Google Analytics

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Google[2] Analytics is a powerful web analytics[1] tool from Google. It allows website[3] owners to track and analyze their online traffic. It provides key insights like session duration, pages visited per session, and bounce rate. The tool also integrates with Google Ads for campaign tracking and offers e-commerce reporting. Google Analytics is implemented via a JavaScript-based tracking code and utilizes page tags for data collection. It has evolved through various versions, with the latest being Google Analytics 4 (GA4). GA4 offers new features such as predictive metrics and enhanced customizability. It’s also compatible with mobile apps, with SDKs provided for iOS[5] and Android. Despite some privacy[4] concerns and potential performance issues, Google Analytics remains the most popular web analytics service, used by a majority of top websites. Google provides comprehensive support and training resources for users, making it a go-to tool for web analytics.

Terms definitions
1. web analytics. Web analytics is a digital data analysis technique used to understand, measure, and optimize web usage. It involves collecting, processing, and interpreting web data to understand user behavior and improve the effectiveness of a website or marketing campaign. The process includes gathering raw data, transforming it into useful metrics, developing key performance indicators (KPIs), defining online strategies, and conducting tests for optimization. There are different categories of web analytics, including off-site and on-site analytics, server log file analysis, and page tagging. Various tools and standards are used in web analytics, including InterActive Bureau (IAB), Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS), and Digital Analytics Association (DAA). Web analytics data sources range from direct HTTP request data to external data. Techniques such as A/B testing, funnel analysis, and heatmaps are applied in various sectors like e-commerce, content publishing, marketing, and more to enhance user experience and inform data-driven decisions.
2. Google ( Google ) Google is a globally recognized technology company, primarily known for its search engine. Founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company has grown vastly, diversifying into various tech-related sectors. Google provides a broad spectrum of products and services, including Gmail, Maps, Cloud, YouTube, and Android. It also produces hardware like Pixel smartphones and Chromebooks. The company, now a part of Alphabet Inc. since 2015, is renowned for its innovation and workplace culture, encouraging employees to work on personal projects. Despite facing various legal and ethical issues, Google continues to impact the tech industry with its innovations and technical advancements, such as the development of Android OS and the acquisition of AI-focused companies.
Google Analytics (Wikipedia)

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and also the mobile app traffic & events, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin.

Google Analytics
Type of site
Web analytics
OwnerGoogle
URLanalytics.google.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired
LaunchedNovember 14, 2005; 18 years ago (2005-11-14)
Current statusActive

As of 2019, Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics service on the web. Google Analytics provides an SDK that allows gathering usage data from iOS and Android apps, known as Google Analytics for Mobile Apps.

Google Analytics has undergone many updates since its inception and is currently on its 4th iteration—GA4. GA4 is the default Google Analytics installation, and is the renamed version for the (App + Web) Property that Google released in 2019 in a Beta form. GA4 has also replaced Universal Analytics (UA). One notable feature of GA4 is a natural integration with Google's BigQuery—a feature previously only available with the enterprise GA 360. This move indicates efforts by Google to integrate GA and its free users into their wider cloud offering.

As of July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics ceased collecting new data, with Google Analytics 4 succeeding it as the primary analytics platform. Google had previously announced this change in March 2022. While users had the ability to use Universal Analytics up to the July 2023 deadline, no new data has been added to UA since its sunset. On July 1, 2024, all users, including GA 360, will lose access to all Universal Analytics properties.

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