This move indicates efforts by Google to integrate GA and its free users into their wider cloud offering.
It can be integrated with Google Ads,[11] with which users can create and review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (key events).
Google Analytics analysis can identify poorly performing pages with techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed on the website and their geographical position.
The latest version of Google Analytics, commonly referred as GA4, encompasses additional features focusing on predictions, customizability, and privacy.
The system also brings ideas from Adaptive Path, whose product, Measure Map, was acquired and used in the redesign of Google Analytics in 2006.
[27] Google continued to sell the standalone, installable Urchin WebAnalytics Software through a network of value-added resellers until discontinuation on March 28, 2012.
The previous version delayed page loading, and so, for performance reasons, it was generally placed just before the
[38] In October 2017 a new methodology to collect data for Google Analytics was announced, called Global Site Tag, or gTag.js.
[43] July 1, 2024: Standard Universal Analytics properties completely stopped processing data and users lost access to the interface and API.
[46] The tracking code loads a larger JavaScript file from the Google web server and then sets variables with the user's account number.
Also, privacy networks like Tor will mask the user's actual location and present inaccurate geographical data.
[52] One potential impact on data accuracy comes from users deleting or blocking Google Analytics cookies.
Website owners can encourage users not to disable cookies by, for example, making visitors more comfortable using the site through posting a privacy policy.
Google analytics JavaScript libraries uses HTTP cookies, with which it remembers what a user has done on previous pages and his interactions.
To reduce the load on their servers and to provide users with a relatively quick response to their query, Google Analytics limits reports to 500,000 randomly sampled sessions at the profile level for its calculations.
Third-party tools integrated with Google Analytics, are now capable of tracking customer journey from online to offline environments.
[58][59][60] However, Google introduced asynchronous JavaScript code in December 2009 to reduce the risk of slowing the loading of pages tagged with the ga.js script.
It has been anecdotally reported that errors can occur behind proxy servers and multiple firewalls, changing timestamps and registering invalid searches.
[67] Webmasters who seek to mitigate Google Analytics' specific privacy issues can employ a number of alternatives having their backends hosted on their own machines.
[28][29] On January 20, 2015, the Associated Press reported that HealthCare.gov was providing access to enrollees' personal data to private companies that specialized in advertising, mentioning Google Analytics specifically.
[68] Additionally, in 2022, countries such as Austria, France, and Italy have prohibited the service which lets webmaster tools track and analyze their site traffic.
[74] The official Google Analytics YouTube channel also hosts a range of video tutorials and insights.
[6] In May 2008, Pingdom released a survey stating that 161 of the 500 (32%) biggest sites globally according to their Alexa rank were using Google Analytics.
[81][82] A later piece of market share analysis claimed that Google Analytics was used by around 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (as ranked in 2010 by Alexa Internet).