Google Analytics

Score8.2 out of 10

3,963 Reviews and Ratings

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is perhaps the best-known web analytics product and, as a free product, it has massive adoption. Although it lacks some enterprise-level features compared to its competitors in the space, the launch of the paid Google Analytics Premium edition seems likely to close the gap.

Categories & Use Cases

Device and Browser Reporting
This enables an overview of the type of devices or browsers users are using to access your website, helping in improving website design, usability, and visibility.
Category average: 8.4
Pageview Tracking
A feature that records and provides data on a specific page's popularity and the number of times it has been viewed by users.
Category average: 8.9
Referral Source Tracking
This feature tracks the original source of your web traffic, informing you where your users are coming to your site from whether it be through other websites, social media, etc.
Category average: 8.5

Lead Conversion Tracking
This tool allows you to follow a user's path through your website until they complete a certain action, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, enabling you to understand what leads to conversions.
Category average: 7.8
Reporting in real-time
This feature provides immediate data and analysis about web traffic and user behavior, facilitating real-time decision making.
Category average: 7.8
Customizable Dashboards
This feature allows users to personalize their view of data and reports to focus on specific metrics that best fit their business needs.
Category average: 8.5

Scott William Halewood View profile

Digital Experience Coordinator in Marketing at York St John University (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my organisation, we use Google Analytics to monitor user traffic and how well our pages are performing. We often use this information as a means to outline projects to improve user experience on certain webpages or make the case to remove pages entirely. It also allows us to provide updates to certain stakeholders about their content and work with them to improve their sections.

Pros

Provide detailed traffic analytics
Useful insight on web trends
How well pages are performing and retaining users

Cons

The overall UI could be made to be easier to navigate
Training could be easier to find , especially after the change to Google Analytics 4
Make it easier to set up reports for a specific URL

Return on Investment

It has made it easier to back up business decisions
It has built better relationships with editors
It has allowed us to better monitor new sections and improve accordingly

Usability

Other Software Used

Hotjar, Microsoft 365, Adobe Acrobat

Francois Salvert View profile

Web Analytics and Dashboarding in Marketing at Dataligent Services Analytiques Inc. (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a Web Analytics Consultant, I use Google Analytics 4 for my client and for my own website. For my client, Google Analytics 4 is the tool most of them used since it's quite simple to implement, it's highly integrated with other Google tools such as Google Ads and BigQuery. Google Analytics 4, is well know now even if the upgrade from Google Analytics was a pretty big learning curve to overcome.

Pros

Integration with GTM to ease implementation
Integration with BigQuery to enable advanced analytics and reporting
Custom events are easy to configure

Cons

Rollback. Most of the Google Analytics 4 features are not applicable on past collected data.
Clarity around sampling used in reports and the effect on data precision.
Custom reports (Explore) and still a bit buggy and the sharing function seems incomplete.

Return on Investment

Since the basic implementation of Google Analytics 4 is free and only require a couple of hours, it's quickly providing value.
When running Google Ads, Google Analytics 4 provides great ad measurements and conversion reports to understand ROI on ad spent.
With GDPR and other privacy laws, Google is not enforcing data privacy information into Google Analytics 4 and all Google marketing tools making it simple for smaller businesses to comply with such laws.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Analytics, Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) and Mixpanel

Other Software Used

Google BigQuery, Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Google Ads

Verified User

Team Lead in Marketing (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

Basic performance measurements
Traffic sources
Demographic data
Data Studio integration

Cons

Optimization
Multi-site setups
Connection to non-Google products

Most Important Features

Traffic sources
Year-over-year tracking
Funnel visualization

Return on Investment

Having a free option gets us off the ground with no financial investment
Easy to spot positive or negative trends in traffic or sources
Helps maximize paid search options

Alternatives Considered

Hotjar and Crazy Egg

Other Software Used

Google Ads (formerly AdWords), Google Data Studio, Crazy Egg

Maria Sergeeva View profile

UX and Content Designer in Marketing at Career Pathway Institute (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I analyze the website's performance and user flows for events and program sales. Google Analytics helps me detect the best channels to advertise our services and create a promotional strategy. Also, I work a lot with the website user experience, and Google Analytics is very helpful for understanding how users react to different types of content, and do they understand descriptions and instructions.

Pros

Shows sales funnels
Shows traffic sources
Shows user flows

Cons

I wish it had more SEO tools
I believe it had keywords before, but now it is not an option
Navigation is confusing sometimes

Return on Investment

It helps to speed up some decisions, because the information is always updated
It helps with ROI, because we analyse campaigns and make improvements on the go
It helps make plans and forecasts because there are a lot of history of previous campaigns

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Wix

Other Software Used

Miro, Looker Studio, Wix, Sender, SurveyMonkey, Google Forms

Connor Bolin View profile

Associate Director of Analytics in Marketing at KlientBoost (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Google Analytics to determine how website changes, landing pages, and events perform against each other, optimizing our A/B testing. I build out custom events in Google Analytics 4 to feed back to ad platforms as well, which helps us get a full picture of users, audiences, behaviors, and conversion activity.

Pros

Google Analytics provides me with the necessary data to make decisions on my landing pages testing.
I am able to push events from Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads for campaign optimization.
I can easily connect Google Analytics 4 to BigQuery to store user data long-term.

Cons

Google Analytics is hard to navigate, especially for users used to Universal Analytics.
Google Analytics needs clearer documentation on deploying events.
The live testing feature is buggy and does not always work the best way.

Return on Investment

We have been able to scale client monthly spend by feeding Google Ads conversion data from Google Analytics 4.
We have launched specific audience campaigns for retargeting in Google Ads, based on Google Analytics 4 data.
We have been able to track micro conversion activity for behavior insights.

Usability

Other Software Used

Google Tag Manager, Stape

Google Analytics

What is Google Analytics?

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Device and Browser Reporting

Pageview Tracking

Referral Source Tracking

Areas for Improvement

Lead Conversion Tracking

Reporting in real-time

Customizable Dashboards

Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Pros

Cons

Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Other Software Used

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