Google Analytics V4 is out, should you upgrade? | Ep. #11

Hi, my name is Phillip Stemann, and I’ll be learning you how to succeed with your website.

Google has released a version 4 of their well-known Google Analytics. It’s just been released, so it’s very new, and they are still developing on it. So I will discuss today whether you should upgrade your Analytics to version 4 now or you should wait. The thing about version 4 that makes it different from the old traditional Analytics, as we know, is that in this Analytics, you don’t have views, you have sources. This means that you make a source for your website, one source for if you have an app or a source for, let’s say you have a webshop, then you would make a source for your payment gateway.

This makes it very, very easy to cross domain track over all of your different domains. Before version 4 if you had to cross domain track, which means that you track two domains as one, what you had to do in the old one was that you had to place some specific code that told Google Analytics this website, sends traffic to this website and this website maybe sends traffic back, it was not so reliable and it was very, very, very difficult to work with.

So some of the pros about this new version of Analytics is other than cross domain tracking, that you get a more precise tracking without the use of cookies. So as you know today, you’re not allowed to track a user before they have accepted your cookies. This is a law by Europe. Now you’re actually able to track the user without the use of cookies, of course, its still tracking. So the user still needs to approve that. You can track them. But this makes it a lot easier.

Some of the cons about Google Analytics version 4 is that it’s still very, very new, which means that all the plugins or the software you’re using are not necessarily ready for this version of Analytics. I personally know that a lot of the plugins and software I use, they haven’t upgraded their Analytics integration yet. They’re waiting for Google to release the final version of it, because it’s still in open beta, which means that they’re still working on it.

They’re still making major changes. So if a plugin or a software were to make changes and integrate this Google Analytics version 4, it could be a waste of time and resources because Google Analytics could basically change it all day by day, especially because it’s in open beta. Furthermore, it’s extremely difficult to set up e-commerce tracking. And the reason why this is because there’s still no plugins supporting this. So you have to use Google Tag Manager and you need to work with something called layers.

And it’s highly difficult. You really need to be aware of this. I don’t recommend you letting go of your old Analytics just yet. However, I do recommend you upgrading your Analytics. You can actually upgrade your Analytics to version 4 without losing your old Google Analytics. This means that when you upgrade your Analytics to version 4, it will create a new entity only for version 4. So that’s completely separate from your old Analytics, which means you don’t lose your old data.

And then when you have upgraded your Google Analytics to version 4, then I actually recommend you running both Analytics on your website at the same time. This way you can easily merge over by time because it’s tough to get your old data to your new version 4 of Google Analytics. So by doing this, you will have data when you are actually deciding that now I will get rid of my old Analytics. So when all plugins and software are ready that you’re using, at least then you can easily make the switch.

And running them side by side will also make you get the new version of Analytics. And you, as a person or as a marketeer, needs to also get used to the new version of Analytics. So this is a great way without going on compromise in any way to get the new version of Analytics 4, and not losing any data for you to track your conversions, your visitors and so much more.

So that’s been it, please leave review wherever you are listening to this podcast. And remember, consistency is key to success. Thank you for listening. And let’s catch up on the next one.