Happy Pi Day, peeps!
Google Analytics is Ready to Rumble
If you don’t spend a lot of time building or editing websites you’d be forgiven for missing the major seismic activity coming to Google Analytics later this year. The current iteration of Google Analytics, usually referred to as “Universal Analytics”, is being replaced by the new generation: Google Analytics 4. Universal Analytics has been around since 2012, but as of July 1, 2023, it will stop collecting hits.
I recall when this was announced that my analytics friends were highly doubtful that Google would be ready for this transition. After more than a decade of tracking, Universal Analytics is widely used. But, to be fair, Google has done a lot of work to prepare – offering training and assisting users with migration to the new platform.
Even so, there will be some growing pains. GA4 tracks website events, as opposed to Universal Analytics, which tracked sessions; the two data sets do not count the same. Historical data will also be a hot topic. Google has promised access to Universal Analytics data for six months, but beyond that, access is unclear. And GA4 will save only 14 months of data, a hit (pun intended) after the unlimited historical data stored by Universal Analytics.
Tips & Tools
Today’s Special: SEO Meta in 1 Click.
This Chrome extension gives you everything Google sees when it indexes your site at a glance. It also shows heading structure, broken links, alt tag info, and other handy insights to help ensure your site is solid.
Stat of the Week
~55% of all websites use Google Analytics. That’s about 84% of the market share for web analytics tools or 28 million sites. [1]
Meet me IRL!
In case you can’t get enough of today’s SEO theme you can join me for an SEO Basics Lunch & Learn at Blush Cowork tomorrow at noon.
After that, I’ll be available from 1-3pm for office hours to help you with your tech troubles. Hope to see you there!
References
[1] – https://www.businessdit.com/google-analytics-statistics/