Google Universal Analytics has been a helpful tool in interpreting website performance for marketers and business owners alike for what seems like forever, but Google announced that Universal Analytics will be going away in favor of their new platform, Google Analytics 4, as of July 1, 2023. This means that everyone using Analytics will have to make the switch to GA4 before the summer.
This change is going to be disruptive for Analytics users, but have no fear. APSEO is here to walk you through how to use the new platform for SEO.
Why The Switch To GA4?
There are a number of factors in Google making this switch. The company says its making the change because Universal Analytics (UA) is outdated and so it can provide easier access and interpretation of site data to help users make more informed decisions.
While UA has flaws in keeping up with the use of current and new technologies in measuring website visits, and GA4 does boast some impressive AI and data modeling, the real reason for the switch is to protect Google from further litigation in the wake of GDPR and other privacy laws.
This is partly why your UA data will be available for a limited time (Google says at least 6 months) post-switch so you don’t have access to potentially litigious data hosted by the platform for much longer.
What’s Different in GA4 vs. UA?
In a word, mostly everything, but the main difference between the two is how the two tools collect data.
Universal Analytics employs a mostly web-based hit model but excludes other sources that are growing in popularity such as mobile apps (iOS/Android), while GA4 combines both web-based and app metrics into one data layer.
There is also more importance on “events” than UA. You can set the machine to pull automatically collected events here or manually enter “recommended events” as per your marketing funnel and strategy. Examples of recommended events include if a user shares a piece of your content or signs up for your email list.
GA4 SEO Reports
There are some minor changes to common SEO reports. Let’s walk through them so we can start to analyze our organic traffic stats in GA4.
Default channel grouping/Traffic By Channel
With GA4, the default channel grouping report can be found under Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition. Here you can use this acquisition report much like you would the default channel report in UA. There are some differences though: bounce rate is gone and replaced by “engagement rate” as is pages per session, now listed as “events per session” and average session duration is now “average engagement time per session”.
As you can tell, GA4 is obsessed with events. This ties in with the level of customization the machine wants to offer users while protecting site visitors’ data.
Landing Page/Top Pages Report
One of the more helpful reports in UA is the landing page/top pages report found in the Behavior section of the module. This lets you see your top pages for a given time period along with options to filter by channel. In GA4, this has been replaced by the “Pages + Screens” report found under the Reports > Engagement > Pages + Screens.
Clicking the + sign next to the page title + screen will allow you to add a variety of other UA “secondary dimensions” but to filter by the organic channel, you’ll now have to go to the top of the page, click “add filter,” select session medium and then organic. You can also edit date ranges to pull specific data and comparisons on the top of the screen.
Google Search Console in Ga4
If you have linked Google Search Console to GA4, you can see landing pages and queries under Acquistion > Acquisition Overview in separate cards or via its own section on the sidebar.
This is good contextual data, but we would recommend using Google Search Console for this data whether in the module itself or via a Google Data Studio Report
Track GA4 Along with UA
Since there’s a bit of a learning curve to GA4, implementing it along with your current UA snippet will allow you to compare reports to see what changes are important to you and your business.
This can be as simple as having your UA account open alongside your GA4 one to compare and contrast the data available. Be sure to click around GA4 to explore the new data options available, including AI options where you can get quick answers to some common questions such as “how many visits did my site get last week?”
Is your SEO Strategy Ready for GA4?
It can help to have a guiding hand help you interpret the new data in GA4 and how to use it to align with your SEO and marketing strategy as a whole.
Contact us today for a free consultation.