The story of Google Analytics begins in the year 2005, when Google acquired a small company called Urchin that made software to help website owners analyze their log files. The software was rebranded as Google Analytics and made available to the public in 2006.
Google Analytics quickly became the largest and most popular platform for analytic tracking of websites for several reasons:
- Completely free to use
- Easy installation on nearly every type of site or CMS
- Stores all data on Google’s servers
- Tight integration with other Google products
- Easy to learn, even for beginners
The software has continued to add new features over the years. In October 2012 Google launched Universal Analytics (GA3), and in October 2017 Google introduced the Global Site Tag gTag.js as an alternative to the previous Analytics.js.
Introducing GA4
In October 2020, Google introduced the next version of their web analytics platform, called Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This is not an iteration of the previous system, but a completely new approach to analytics.
The shift to GA4 is orders of magnitude different. It is not just updating to the latest tracking tag on your website, as in the past. Whereas Universal Analytics is based on “sessions,” Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is event-based. Everything in GA4 is an “event” and it uses a completely different model to measure user activity on a website.
Anecdotally, I feel like adoption of GA4 was not a priority for many webmasters, who were content to stay with GA3.
End-of-Life for Universal Analytics
Google sent shockwaves through the web development world on March 16, 2022 when they announced that Universal Analytics will stop recording new traffic effective July 1, 2023. Users will need to upgrade to Google Analytics 4.
The power of GA3 is its library of built-in reports. Even a novice user can analyze their website traffic and explore Traffic Sources, Most Visited Pages, Audience Info, Geographic Sources, and Traffic by Device Type simply by clicking on one of the built-in reporting links in the sidebar.
In Google Analytics 4, the familiar library of reports like “Audience” and “Acquisitions” and “Behavior” and “Conversions” have been replaced by “Acquisition,” “Engagement,” “Monetization,” “Retention” and “User.” These are not just new names for the same old reports.
Hey Google: Where’s The Beef?
My whole gripe with Google Analytics 4 is that it leaves out nearly all of the built-in reports that were found in GA3. Instead, GA4 comes with a Report Builder, where the user must create their own custom reports before they can begin to analyze their site traffic.
I think that GA4 is a huge misstep on Google’s part. A report builder may be useful to enterprise-level users doing “Big SEO” for ecommerce sites or content publishers, but it raises the learning curve significantly for non-expert users.
Google Analytics is used by millions of WordPress blogs, small business websites, entrepreneurs and non-enterprise users who want basic information about their site traffic in an easy to use format. These users are going to be left high and dry when confronted with a report builder in GA4. I don’t want to figure out how to build custom reports to see users by mobile device type of geographic location that I used to access with just two or three clicks.
This is the difference between “Working In The Box” and “Working On The Box.” With this change, I feel that Google is going to alienate a lot of its hobbyist, amateur, and non-technical users who just want a free, simple analytics solution.
The move to event-based tracking and a report builder instead of built-in report templates may satisfy high level, advanced, enterprise users but makes Google Analytics significantly more difficult to use and understand for everyone else.
Restaurant vs. Grocery Store
Think of it another way. Google Analytics 3 or UA is a quick-serve restaurant offering combo meals that you order by number, say one through eight. “Give me a #3” would be like saying, show me my top visited pages last month. This type of restaurant does not satisfy the need of every customer, but it does meet the needs of 90% of them.
Google Analytics 4 is more like a grocery store. They have the ingredients to build any type of dish you desire – everything from pancakes to a four-course French meal. You are on your own to pick out which components you need and assemble them together into a dish. This may be perfect if you are an experienced chef – if you are in that 10% that desires total customization. But for most users, this experience is neither fast nor simple.
Google’s “New Coke” Moment
This is an inflection point for Google Analytics. It is a point on a graph where the trajectory is going to change dramatically. I think that Google is in a similar position to where Coca-Cola was in the 1980s. Google is no longer a fast-growing startup company; they are a tech giant. They have gained a dominant share of the U.S. market for Search, Web Browsers, and Analytics.
Their growth numbers for these products are no longer double digits. They may even be stagnant or falling slightly, which is where Coca-Cola found itself in the 1980s. As the dominant soft drink company in the U.S., they were in a bit of a sales slump.
Coca-Cola completely reinvented their signature product, introducing New Coke in 1985. It wasn’t a hit, and the company quickly pivoted. As it turns out, consumers didn’t want the product – they wanted Coca-Cola Classic. The tale of New Coke is a landmark example of a major company completely getting it wrong. I think that Google may be making the same mistake with GA4.
If you were to conduct a random survey of Google Analytics users with a large sample size, I would bet that greater than 80% are satisfied with the current product and do not want it to change.
Final Thoughts
What are your thoughts on GA4? Have you made the switch, or will you be looking for a new analytics product? Has Google completely lost touch with its customers needs, or are they building a bridge to the next generation of Internet tech? Share your comments and GA alternatives in the comments below.
