Google Analytics has been all about giving power to the masses. The open-source set of analytical tools for marketing and search engine optimization that has an overwhelming 86% of the market share, has long served the needs of a smarter, freer market with equal opportunities and more visibility to all companies. While the tech giant’s vision to
revolutionise web analytical services under its Google Marketing Platform has actually cloaked the shaping of a legendary road map to a better experience for all web users. The result is a global community of smart companies, well-informed users, and a continuously churning technology space.
Evolving versions
The story of Google Analytics that is bound to take another turn for the better, started in March 2005 upon the acquisition of Urchin Software Corp, a web statistics analysis program, which itself was a radical program offering customers farther horizons into traffic analysis.
Here’s what has happened since-
- 2005- Urchin’s take over by Google
- 2007- Classic Google Analytics
Classic Google Analytics incorporated Google Analytics Synchronous Code (2007) and Asynchronous Code (2009) provided benefits like faster loading of web pages, convenient e-commerce data tracking, better data collection, lesser errors, and improved accuracy.
2012- Universal Analytics (UA)
This offered fresh tracking codes that became a huge success in back-end improvement and finer user behaviour tracking. As soon as UA was out of beta, it also carried out Classic features that made it all the more convenient for existing marketers.
2020- Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
The latest bid of Google Analytics offers a new interface, that works on the errors of the UA the system has overcome the problems of using third-party cookies and makes use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for improved accuracy.
The Change
Skidding towards better technologies, Google Analytics has planned to bring down Universal Analytics has set its expiration date as the 1 st of July 2023. This marks an overhaul of the whole system and rebuilds the foundations of the most popular web analytical service with a deeper integration with Google Ads and more granular data control.
The grand leap is, however, a small step towards digital analytics and reminds marketers that an inevitable shift from Universal Analytics already stands on the gates. This mandatory shift is owed to a simple customary practice of collecting year-over-year data for analysis. If a company wishes to have a ready GA4 in July 2023, it is a must to begin the shift now, as it will take some time in fine-tuning tracking in GA4, collecting data, and building reports.
Welcoming the GA4
The UA offered a third-party cookies-based tracking that is also called a session-based data model, however with increasing concerns over privacy, the use of this model is predicted to become less efficient. While the GA4 uses a more flexible event-based model that elaborates the details of the user’s actions and his decisions while visiting a webpage.
The GA4 offers a comprehensive alliance of traditional and new systems for increasing user experience and is officially tagged as a more customer-centric software. Here are a few features that replenish the most powerful analytical tool and completes a quantum leap for the tech giant-
- Deeper Integration with Google Ads: This smartly tracks the actions of visitors on your website, and automatically adds them to or removes them from your lists. This in toto means better insight and greater opportunities to improve ROI.
- Customer-centric reporting: This does away with the customary fragmented measurement by devices or platforms and rather provides customers’ full life cycle to the marketers to include a comprehensive view of customer interaction.
- Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence tools for accurate predictions and insights: This comes as a boon in tracking demands, and offerings as well as predicting potential revenues and rates, that help the marketers with better decisive powers through more accurate insights.
- Codeless tracking features: Certain actions of customers like video playing and page scrolling can now be tracked in real-time without the extra effort of adding codes to the website. Automatic codes can be deployed by just enabling ‘enhanced measurement’ in settings, following which Google automatically places codes without the need for tags.
- Granular data control: This means that marketers now can choose between the data to be used for optimization and for just measurement. GA4 awards the opportunity to actively manage the collection, retention, and usage of customer data.
Conclusion
Google’s brand-new version of web analytical tool makes it evident that the vision is to improvise experience for users at both ends- customers and marketers. However, a shift is inevitable, and the beacon of change only gets louder every day now. Companies should already start preparing for the obvious overhaul as the walk is long, however, the path is not Unfamiliar.
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