most people, not most people, the one that people will probably have name recognition about is Adobe Analytics, right? And, you might be… People listening to this right now might be using Adobe Analytics on their website as it is. And, if you are… Wanna use that, that’s a perfectly fine alternative to Google Analytics. There is another analytics platform called Matomo Analytics, M.A.T.O.M.O., which will feel the most alike Google Analytics. They’re marketed as essentially the privacy version of Google Analytics in that you can host Matomo on your own servers, control kind of all the data processing and things like that. And, they’re built in similar ways in the way that they’ll look and feel and things like that. So, that will feel the most familiar. But, there are certainly other alternatives like Funnel.IO, Heap, Countly, there’s plenty of alternatives. I’m sure if you Google G4 alternatives, there’ll probably be 3000 articles about which one’s an alternative. Just the important thing is to pick which one will work for your business. And, so if you don’t wanna use Google, there are plenty of other options out there.

Taryn:

Oh, perfect. Yeah, I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in thinking like, oh, it’s the internet, it’s Google that’s our only option, that we sometimes forget there might be other options and they might be better suited to meet our needs if we’re looking for ’em. Anything that we haven’t discussed that you think that we should add to this conversation?

Dan:

No, I just encourage everybody to keep up with the documentation on Google’s site and then keep up on our blog and things like that. We’re gonna kind of continually try to put out information as best we can about Google Analytics 4. Maybe we’ll delve into some of the alternatives as well and how you can kind of use them for your law firm analytics measurements.

Taryn:

Perfect. Well, Dan, thank you for going through this topic with us. It is really important since we are really closing in on that deadline. We wanna make sure everybody’s prepared by July, July 1st. As Dan said, we have several resources on our website. We will be adding more resources, so either follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletters. That’ll be the quickest way to see when we’ve posted something new. Additionally, we have a team who is really immersing themselves in this transition, so feel free to reach out if you have questions or if we can help in any other way. Join us next week for our LISI Livestream, which will be a “Behind the Bio.” Julie Ackerman will be interviewing a really fascinating attorney, so definitely check this out. And, have a great April Friday. I don’t know about where everybody else is, but hopefully, the rain is gonna stop, the April showers, and it’ll be a nice afternoon to get out and enjoy those nice flowers that seem to be coming up early.

Dan:

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Taryn.

Taryn:

You’re welcome. Anytime. Bye, everybody.