This is an unedited transcript created using Otter.Ai. As such, it may contain minor errors.

 

Chapter One: GA4 and Digital Communications

 

Paul Sutton 0:00

Hi. I’m Paul Sutton and this is digital download the show where I talk to topic experts on digital marketing social media and public relations, about the things that matter in today’s communications industry.

 

Google finally started enforcing the use of Google Analytics for this summer. But it’s fair to say that it hasn’t exactly been welcomed with open arms by marketers. In July, one of the SEO industry’s top media outlets, Search Engine Land wrote a piece entitled 10 Things we hate about GA for. So if you’re finding it a struggle, maybe there’s little comfort in knowing that you are far from alone.

 

Or maybe not. I have spoken to several consultants in the last few months who’ve been pulling their hair out trying to get their heads around GA four. And to be completely honest, I’d count myself in that too. knowing your way around GA four is one thing, but easily getting hold of and analysing meaningful data is quite another. Among the common gripes that people have are the user interface, the lack of resources that explain GA for in easily understandable terminology, the lack of features, the non existent reports and the fact that overall, it’s just incredibly difficult to use. Whereas its predecessor, Universal Analytics was pretty intuitive. Ga four has very obviously been built by data engineers with no grasp on real world use.

 

I asked my LinkedIn network what they make of it, Gregory Rose said he’s confused as to what it is. I like to think I’m intelligent person and pick up skills fairly quickly, he said, but it’s thrown my campaigns a little John Adams said that it’s massively over complicated, especially if you’re not an E commerce business. She told me that she usually picks up new analytics changes easily, but that even with training she finds it hard to see the data she needs. Amy roe and Chiara Bella Kendra and agreed that GA four is unnecessarily complex, and seems to be designed for E commerce and not for those working in comms. Stuart Bruce said that whereas GA three had an acceptable difficulty to learn for the benefit ratio G for doesn’t have enough benefit for the effort.

 

Well, enough is enough. And so for today’s show, I turned to the person who I know understands GA for better than most communications professionals, and is capable of explaining things in words we can all understand. Andrew, Bruce Smith has worked in comms for over three decades and has the claim to fame of being the second person in Britain to send a press release by email in 1990. So journalists, you should blame Andrew, you’re going to web analytics before Google LM hooks even existed. And so he’s been a user since the day it launched. He says that around 2008, he started to connect the dots between PR work and web analytics and started to look at the relationship between media coverage and behaviour online.

 

Chapter Two: PR Measurement

 

Andrew Smith  3:23  

From there, I kind of worked out. There’s not that many people working in PR and comms that have any clue whatsoever about how to utilise web analytics data and how to integrate it with with everything else. And I guess that’s when I began doing training for the CRP, er, and I suggested what I do a workshop around it, this is 2012, this insurer. And here we are 11 years later, that course is still very popular. And yeah, I spend a lot of my time working with agencies or in house teams to help them get the most out of out of Google Analytics.

 

Paul Sutton  3:57  

Do you find it surprising that 10 years on that course is still very popular?

 

Andrew Smith  4:03  

I mean, yes, and no.

 

Paul Sutton  4:05  

I get the questions a lot. And I do sort of probably not as in depth as you but training on the basics of analytics for PR people and comms people. And it always it still surprises me to this day that I get asked that. When it’s been so long, you know,

 

Andrew Smith  4:21  

don’t get me started, to be honest that the debate around measure evaluation is kind of depressing. Because I remember even back in the 1980s when I started out in PR, we’re having same conversations, oh, you know, PR we need to get better at measurement. We need to get better at evaluation and 30 odd years later, we’re still asking the same questions. It’s that is kind of you know, a bit depressing. But yeah, to be fair, on the upside, I mean, clearly it’s not as bad as it once was. I’m just disappointed. We haven’t got a lot further in that. In that journey. We can spend it again forever arguing what more discussed seeing why is that the case? Our PR people just inherently kind of like, you know, they just Oh, numbers, data and statistics or mathematics? Oh, no, no, I want to I want to avoid it. I don’t know, I don’t You don’t need a PhD. But I just think there are some basic, basic basic principles that it’s well worth just spending a bit of effort to wrap your head around, because it will serve you well,

 

Paul Sutton  5:24  

for Well, exactly. I mean, things like, you know, like said, things like backlinks and referral traffic and all that sort of stuff. That’s not It’s not rocket science, it’s it really isn’t.

 

Andrew Smith  5:32  

No, it really, it really isn’t rocket science. As I say, I think there’s this kind of tendency to Oh, if we’re, if we’re better at measurement, then it automatically means that our PR programmes are going to be more successful rather than it’s the other way around. If you measure properly, that can provide you the insights to then help you improve your, your communications programme, but but in the absence of of measurement, then it is just guesswork. Which, you know, you’re welcome to try that. But I think you’ll come unstuck.

 

Paul Sutton  6:06  

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I guess leading on to the topic we’re going to talk about today, then, when when did I start using analytics? That would have been about 2005 2006? I think, because I originally, I was working for an agency, and then I set up an E commerce company at that time, and suddenly needed to get to know analytics and SEO and Yeah, exactly. AdWords and you know, all this stuff, which I didn’t have a clue about. So you know, learned it through through doing it.

 

Andrew Smith  6:40  

Well, that’s what most people do. I mean, let’s be honest, because that there were no real books in the early days where there was nowhere to go. You already found out as you say, by doing it. That’s That’s how everyone originally figured things out. In the early days.

 

Chapter Three: User Frustration

 

Paul Sutton  6:57  

Yeah, I think you’re right. So yeah, I mean, I’ve been using analytics them for 17 years or something like that. I don’t know. But I have to say I struggle with what’s happening. Now. We all want to put it bluntly. I hate che. I really do. I despise it. And I am one of these people who a year ago, was like, right, got to learn this stuff, got to transition everything across, hated it, put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off gets to June, and I’m starting to get this big flashing counter in my analytics and you’ve got 30 days left, you’ve got 29 days left. That count has now gone. And we’re fully into GA for now. Universal Analytics is gone.

 

Andrew Smith  7:42  

Well, it’s it seems to capture data. Yeah, yeah. You’ve got it. You’ve got a year left to we’ve got you’ve got a year left to extract that if that information if you want to keep it for posterity, which again, I suspect most people will leave it until next June. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Paul Sutton  7:57  

I mean, panic. Panic. Oh, yeah. On that point, though, what why do you think people like me hate this so much?

 

Andrew Smith  8:08  

Well, I think that my anecdotal sort of straw poll of people I talked to suggested that that is the general reaction to it. It’s a combination of things. It’s partly because it is so different from from what came before. The fact was that they had to do something, Google Analytics, three, Universal Analytics was built effectively on that original urging codebase. So it was a kind of almost a 20 year old technology. And for various reasons, it was never going to be, they couldn’t keep it going. So GTA four is effectively a completely brand new thing is built from the ground up.

 

There’s pros and cons to that. I mean, the pros should be well, it’s a blank sheet, you know, we can hopefully kind of build something that’s fit for the modern age, and can do lots of great things, and people will like it, that clearly isn’t up, it’s winter. So I say it’s unfortunate, I think a lot of the things that that people get annoyed about. They’re kind of they’ve kind of forced on Google, because they couldn’t just replicate exactly the way it was done before. Because it’s an entirely new data structure, data model, etc, etc, etc. So, there are clearly technical reasons why they’ve had to go a certain route.

 

Again, it’s like, dude, have you really thought this through properly? Because there’s a say that we’re gonna get into in detail in a minute, I’m sure but but one of the classics, of course, is people go, Oh, hang on. I’m used to all these reports that was there. Where are they all gone? You’ve got rid of all literally every single last damn one. The standard reports in GA four and the not even really reports. You get a couple of data cards really, really simplistic data carts. And that’s it. You know, if you want anything more or they’ve basically outsourced a lot of it to the user. Yeah, placing the responsibility on the user to have a clear idea of what they want.

 

Now, rightly or wrongly, most people don’t. It’s all very well saying, well, strictly speaking, you shouldn’t even get anywhere near Google Analytics until you’ve gone away and thought through what I want. In an ideal world, I get a pen and paper out literally and I draw a kind of a, the ideal sort of report dashboard. What are the dimensions and metrics? I think I should be tracking? What kind of visualisations do I want? Once I’ve decided that, then I go back, and I use Kinect, GA to try it, try and do that. And again, it’s, they haven’t said this very clearly to people. But obviously, all along, they, in fact, five or six years ago, they said, Look, we should separate effectively reporting from analysis. So really, GA four is strictly speaking a tool for capturing the data, and for analysing it, but reporting, use something else.

 

And of course, people will say, go and use Google Looker, or Data Studio as as it was formerly known. And they’ve got a point. Google Looker is a far far superior way of reporting and visualising well, not just data from GA for but but from anything. Arguably, that’s a good thing. You know, separating these these two, have they done a particularly I don’t think they have a good job of explaining to the general population as it were. This is how you should go about doing things live instead of putting on tutorials and resources to explain to people, this is why we’re doing it. You may have noticed, even using Universal Analytics, if you ever went anywhere near the dashboard feature within within universal universal for like the last five years, it would say, Oh, don’t use this, go and use Data Studio. Yeah, for years, they’ve been even telling their own users, the dashboard, bit of UAT universal wasn’t very good.

 

And that Looker was a superior way of doing it. But it’s one thing to say it will go and use this as opposed to look, here’s why. Absolutely. Let’s explain to you what’s going on here. That could be understood by most people who are not full time professional data analysts, or they’ve done a PhD in data analytics and visualisation. Because that is the most people.

 

Chapter Four: GA4 Differences from GA3

 

Paul Sutton  12:25  

And I mean, that’s probably where this confusion hatred comes from, I guess is that 80% of users? Probably more than that, I’d say more just normal, normal people. You know what I mean by that non data people, there are people who want data on or they want analysis of what they’re doing. But they’re not going to sit there for hours. Interrogating this stuff, they just want a neat, nice report.

 

Andrew Smith  12:49  

Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna give you an example with VGA for Now, admittedly, they’ve they’ve kind of obviously, they’ve been such howls of anguish that they’ve relented on this one. But GA for until probably towards the end of last year, you didn’t even have an inbuilt landing page report. You had to build your own. And it was a 10 step process, get one of the most basic reports imaginable. But you the user would first of all have to go away, and you have to work out what are those 10 steps just to get something that surely, surely that should be just there at the click of a button. Now it is. But that is one, kind of as I say, standard report that they relented on everything else, it’s still it’s on you, basically, to figure out what you want. And then to use the tool or the tools really in reality to arrive at what you’re, you’re looking for. I mean with GA for I mean, they did deliberately making it very difficult to share things with with others. So we can get into the detail on this. But the exploration feature, which is where you get the more detailed insights. So if you create an exploration report, you can share it only with other people who’ve got access to the GA account.

 

And even then it’s read only they can’t edit it. Yeah, if they want to amend or edit that that exploration report, they have to make a copy of their own and edit that and then share it with you, which is read only again, so you end up making I mean, it’s no, it’s clearly they do not want you to share it. They’re seeing it more as a kind of individual analysis tool for the user. If you want to report stuff and share it. Don’t use Google Analytics, you know, go off and use Google look at that’s what they want you to do. Now. You can just see from from the normal user standpoint, bloody hell. I’ve gone from using one tool which provide everything that I’m going to have to use to and I’ve got, I’ve got two sets of tools I need to learn how to use now. And Blimey, all the ones who

 

Paul Sutton  14:50  

was Yeah, exactly a quick snapshot. Yeah. It feels so short sighted. And like you said it’s not well my impression is it’s Not that the product is inherently bad, it’s that the comms around it and the way it’s been built and structured is inherently bad, if only that

 

Andrew Smith  15:09  

have PR professionals in your life could have been so different for Absolutely.

 

Paul Sutton  15:15  

Well, let’s get into some of the details of, of GA four. And let’s start with what what are the major differences between Universal Analytics and GA four?

 

Andrew Smith  15:28  

Okay, so it’s pretty well, it’s kind of you’re breaking those down into into different areas. If we start with a techie stuff first, fundamentally, Google Analytics for is a completely different tool product to GA three, GA three, was built on the historical urging code that was been around for 20 odd years. So it’s been completely built from the ground up to get a little bit too technical about it is a it’s an event based data architecture. In GA three, you had pageviews, and events, and what’s an event?

 

Yes, in the parlance of, of analytics, or at least at least Google Analytics, an event was any non page view interaction with a website. So somebody’s clicking the play button on a video or downloading a PDF, you’re clicking anything, quite frankly, is a non Patriot interaction, therefore that is an event. But pageviews. And events were kind of treated as kind of separate, separate entities with GA for there are only events. A page view is now just another kind of event that is tracked by by the system.

 

Paul Sutton  16:43  

So the question there that leads on from that, is our page views still counted? Is that just rolled into events now?

 

Andrew Smith  16:51  

Yeah, it’s it’s an event? Yes, they Yes, they are, where it gets slightly confusing for the ordinary user, of course, is now they’ve introduced this concept of parameters. What’s that? Yep. So parameters are basically kind of features of events. So if I take the page, for example, there’s the page view is now an event, which can have various parameters associated with it. An obvious one would be, well, what was the page that was opened? And you know, the page location, so the page location is a parameter, in this case associated with the page view event? To give GA for a little bit of bit of credit.

 

Previously, of course, if you want and most people did want to track events, you’re a PR person, do you want to track whether or not that PDF that you slaved over it has been downloaded? X number of times? You want to know that that? Why did did the people download that PDF? What brought them to the site? Wow, is our media coverage that drove people to the site? And they ended up down in that PDF? Yes, that’s definitely an event. Yep, I want to track historically, setting up event tracking in GA three was a bit of a pain in the rear. Now, to be fair, when Google tag manager came along, just put about, what about eight, nine years ago now, it’s certainly made that job a lot easier. But let’s be honest, it was still a bit of effort to be able to track events in GA three, a four has got a whole bunch of effectively kind of built in event tracking. So you want to track video plays. Don’t worry about it.

 

Now, it’s all in there, does it for you. file downloads, which was again, was always a bane bane of people’s lives. I remember, I won’t reveal the client was a very huge organisation about 12 years ago saying, Wow, we can track our PDF downloads. So how many of you got this about 10,000? So oh, well, who’s the poor sap, that’s going to have to literally add the event tracking code to all 10. saw the blood drain from their face. Tag Manager obviously, when it when it finally came along, would have made that that job a lot easier. But But now, ostensibly, you don’t just think about it, because it’s already taken care of. So that’s one of the good things I guess about about GA for the things that in the past would have taken quite a bit of effort to set up and particularly when it involves any kind of technical intervention. So what I’ve got to add add code to the site odia, you can tell that your typical PR professional is already going, well, there’s no way I’m gonna get it. Or you know, right.

 

Well, pour, it means I have to go to the web team. And it’s like, they’re going to add that to the million one other things they’ve got to do. I’d like to see it happen now. And then well, yeah, it’s at the bottom of the queue. Yeah, we’ll do it when we get rounds, which might be in the next two months, which again, is pointless. Yeah. So yeah, that’s sort of difference between the way in which that the two tools were kind of built, developed. But that’s sort of event based at your model. which is what GA faults rests upon. But yeah, so there are some good things, there are some good things that inbuilt event tracking basically takes care of the vast majority of things that people would want to track. And there’s no no further work required.

 

Paul Sutton  20:15  

Yeah. Okay. So in in one sentence, then just explain it very clearly. The main difference is that GTA four tracks, all interactions on a website, whereas previously, it tracked sessions or pageviews.

 

Andrew Smith  20:33  

It tracks sessions, it treated events and pages as separate things altogether. Yeah.

 

Paul Sutton  20:37  

See, I can’t even do that in one sentence, because I still still didn’t get that quite right.

 

Andrew Smith  20:41  

Yeah. I didn’t explain it very

 

Paul Sutton  20:43  

well. But no, you did absolutely. Like, there’s the problem. Inevitably, then this is going to lead to or does lead to discrepancies between the data that is pulled in, and therefore the data that is that you can find?

 

Chapter Five: Sessions and Bounce Rates

 

Andrew Smith  20:59  

Yeah, it’s good point. So there are new metrics, for example, in GA four that we didn’t have in the old version. And there are metrics that have got the same name, but they’re calculated in different ways, which is not helpful. Not helpful. And again, it’s been unfortunate people been talking about, you know, migrating from from GA three to four, you can’t really migrate because they’re completely different people. So can I take the data from GA three and important, and you can’t? Yeah, because it’s two completely different data models. You’re not comparing apples with apples?

 

So the short answer is, sadly, no. Yeah. I mean, you can make some some approximations. But at the end of the day, they are different. I think one of the key kind of new metrics is this concept of an engaged session. Yes, it’s worth a minute or two on the engaged session. So what is that? So by default, I think gauge session with GA for today is when a user visits a site, and either visits two or more pages, or spends at least 10 seconds or more on the site. Now, people might think, well, that doesn’t sound much different to what it was before. But with GA three, for example, a bounce visit was when the visitor visitors site only visited a single page and then departed. Yep.

 

But it had no idea how long that person’s spent on that single page. Was it two seconds? Or was it 30? minutes? Yep. If it would, it wouldn’t believe me. And so we’ll look at the column where it says time. Yep. And it’s always 00. Really what I thought it I thought it meant that the person spent no, it didn’t. To be fair, again, the Engage session is trying to take into account how much time a person spent on the site. And even if they only spent, if only visit a single page. If they spent 10 minutes on it, then it counts. It’s not a bounced visit. That makes that makes sense. That is to make things even more complicated, of course, that some people said, well, 10 seconds, that doesn’t sound very long to me, is that really long enough for somebody to be counted as a as an engaged visitor? I would have thought, would it be better to say 60 seconds? Well, now there’s the option if you want to nga for to change that default.

 

So if you want to save 10s 10s Enough, I want to make it 3040 50, then you can get the danger there there is that certainly, if you’re reporting to senior management, if you adjust that from say, 10 seconds to 60, your bounce rate will immediately go up. Because bounce rate in GA four is calculated in a different way to what it was previously. In the old one, it was a single page visit. And that was it. Now a bounce visit is simply the number of is the total number of sessions minus the engaged sessions. It’s a measure of non engaged session. If that, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. If you raise the threshold for the engaged session limit, your bounce rate is going to go up. Yeah. Which makes perfect sense. So again, people now start to study, you can really start people start to think about, oh, well, I don’t want the bounce rate to go up. So I know I should raise the threshold for engaged session, but I’m going to keep it low. So I want the

 

Paul Sutton  24:17  

No, missing the point.

 

Andrew Smith  24:19  

And missing the point. Surely, if you’re genuinely interested in an engaged visitor, then I’m sure you want to make it the maximum that you think is the right one to truly track that. Yes, people have arrived to the site. And they are spending an acceptable minimum amount of time because that reassures that yes, they’re here. And there hopefully they are you’re reading the content and watching content, whatever else. But yes, the Engage session and the relationship there between bounce rate is kind of a pretty, pretty crucial one to wrap your head around if that that makes sense. Yeah, it

 

Paul Sutton  24:54  

does. Absolutely. I was asked a question the other day by someone who said it was to do with this and if I raise my by my threshold of what counts as an engaged session, and they said to me, well, let’s say someone opens my website, and they leave it open on a tab, and they leave it open for 10 minutes, but they’re doing absolutely nothing with it. You just got to suck that up. Um, yeah, exactly. Yes.

 

Andrew Smith  25:20  

I mean, strictly speaking, Google does allow you to adjust the so called session timeout. So as previously, the default is 30 minutes. So if there’s 30 minutes of inactivity, then GA does assume well, they’ve obviously gone away so that the session is over. So if you’ve if you wanted to, if you felt actually CERT is too long, if it’s inactive for 10 minutes, I want to end the session when you can, that’s up to you. Yeah, that’s a that’s an adjustable setting. But I think for the vast majority of people, what, most people don’t realise there is a timeout, no, no, no. Or even that is adjustable. Yeah. But yeah, absolutely. If somebody, if somebody was to tab and for whatever reason, you know, the Phone Guy or whatever, they’re distracted, they go somewhere else, and the tabs still open. Sure. That’s, its that’s the proxy.

 

Paul Sutton  26:08  

Yeah, absolutely. I’m the person who asked me was, was kind of getting up whether directly asked me where as GA, for fix this thing? Can Can we now? Can I now tell if someone has literally done that? Because they haven’t interacted with the site. They haven’t scrolled, they’ve done nothing. They’ve just opened it and left it.

 

Andrew Smith  26:27  

Again, this is this. This is where people sort of forget that. In reality, Google Analytics is tracking the browser, not the person. Yeah. Yeah. You’re assuming there is a human being on the other side? Yeah, screen. Yeah. It’s the the age old joke about if if there’s a computer in a shared environment, ie at home, where multiple different people can access the same browser, you’ll get a pretty interesting. So one minute, they’re looking at Vogue, and the next minute, they’re checking out the Harley Davidson website. And it’s like, assuming it’s the same person, but in reality, it’s different people using the same browser. And even now, Google Analytics is simply tracking the browser. So unless you’re going to start to connect the camera, check,

 

Paul Sutton  27:22  

hey, we can do it. Now. Facial recognition and AI will be working out.

 

Andrew Smith  27:26  

Somebody’s working on it as we absolutely.

 

Paul Sutton  27:29  

Okay. So another one of the things that is, is mentioned to me quite a lot at the moment is around the user interface in J four, which I mean, I think is atrocious. And a lot of people seem to think that I mean, I had a question just last week, from someone who was trying to find referral traffic, fairly straightforward thing to do, isn’t it? You know, if she can see the number of referrals? Could she find where those referrals were from? No, it’s, you know,

 

Chapter Six: User Interface and Reporting

 

Andrew Smith  28:00  

because, okay, so the interface, let’s be honest, has been drastically stripped back. Yeah. So you, again, if you think about the old interface, effectively, your kind of left hand side menu in GA three, was just a way of, of kind of aggregating all of these pre built reports, under audience acquisition, behaviour, etc. And there are about 120 of these pre built reports. And people forget that even then, it defaulted to showing you a table view, but you have four other options to display. So there was actually a really kind of, you know, vast array of different ways of taking these kind of standard reports off the shelf. And you know, you’ve got something you can you can begin to work with. Yeah, that’s not how it works. Yeah.

 

So in the old one, there was a, there was an off the shelf referral report, yeah, there isn’t anymore. You know, to be honest, and to replicate what you have previously, you would need to use the exploration feature, you’re gonna need to go in, and you’re gonna need to manually select the dimensions and metrics that you’re looking for. And again, just to make it even harder, you have to seek out the dimension. I’m trying to refer to my head now. I think it is something like you know, paid on the score refer us you need to find that dimension, import it into exploration. And then you need to then effectively build the report that you want.

 

So there’s a number of steps you need to go through just to get the basic referrer report. I mean, just on that as a bit of a sidebar, I think because because people have been asking me this for the last couple of years. And this was this was happening in GA three because we’ve been sort of monitoring the traffic we get from media coverage for a few years now. But we’ve we’ve noticed that it seems to be going down. So Well, it probably isn’t. But here’s a little known change that Google made to the Chrome browser about three years ago in 2020. So stop me from getting too boring here.

 

But it is kind of important for PR people. So up until 2020, the Chrome browser, if the user went to a website, let’s say the F T, and the F T site didn’t explicitly tell the browser not to pass on the full referral string of the page opened to to the site that the person visited. It did it. So hey, we’ve got this piece of coverage on the ft. That’s the URL of the coverage, browsers, browsers open. they’ve clicked the link, they’ve got the site. And we can see in Google Analytics, how many people who visited that ft story came to the site in 2020, they decided that they would make it a kind of opt in. In other words, if the site doesn’t explicitly tell Google, it can pass on that referral information. It would say no, right? Even if it hasn’t said you can’t. So most sites don’t have a policy, if you will. But Google says, Well, you didn’t tell us we can. We won’t.

 

So increasingly, over the last several years, you would see you be able to see how much traffic the FT might have sent to your site, but breaking it down into the industry pieces of coverage? No, yeah, yeah. So effectively, that’s going to disappear, really, because people have started getting worried thinking, what does it mean that, you know, our media coverage isn’t sending traffic? Well, it almost certainly still is. But your ability to break it down to that granular level of an individual user coverage is being stymied by that introduction of that policy to correct.

 

I mean, to be fair, Google’s is look, you know, it’s about privacy. It’s about so that’s, I think the argument they are making. But, again, you could argue, well, even if you had a prebuilt referral report now in GA for from a PR perspective of using it to understand media coverage traffic? Well, it probably still wouldn’t tell you much anywhere. Other than the total amount of traffic from, say, a media site. All we got 3000 visits from the FT this month. And there’s only one story I got on there must be that one. Yeah. But if you’ve had, yeah, so you get the idea.

 

Paul Sutton  32:12  

Yeah. Okay. But then if using this specific example, then if I go into GA for and I, because you can do it, you can see where the referrals are coming from to a degree anyway, can I then save that dashboard? Or do I then have to save the dashboard in a third party tool?

 

Andrew Smith  32:30  

So so the clarity, the standard reports in in GA four, still allowed to add a so called secondary dimension, but again, it’s not obvious. But you’ll see in the kind of the really basic table, there’s little plus sign if you click on that, so you could, for example, put in your referral as the second option. But generally, using the exploration feature is the better way to do it. Because you’ve got complete control over the dimensions and metrics you select. Yeah. So again, it’s this whole idea of Google saying, Look, we want to separate your ability to analyse your data and then to report on it. So in the exploration feature, you could build a basic table, which might give you some insights, because again, that the visualisation options in GA for pretty restricted, you can do a table, I think you do a scatterplot, and two or three others, whereas Of course, Google looker. Wow, you know, you’ve got the full nine yards.

 

Yeah. So again, this is why people hate it is that well, you know, I’ve got the insight, but really, I can’t share it, I want to put into report management, it’s not going to give the CEO access to GA, that’s, that’s the on the cards. So you, you’re being pushed to use, say, Google Looker, where you can actually kind of take whatever visualisation you want. And then select the appropriate metrics and then display them so that it may seem a bit odd. But the idea is you you kind of work out what you want to show in GA, and then go over here into Looker to actually then share that information with with others. And a little sidebar with with Google look at which again, is just what what is Google playing at. So you can obviously pull data from GA four into a looker dashboard. But until a few weeks ago, they didn’t let you pull in the full range of dimensions and metrics.

 

Paul Sutton  34:22  

They’ve only had a year to work out or give them a chance.

 

Andrew Smith  34:27  

Or even longer. For example, until a few weeks ago, the landing page dimension was not one you could access through Google looker. You know, I spent hours getting the landing page data I want. Yeah, I want to display it in looker. I can’t do it. Thankfully, about two or three weeks ago, they have now made pretty much the full because there are 300 dimensions and metrics prebuilt dimensions and metrics in GA four, but they’re only giving you a small number of them until till recently, to be able to pull them in. And so we ended up in some of us ended up doing these ludicrous kind of workarounds to try and sort of replicate a landing page, landing page table. In Google look at it, it should not be that difficult.

 

Chapter Seven: User Behaviour and Insights

 

Paul Sutton  35:14  

Really? Absolutely. One of the things, or another thing, should I say that I’m hearing quite a lot from people. And I think this comes down to a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, really. But it’s around user lifecycles. So people have said to me, they’re getting very excited about the fact that they can now track a single user and where they go, and how they what they’re doing around the place. Do you want to dig into this a bit more and maybe dispel some myths?

 

Andrew Smith  35:43  

Well, in reality, you could have done that before in in GA three, it was a little known feature, which was the there was a there was a user explorer report. Strictly speaking, it allows you to understand the interactions from a single client ID, because in reality, when people talk about adding the GA tracking code to your website, yes, it’s a little bit of JavaScript. But effectively, what happens is when somebody opens the page in the browser, fires a JavaScript what it’s doing is it’s it’s looking to see, is there an existing client ID cookie already in the browser? And if it can detect that it’s like, well, this browser has been to this site previously, it’s a Returning Visitor.

 

It’s a unique number assigned to that browser that allows Google to kind of understand different to different browsers coming to a site. The second cookie is the session, cookie that records all the data within the session, and then it can you you attach the client ID to the session data. And that’s how it so the user explorer report, J. Three, was saying that down to the level of an individual client ID, we can tell you that that that particular browser first came to the site, you know, six months ago, and all the interactions, but it took me all year. And again, you think from a GDPR standpoint, or blimey probably sometimes you might be able to you might work out who that is? Certain days, anyway. Well, that aside. So you’ve been able to do that for a very, very long time. The reality of fire, those will, but was it actually any use to you?

 

So I mean, I know Google’s idea as well. Let’s say you it wasn’t for stalking purposes. But it was a case of well, if you identify certain people who are displaying the kind of user behaviour, you want to see more of, you know, what can you learn from that? Wow, this person turned up and they looked at 20 pages, and then they did this isn’t this, we want we want FERS as more people to do just this. What is it about that session? Or that user interactions that we can try and replicate that? What was it a particular campaign or a channel, whatever, I think that was the thinking. But behind that, and it’s there, it’s still there in GA for it’s an off the shelf exploration.

 

So you can if you want to go in, and you can look at an individual client ID or arrange a client IDs to get the data associated with it. I guess it’s a moot point is it kind of feels like it should be good. But what actually is the practical use of that unless you aren’t going to use it in that kind of way? To try and figure out what those are user interactions, behaviours that we want to see more of? What can we learn from those that are doing it, to try and encourage others who aren’t to do what we’d like them to do? So that’s there, it’s still there in GA for again, how easy is it? To find that?

 

Well, you need to know what an exploration report is, you need to know how to get into it, you need to know where to then find that default exploration template, because you still need to attend with any new exploration. You’ve got to define upfront, what dimensions do I want? What metrics do I want, and sundry other things before it will do anything? Because even if you’d sit there going, well, I’ve picked my dimensions and metrics. And it’s still a great big blank screen. Yeah, yeah. Because you’ve got to drag them over into that sort of second column to then and say, Well, is it a table? I want? Is it this is, there’s all these little steps you got to go to before you even see anything? Yeah,

 

Paul Sutton  39:21  

I guess this is the big issue, isn’t it, which we referred to earlier is that all of this stuff is great. But for the people specifically who listened to this podcast, are not the people who are going to do this. They’re just not. So I mean, is is the onus on them. But here’s a question. If I if I’m running a PR agency, let’s say, let’s say there’s 30 People in my agency, do I now need to hire a data person who’s gonna sit there building reports for GA for and looking at each client and I don’t know.

 

Andrew Smith  39:53  

Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, do you need a full time person? I mean, do you do pay Somebody who knows what they’re doing to kind of work with you basically can bring in a consultant, not it’s not a plug for myself. That That, to me is probably the more practical way forward. So if you’re working with somebody that you can brief them correctly, and they basically go and build it for you. Yeah. I just think this this idea of all just let’s let’s hire somebody, and that’s all they do. Or that

 

Paul Sutton  40:28  

maybe, right, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But I do think it changes the onus on maybe smaller companies, smaller agencies, independent people as well. Oh, yeah. Who are just not got the there are only 24 hours of the day. Yeah, exactly. Not got the time to do this.

 

Andrew Smith  40:47  

You have to make decisions about what am I going to spend my time doing what I mean, just to cut to the chase, what is the return? Okay, right, I’m gonna bite the bullet, you know, I’m going to go and spend your days being shown how it works and what to do to set it up. You know, we’re probably you probably took about a week, maybe two weeks of your time. And now just to get to a point where I’ve even got a basic reporting setup. Is it really worth it? Yeah, my clients really care that much about it. I mean, I’ve had a lot of conversations, certainly with smaller agencies, you know, freelancers going on. I know if a car you’ve shown us all this really, really likes to short and to be honest, you know, my, my clients couldn’t give a monkey’s about all that stuff. Yeah, they just want the basics. And, you know, I’ll be honest, I said, Well, you know, if, if that’s the case, well, there’s no law that says you have to stay with Google.

 

Paul Sutton  41:45  

No. Which leads on to the next point, probably. Is that okay? You’re right. You don’t have to stay with Google. So what are the better? I’m gonna say free competitors, because Google’s free, what are the better free competitors that people should be checking out if they’re sick of this?

 

Chapter Eight: AI Powered Tools for Data Analysis

 

Andrew Smith  42:04  

The one tool that I generally hear people talk about in this context is Massimo matomo. Choi, I never know. Which I think was originally called Pickwick. Okay. So it’s, it’s been around a long time. And I think, you know, hats off to Mattamy, I think they’ve done a very good job have positioned themselves as saying, look, hey, if you liked the way Google was, that’s where that’s what we do. Effectively, we’ve we’ve built a tool that that to all intents and purposes, kind of works in the way that you’re used to. And they they really kind of push this idea that they’ve they’ve always been privacy and convenience, data, data, compliance strengths all along,

 

I’m certainly aware of, in some cases, really sizeable organisations. It’s interesting that they do very well in Germany, unsurprisingly. So a lot, and a lot of larger German organisations have gone yet. We’re not going to stay with Google Maps. So and, you know, they’ve clearly not got anywhere near that market penetration. But but to be fair, if people are asking, Where can I go for a tool that is credible, robust, free, and it works the way that I’m used to? Absolutely, definitely.

 

Paul Sutton  43:24  

Can you run the two alongside each other? I mean, it does it work on a little bit JavaScript in exactly the same way that

 

Andrew Smith  43:31  

literally so you just instal the mattermost code. I mean, yeah, there’s nothing there’s been nothing to stop anyone who wanted to from from running multiple different analytics tools simultaneously. on your site. That’s that’s always been an option. In fact, ironically, I mean, another one that springs to mind, of course, is some is Microsoft, Microsoft clarity. Turns out is actually not bad at all. And I mean, I was I was kind of surprised a few weeks ago when, I mean, I think they launched it, what, three years ago, and of course, I installed it put it in, so yeah, it’s all right. You know, and certainly, at that point, integrated with GA three, as, as in it can pull in some data from g4 and combine it with with with their own data. I mean, it’d be like hot jar, it combines elements of user tracking, etc.

 

But what I was I lightbulb moment a few weeks ago, when somebody said all you do realise they’ve they’ve introduced copilot into clarity and like, really, what’s that? So copilot is Microsoft bringing AI to all of its tools. So we haven’t got it yet in Word or PowerPoint, we will very shortly, but it’s already in clarity, right? How does this work? And it’s really quite smart. So this is where the AI looks at the data for you and effectively reports back to you in plain English, right? What it’s found. It’s like, ah, that’s really good. So for example, with a with a kind of a heatmap report Previously, it would have said, well, this person kind of spent 40 minutes on the site and they visited these pages and you can watch the Maris move around the page.

 

The AI goes, Well, based on that data, this looks like somebody who really is quite interested in your products and services. Okay, we can, we can see that the map, we can see, because of the amount of time is spent looking at that content on that page, and oh, look, they hovered over that tab about pricing or whatever. So it gives you like a natural language understanding report of the data. Wow. Now that’s, that’s pretty cool. Absolutely. So I can’t believe for a minute that Google isn’t going to start in to kind of hope they might start to introduce that kind of capability into Google Analytics. Yeah. But But yeah, the point being clarity, completely free, does a perfectly basic acceptable job of just tracking the basic stuff. And now it’s got that that AI capability to really just help the ordinary person. Understand, what’s this telling me? What’s his status actually saying to me? I think it’s really quite good. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Paul Sutton  46:09  

And that, that would make sense of GTA four. To me. If there was an AI plugged into it, you don’t have to do anything. It just tells you. I mean,

 

Andrew Smith  46:21  

we’re all being told that Google’s been investing in AI for longer than anybody else, etc, etc, you know, got this got Deep Mind, etc, etc. You know, why? Got? I mean, to be fair, I mean, there are elements of that sort of AI where they analyse the data, and I’ll come back little sort of little card that says, oh, you know, based on what we’ve we anthropomorphizing the AI have seen, but but not not in the way that the Microsoft co pilot does. I mean, who knows? I mean, it would be surprising. If Google isn’t, yeah, it’s gonna do that. But it’s like, Can you hurry up, please

 

Chapter Nine: Migration  Challenges

 

Paul Sutton  46:57  

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess just to finish off, then, two things. Firstly, do you think Google shot yourself in the foot a bit with this?

 

Andrew Smith  47:11  

A bit? No. I think it’s both battles. Blue, both feet off, quite frankly. I mean, if you think about, if you look back, I mean, really, this this whole journey, if that’s the right word to use began about five years ago. I mean, Google would argue, look, we use, strictly speaking, we’ve all had five years to get our heads around GA four, they introduced the beta version in 2018. For two years, they said, Look, here it is, that we’re encouraging everyone to instal it and run it in parallel with with analytics.

 

And of course, nobody did. A fewest did because we were interested in it. But But most people go, Well, it’s not it’s not the real thing, and not enough time. And you know, look, this is working. So yeah, I’ll get round to it eventually. Yeah, when they finally launched the real thing, that’s when I look at it. Well, then they did in 2020. Thinking right, now, everyone’s gonna have another year or two, and everyone’s gonna neatly kind of move over to four, because that’s what we’ve told him to do. Nobody did. So that’s where they find it was, oh, so we’re basically going to have to force people to do it. So when the last year in March of last year said, we’re going to kill Universal Analytics by next July, they gave us another, whatever, 1415 months to do it.

 

And even now, even now, even now that that universalize is officially not capturing any more more information, various people have tried to estimate well, how many people have actually moved to GA for and no matter who you talk to? There are huge numbers of people who don’t appear to have moved to for what’s going on. They all move to Massimo even realise that they’re gonna wake up in two months ago. We haven’t got any data.

 

Paul Sutton  48:56  

Exactly that exactly that people clocking in it, like I said, two months, six months ago. What data? Where’s it gone? Yeah, absolutely. But that was undoubtedly happened to a big number of people. Totally.

 

Andrew Smith  49:08  

You got, you got nothing. Yeah, nothing. Okay.

 

Paul Sutton  49:11  

So obviously, people listening to this. They’re listening to this for a reason, because they’re struggling with it. I mean, there’s no way around it. People got work to do. It’s that simple, right? What’s the start point for anyone who’s thinking I don’t, I don’t know where to start. I’ve logged into it. Now. It’s pulling data. I look at it. I don’t know what to do. What’s the start point for people?

 

Andrew Smith  49:33  

Well, I’ll say I’m not going to plug my own services, please do. Obviously, I I run off the shelf workshops through CRP and PRCA and bespoke etc. But if people are looking for locate, that involves spending money, there are a couple of excellent resources on the web. There’s a YouTube channel called analytics mania. Search track called Julius Federer. Vicus for pronounced that correctly, okay, Julius is great love Julius literally every every week without fail. He’s been producing these fantastic GA four tutorial videos for the last several years. So I’d recommend going to his channel.

 

Don’t be too overwhelmed, because there’s tonnes of videos, but I think he this year updated his kind of GA for beginners tutorial video. It’s about an hour long. If you don’t if nothing else, I’ve watched that as a starting point. Because I think that will well, it’ll help you make a decision, I think. Yeah. All right. Okay, there’s a bit of work involved here. But you know, I think it’s worth it. So do it or now. You know, Where’s where’s Massimo? Let’s go. And let’s go and instal that. Or what? Just investigate another simple, simpler tool. Yeah.

 

Paul Sutton  50:52  

Or find someone who’s going to help you and work with you in collaboration?

 

Andrew Smith  50:57  

That’s yeah, exactly. Although to be fair, I’m just to start on the measurement point, investing time and effort in understanding Google Looker slash Data Studio probably is worthwhile, because you can obviously use it not just with GA for but actually, I mean, you can use it literally for everything. Yeah. It’s interesting, I think the agency is now waking up to the fact that, hey, we can actually build this kind of holistic reporting dashboard for clients that’s pulling in data from our media coverage and social media and Google Analytics and an SEO data and we can combine it and when we get really clever, we can blend the data and show Hey, do you realise the effect our media coverage is having on say, branded search? You know, you’re going, Oh, great, you’ve got this media coverage.

 

And you’re telling us that x number of people may have seen it, but how do we know what effect it’s had? Well, if you can see that your brand search is going up or something to cause that to go up. So just maybe it’s that increased visibility through PR, that’s explaining a lot of that knock on effect. And you know, more people searching for your brand definitely means more people going to your site, and if sales are going up, hey, there we go. We’re now starting to join the dots between what we do and our effects on on on outcomes. So that what I think are fantastic and quite exciting is that there is no Google look at cost nothing and is perfectly capable in the right hands of pulling that kind of data together and doing it I’m not saying it’s it’s a five minute job.

 

But it’s it you know, it doesn’t have to take you months, a little bit of sort of effort involved even to build something quite basic, I think gives you confidence to go wow, you know, now we can start to look at pulling in other things as well. So I think that’s that’s something to bear in mind.