Google Signals to be removed from GA4 Reporting Identity

Google have recently announced that from 12th February 2024 Google Signals will be removed from being used for “reporting identity” in GA4.  What will this mean for your user data and how will this impact your reports?

In addition to providing demographics reporting, Google signals can also be used to de-dupe data where users, who are logged into Google, access your site from different devices.  This cross-device reporting provides a more unified view of user touchpoints with your site across multiple sessions and via different channels.

Demographics data will continue to be available following the change, but cross device reporting will stop. 

To assess the impact of this change on your data first check your “Data Display / Reporting Identity” settings in GA4.  If you are using either the “blended” or “observed” settings then Google Signals will no longer be used following the change.  If you are using the “Device Based” option however there will be no change as this uses the GA4 cookie set on the user’s device

To assess the impact of the change on your user data head over to the Explore tool in your GA4 account and create a “Segment Overlap” report. Create one segment for users with a “device category” of mobile and another for desktop users.

In the example below, the overlap between mobile and desktop users represents the volume of users identified via Google Signals cross device reporting. Once Google Signals is no longer used for reporting identity these users will no longer be de-duped from your data. In this example you’d thus expect to see a small increase in your overall user data.

Have a question about GA4 reporting identity or need assistance with an analytics project?  Why not drop us an email at info@andersanalytics.com.

What’s the difference between Bounce Rate & Engagement Rate in GA4?

In Universal Analytics, bounce rate was often used as a key engagement metric to assess the performance of landing pages, channels and marketing campaigns.  Whilst available in GA4, the focus has moved to engagement rate.  Why the change and what are the differences between the two statistics?

What is Bounce Rate?

In UA by default bounce rate was the percentage of sessions who had single page interactions with a website. 

If you captured other events on a page, such as users watching a video or downloading a file, then this additional interaction would mean a visitor didn’t bounce (even if they looked at only one page).  It was possible however to set events as ‘non interaction events’ (e.g. for scroll depth) so that additional tracking didn’t adjust the bounce rate. 

One issue with bounce rate was that by default it could sometimes be a bit of a crude statistic.  People performing searches for example might land on a page, spend a fair amount of time on it and then leave - their questions or reasons for the search having been answered.  In the absence of other tracking the user would have bounced even though they may have spent a fair amount of time on the page. 

For this reason many sites set an ‘adjusted bounce rate’ where an event would fire after a period of time had elapsed to signify a level of user engagement with the site and to class the visit as not having bounced.

What’s different in GA4?

In GA4, in part to overcome the issue above, Google have turned bounce rate around into a more positive metric and have essentially implemented a form of adjusted bounce rate.

If users spend over 10 seconds on a page, complete any event you’ve marked as a conversion or view more than one page the visit is marked as an ‘engaged session’. 

Engagement rate is essentially the percentage of engaged sessions your site or traffic segment received.  You can thus use engagement rate in a similar way to bounce rate to assess the performance of landing pages, channels and campaigns.

If you used an adjusted bounce rate in UA, you may want to adjust the settings used for engaged sessions in GA4.  You can do this primarily by adjusting the 10 second timeout event that fires a ‘user_engagement’ event.  To do so log into your GA4 admin interface and then follow the steps below.

Data Collection & Modification -> Data Streams -> Your Website -> Configure Tag Settings -> Show More -> Adjust Session Timeout

Bear in mind that as conversion events also signify engaged sessions, if you use these too broadly (e.g. conversions for popular content) then you may artificially inflate your engagement rate and make it a less helpful metric.

Is engagement rate a more useful metric?

Arguably, engagement rate is a more helpful metric than bounce rate as it helps you understand how many users have had a meaningful interaction with your website.

Have a question on this article or need a Google Analytics consultant to provide help with a project? Why not contact us at info@andersanalytics.com.  

GA4 Admin Interface Changes

Google have recently rolled out a rework of the GA4 admin interface. What has changed and is this an improvement on the previous version?

The new UI has been reworked to use menu groups in place of the old list menu and the sub menus present previously. The new layout reorganises admin settings under a number of new headings including account and property settings, data collection and modification, data display and product links . In addition a new vertical sidebar menu has been added with expandable sections for easier navigation.

Each of these groups gives access to the previous options and settings, in a clearer visualisation without having to click through as many sub menus.

If you are having difficulty finding a setting in the new interface, the search bar at the top of the page is still a great tool to locate what you are looking for.

 If you have a question or need a Google Analytics agency to help with a configuration or project, why not contact us via info@andersanalytics.com.

GA4 New Data Redaction Tool

Google recently implemented a new feature within GA4, Redact data. How does this work, and how does it help protect user privacy?

Redact Data is designed to help prevent the inadvertent capture of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).  

This setting can be found under:

Admin > Data Collection & Modification > Data Streams > Your Data Stream>Events>Redact Data

There are two features available within this setting Email & URL Query Parameters.

Email

This uses text patterns to identify likely email addresses across all event parameters. When a potential email address is identified it is redacted, and the rest of your data collection then continues as normal.

Keep in mind that if you are capturing clicks to email for example info@yourcompany.com, this feature will redact the email address. You could use a JavaScript variable here to put the email address in a different format.

URL Query Parameters

Allows you to redact specific information from URL parameters, such as customer names (example below). This feature covers the following parameters: page_location, page_referrer, page_path, link_url, video_url, and form_destination.

To create a URL query parameter, you can enter the data types you want to filter out as keywords (click the opt in button and you will be presented with the box below).

In this example we are using ‘firstname’ as our keyword, we will then test this using the tool at the bottom of the menu.

Conclusion

It is worth noting that newly created properties will have this feature enabled by default, for existing properties this needs to be enabled manually.

Currently this tool is only available for use on web data streams and won’t prevent the collection of PII via Measurement Protocol or Data Import.

If you have a question or need a Google Analytics agency to help with a configuration or project, reach out to us via info@andersanalytics.com.

What does landing page (not set) mean in GA4?

As in Universal Analytics, (not set) may appear in a number of reports in GA4.  (not set) essentially means Google hasn’t any data for a particular dimension or parameter. 

What are the causes?

The first thing to note is that it can take up to 48 hours for GA4 to fully process your data. If you’re seeing (not set) against a dimension for yesterday’s data, be patient and come back in a day or two and check again.

When it comes to landing pages, (not set) typically occurs for sessions where a “page_view” event wasn’t recorded.  Sessions time out after 30 minutes and so if someone visits your site and there’s then a period of inactivity the session may time out.

From Google’s documentation:

“In Analytics, a session initiates when a user either opens your app in the foreground or views a page or screen and no session is currently active (e.g. their previous session has timed out)”.

This means that if someone was viewing a page in another tab and then opens it again after the session has timed out, a new session_start and potentially a user_engagement event may fire without a page_view event.  This will lead to a new session without a landing page. 

You’ll see that when viewing data for (not set) in the landing pages report, the number of new users is typically very low backing up the fact that this is essentially existing users who are affected.

Finally for complex sites with advanced tracking do check your implementation. In cases where for example you’ve disabled enhanced measurement and have complex events firing it’s possible that there could be a tracking cause to the issue (check out our Google Analytics / Google Tag Manager audit service).

Have a question or looking for a Google Analytics agency to help with your setup?  Drop us an email at info@andersnalytics.com to find out more.

How to add GA4 to Squarespace

Installing GA4 onto your Squarespace site is a great way to get started with tracking and understanding your web traffic. Our guide covers the basics on how to get up and running.

What you will need

-        A GA4 Account and Property for your website (free to set up).

-        Your GA4 Measurement ID (found in your account).

What to do

-        In your GA4 account, select your property and open your admin settings.

-        Within Property Settings, you can view and copy your Measurement ID.

-        Once copied, return to your Squarespace account. Open your website dashboard and go to Settings -> Developer Tools -> External API Keys

-        You can copy your GA4 Measurement ID into the box and your accounts are linked.

With GA4 set up you can start to track core measurements through the Google Analytics Platform.

This can help you to understand how users reach your website and what content is getting the most engagement.

To set up advanced tracking and focus on more bespoke metrics that are relevant to your business, why not speak to one of our team today and see how we can help you? You can contact us at info@andersanalytics.com.

Adding Search Console to GA4

Google console provides a range of reports that allow you to monitor your performance in Google search. It's possible to see what keywords people are using to find you, how you perform in different countries and devices and what landing pages perform best.

If you've migrated to GA4 linking Google Console is easy. Go to Admin and in the subsequent property column scroll down to Google Console links. Use the Link button to select your Google Console account.  If you haven't set an account previously you'll need to verify your account - there are a number of options to do so.

An additional recommended step is to then adjust your library settings within GA4 to publish Search Console to your reports menu. To do so within "Reports" click "Library". Allow a few seconds for the "collections" options to load and you should then see Search Console listed (but marked as unpublished).

To publish Search Console simply click the three dots to the right of the widget and click publish. Note that at the time of writing this article there's a bug and Search Console will be published twice. To remove the second listing select the second "Search Console" widget and then click the three dots to delete it.

Google to Sunset Universal Analytics in 2023

With the introduction of GA4 approximately two and a half years ago, Google have now announced that they will be sunsetting Universal Analytics in 2023.

All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. Universal Analytics 360 properties will continue to collect data until October 2023.

Read more at: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528

Using the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol to Track Email Opens

When you set up Google Analytics you add tracking code to your website either using the standard GA tracking snippet or via a tag management solution such as Google Tag Manager.

By default Google Analytics tracks page views. You can however also extend tracking to also capture additional user interactions via event tracking, virtual page views or use e-commerce tracking to capture online transactions.

Until Universal Analytics – the latest version of Google Analytics – tracking however stopped there. If you had other payment systems, CRM systems or essentially any other systems connected to the internet it was not possible to incorporate the data into GA.

Introducing the Measurement Protocol

This all changed with the introduction of the measurement protocol – a technical set of rules on how to send data to Google Analytics servers and incorporate the data into your account. With the measurement protocol the potential is enormous. Examples of how it could be used include tracking offline transactions, sales team follow ups and even footfall in a real world store.

Tracking Email Opens

As a simple introduction to how the measurement protocol can be used let’s take a look at tracking email opens from a marketing campaign. Whilst many email management tools will provide you with these statistics wouldn’t it be great if you could also incorporate this data into Google Analytics?

First things first – you’ll need to be using Universal Analytics. If you are using the older classic or asynchronous versions you’ll need to upgrade. It’s also essential to note that as part of Google’s terms of service that you can’t use any information here that could personally identify an individual. This means that names and email addresses are out.

Data is sent to Google Analytics via an “HTTP request” – not as complicated as it sounds as to track email opens you can simply add an HTML image tag to the footer of your email.

Building the Code

The code starts of as the following:

<img src="https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&AddCodeHere"/>

You then need to replace the AddCodeHere above with a series of statements to tell Google how you’d like to track email opens and the account to send the data to.

You next need to add:

&tid=UA-XXXXXXX-X – replace the XXXXXX-X with your Google Analytics property code (go to Admin and click Property / Tracking Code if you are not sure of this.

&cd= YYYYYY – this is a unique random number that anonymously identifies a particular user or device (via a client ID). Many email software solutions will be able to complete this via a dynamic parameter (for example you could use *|UNIQID|* in MailChimp).

&t=event&ec=email&ea=open – this code is then required to indicate you want to capture the interaction as an event, the category should be email and the action should be “open”.

Finally you’ll want to add a final set of parameters to attribute the email open to a particular campaign. For example you may wish to track the campaign as a newsletter promoting a spring offer for which the tracking code could be:

&cs=newsletter&cm=email&cn=spring_newsletter

Replace the campaign source value (after &cs) and campaign name (value after &cn) as required.

Bringing It All Together

Putting all of this together you’ll end up with an image tag similar to the following (where you will have amended the items in bold).

<img src="https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-XXXXXXX-X&cd= YYYYYY&t=event&ec=email&ea=open&cs=newsletter&cm=email&cn=spring_newsletter_2016"/>

Google Analytics & "Spam Data" - Removing Automated & Ghost Referrals From Your Analytics Reports

Seeing a sudden, unexpected and potentially dramatic rise in your traffic or other unexplained changes in patterns of traffic or engagement within Google Analytics? Even if nothing appears untoward we'd advise you to check your referrals and hostname reports to see whether you've been affected by either spam or ghost referrals.

Referrers such as semalt.com, ranksonic.info, social-buttons.com or buttons-for-website (and many others) can generate large numbers of referral sessions within your Google Analytics reports and seriously interfere with your traffic figures and overall engagement statistics. You may well find traffic from these and similar sites within the All Referrals report (which appears under Acquisition / All Traffic) - regardless of whether these are services you ever signed up for.

Sometimes you may see fairly dramatic spikes in your traffic - alerting you to a problem. In many cases however the volume of sessions generated may stay low enough to be below the radar and only identified after some investigation. Whilst low though the aggregate affect of multiple spam referrals can add up. Small businesses / sites need to beware - whilst an increase of a few hundred sessions may be a tiny blip for a large site with tens of thousands of visits a month if your site has a lower volume of traffic spam referrals can seriously distort your figures.

Within the All Referrals report look out for unusual patterns of traffic from specific referring sites. You may sometimes see a large spike in traffic from a site occurring on a single day with nothing generated thereafter for some time. Look out also for referrals generating a very high percentage of new sessions (often 100%) often with a bounce rate of or approaching 100% (although this is not always the case). Any referrals matching these criteria warrant further investigation (although be careful and don't automatically visit the suspect site - do some research via a search engine first).

You should also check your event tracking reports (available within Behaviour / Top Events) as we've recently encountered spam data appearing here (via ghost referrals). Event tracking has to be specifically setup for your website and is not available by default so if there's something you don't recognise then check with your web team.

Automated Spam & Bot Filtering

Google rolled out a bot and spider filtering tool in 2014. You configure this at a view settings level (via a tick box) and need to enable this for each view you wish it to apply to.

Spam traffic is currently a growing problem within Analytics. Selecting "remove bots and filters" within your view settings however still allows some automated referrals to make their way through to your reports and so you'll need to take action e.g. via setting up exclusion filters to remove them or taking one of the steps outlined below.

Ghost Referrals

It's recommended that you also check your "Audience / Technology / Network" report and then change the "primary dimension" (link below the graph) to "Hostname" to check for anything suspicious - the hostname is the domain from which your content was viewed or tracking was triggered.

If you see unexpected results here (e.g. darodar.com) these may be from ghost referrals - this traffic never actually visited your site but tracking was triggered via the Google Analytics "Measurement Protocol". An include filter (telling Google to only include your domain and other relevant domains) can help limit such ghost referrals but for a more comprehensive (but more technical) solution LunaMetrics have described a technique using a cookie and Custom dimension.

If adding a filter as always ensure you have a master view with no filters applied to ensure that if you make a mistake no data is lost. You might also wish to create a test view and apply the filter to it before rolling it out to your main views.

As the number of sites generating automated referrals and ghost referrals appears to be growing (we've seen a big increase over the last few months) and site sources change you'll also need to be proactive about this. Having performed an initial audit to identify and exclude any suspicious referrals from your reports you may then want to set up some alerts within the Intelligence Events section of your primary analytics view.

What if we have already been affected?

If you are preparing reports based upon historic data that includes referral spam you'll need to use advanced segments to filter this data out. Identify the hostnames and referrals you wish to exclude and then create an advanced filter to exclude traffic by source / hostname. (Note if there are a lot of suspect hostnames you may instead want to use an include statement).

Ultimately this is a problem that Google will need to (and we are confident will) address or using Analytics is going to become a lot more problematic - there is a danger though that the problem could get worse (and potentially more complex) in the meantime. For now we strongly advise that GA users are proactive about identifying whether they are affected and take steps to ensure the integrity of their data and their reporting.

If you have concerns about automated referrals compromising your data get in touch and we'll be happy to explain how we can help - drop us an email at info@andersanalytics.com. It's likely that there will be further developments here - we'll provide additional updates in due course.