Privacy Changes Drive Google to Sunset Universal Analytics in Favor of G4

July 1, 2023 is the sunset date for UA or Universal Analytics.

Google has announced that it will sunset the popular web traffic analytics tool called Universal Analytics in favor of G4 Analytics on July 1, 2023.

Why is Google making this change?

With the changing needs for privacy, Google has decided that it is time for everyone to get onboard and embrace G4 Analytics. Read about the differences between the two.

G4 has been out for two years, but many, myself included, consider the dashboard difficult to set up and use. This has slowed webmasters and marketing managers from embracing the new cookieless technology of G4.

Additionally, Google announced that the data from Universal Analytics (UA) will not flow into G4. So, webmasters should plan on adding code now for G4 to start gathering data before the UA sunset date. Some webmasters and site owners may want to do a download of UA data before the sunset of the application.

It’s all about the third party cookies

All of these changes are about the use of third party cookies for tracking. Google Ads uses audiences and cookies from UA when merged with Google Ads to create tracking for advanced audiences. Specifically the explanation below puts this issue in easy to understand terms.

“…the change reflects an evolution on how analytics is associated with websites and the changing role analytics plays in privacy. Universal Analytics represented the pinnacles of page-loaded measurement, introducing cross platform tracking and more flexible code options for producing custom dimensions and metrics. However, it still relied on cookies, the text files in browsers, to transmit data behind the dimensions and metrics. ” Read more.

By moving beyond cookies with G4, Google is building for the future, but may also be self-serving to benefit remarketing and conversion technology alternatives to protect Google Ads. The loss of third party cookies is a huge issue for Google Ads conversion tracking and for the serving of remarketing ads for advertisers.

For now, Google and McCord Web Services is recommending running UA Analytics and G4 on the same website. Allowing the two to run will build a number of months worth of data before UA Analytics is sunset.

The problem with G4 is it is more than an update it is a new protocol

If you have logged into a G4 account you most likely are stunned at the lack of any data. G4 runs on custom events, there are really very few built out features at this time which makes it hard for webmasters to embrace G4 as a functional alternative to UA Analytics.

Although the ability to customize events may be a boon for some, for most G4 cannot be considered a plug and play application. We are hopeful that as the sunset date gets closer Google will listen to the feedback about needing to make G4 more user friendly and offer more information on how to set up events that make sense to replace the information lost when compared to UA.

Our recommendation is to start now with G4 code implementation so data can start accruing for at least one year. And to start learning now to create events for the important statistics you like in Universal Analytics in G4.

We encourage you to subscribe to our blog posts to stay informed on what’s coming up for G4 and Google Ads.  Just visit our blog home page and look on the right side bar for subscribe by email to get a copy of our blog posts when they are published.

 

 

What to Know About Google Indexing and Ranking

Nancy McCord and Bandit

I recently ready a very interesting article and wanted to share some of the important nuggets with you in Google indexing in this January 1, 2021 post.

First, Happy New Year! 2021 simply has to be better than 2020.

Second, there are the nuggets that I find of particular interest for our clients from this article.

• Google has now verified that it can take two months or more to impact search results when you make a change to your website.

• Google does validate that when you regularly add new content to your website, that the Google Bot spider will focus on the new content and not the old content for its time to index your website.

• If you have poor quality sections on your website, these poor sections can drag down the rating/ranking of your entire website.

• Rankings are determined not by page, but by weighing the entire website.

• However, now the Google team has stated that regularly updated new sections of your website that are of good quality may keep the poor sections of your site from making a strong impact that drags down your website in the rankings. Hmm, kind of conflicting from what has previously said and Google couches this with “it depends on your website.” So, not a conclusive nugget.

• What I find of particular importance in all this is that ranking and changes to your site have far reaching long term impacts that in some cases not seen even in two months from the changes. Keepng your content fresh is crucial to attracting and keeping the attention of the Google Bot spider.

If you are mystified by this, it may be time to visit our website to check our services. When you need a team that is trustworthy on your side to help you understand and then act to improve your website visibility, McCord Web Services is your top choice.