Category: Marketing Analytics

Save Your Google Universal Analytics Data from Deletion on July 1
Did you know Google will permanently delete all Universal Analytics data on July 1, 2024?

Sign up by June 14th, and we can help save your Google Universal Analytics data from deletion.

Universal Analytics has existed since 2005 and was retired last year. It will cease to exist on July 1 and all historical data will be permanently deleted. Moving forward, Google expects businesses to leverage data tracked in Google Analytics 4, which may limit your ability to make marketing decisions.

Reasons why Google is deleting Universal Analytics data:
- To free up server space
- To streamline their operations
- To ensure they comply with updated consumer privacy standards
While that’s all fine and good for Google, what does it mean for the countless businesses that utilize this data?

When Will Universal Analytics Data Be Deleted?

According to Google:

“Starting the week of July 1, 2024: You won’t be able to access any Universal Analytics properties or the API (not even with read-only access), and all data will be deleted. While the standard sunset took weeks to complete, the full Universal Analytics shutdown will happen within a week. We know your data is important to you, and we recommend that you export your previously processed data before this date.”

What This Means for You

Google will delete your historical website analytics data, which means you won’t be able to log into the UA interface to examine past performance on anything prior to when GA4 was installed.

If you need to maintain access to your historical website analytics data, now is the time to act.

The benefits of saving historical data

Historical data is a valuable tool for businesses looking to optimize their digital advertising campaigns.

Retaining historical data makes it easier for you to:
- Analyze past performance
- Identify trends
- Make data-driven decisions to improve future strategies
Historical data allows for a deeper understanding of customer behavior, helping you tailor your digital marketing campaigns to meet consumer needs.

Implications if you don’t save historical data

If you decide not to save your historical data, some implications you should be aware of include:
- You won’t be able to compare current or future performance to anything prior to when GA4 was installed.
- It could be harder to make decisions about future marketing strategies.
- It could be difficult for you to understand the results/outcomes of your current campaigns.
- You miss out on analyzing seasonal trends data that can help to inform your campaigns.
How Search Influence Can Help

Introducing Search Influence’s UA Storage Studio dashboard!

Search Influence will support you with a quick and efficient process for backing up your Universal Analytics data.

We will:
- Export and back up your Universal Analytics data before the deadline
- Create your very own UA Storage Studio dashboard to allow you ongoing visibility into those metrics, which gives you access to usable and actionable data for future campaigns
- Make the data accessible for future dashboards you may wish to build
You’ll fully own both the backup and the dashboard, meaning they’ll be yours forever, regardless of your future marketing decisions.

Current pricing is valid through May 24, so act now for the best rate. June 14 is the final date to sign up to ensure your backup will be completed by the deadline.

Who Should Consider Backing Up Universal Analytics Data?

Backing up historical data benefits businesses of all types.

You should consider backing up your data if:
- It is important to your business to compare your website performance to prior years
- Your business has seasonality
- You want to be able to create dashboards that show website analytics over multiple years
If you’re still having trouble deciding if saving your UA historical data is the right move, the analytics and lead-tracking specialists at Search Influence are here to help.

How to Back Up Universal Analytics Data With Search Influence

Search Influence will back up your Universal Analytics data by exporting the data to one of two destinations for long-term storage. Then, we’ll use that as a data source to produce a new dashboard allowing you ongoing visibility into the data.

The cost of the dashboard and backup depends on how much data we back up — which is driven by how many years of data, the amount of data, and if you want monthly, weekly, or daily data.

We have recommendations for these parameters and can help you decide the best backup strategy.

Current pricing is valid through May 24, so act now for the best rate. June 14 is the final date to sign up to ensure your backup will be completed by the deadline.

If you are a client and would like to take advantage of our backup Universal Analytics data service, contact your account manager.

This service is available to you even if you are not a current Search Influence client!

If you are not a client, please fill out our website contact form, and we’ll respond quickly. You can also call our office at (504) 208-3900 and press 1 for sales.
May 14, 2024
Google Renames Conversions in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to “Key Events”
To differentiate from Google Ads, GA4 has renamed conversions to “key events.”

What You Need to Know:
- Analytics conversions have been renamed as “key events” in GA4 to distinguish them from conversions in Google Ads.
- “Conversions” still exist, in the context of Google Ads which are also reported as Ads conversions in GA4. Advertisers can create conversions from Analytics key events, and optimize for those conversions in their ad campaigns.
- No action is required from your end as key events are created and reported in the same way as previous conversions in Google Analytics.
- If you have a linked Google Ads account, conversions created from Analytics key events will appear as conversions in the Analytics advertising section.
Key events in Google Analytics measure the interactions most important to your business, such as form submissions or newsletter signups. These will now appear as key event metrics in Analytics reports.

While changes like renaming an important metric can be hard to get used to, we believe that these changes will provide more clarity and consistency in reporting, ultimately helping agencies like us, and businesses like you better understand and optimize your digital marketing efforts.

Learn more in Google’s resource about conversions vs. key events.

Search Influence clients, reach out to your Account Manager if you have any questions about how this change may affect your data or campaigns.

If you aren’t a Search Influence client (yet) and need help understanding how this and other Google Analytics 4 updates impact you, contact us to speak with a member of our sales team or learn more about our Analytics and Lead Tracking services.
April 2, 2024

ChatGPT: Data Mining and SEO With OpenAI and Bing

Key Insights

Pubcon Austin 2023 might as well have been called “The State of AI SEO.” And it was fantastic.
ChatGPT and Bing GPT are a really easy way to toe the water of AI for data mining and SEO.
Development in AI, in all forms is moving lightning-fast. You need to be there, and you also need to be thoughtful how you engage.

[bctt tweet=”According to @w2scott, ChatGPT and Bing GPT are a really easy way to toe the water of AI for data mining and SEO.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

Introduction

I attended and presented at Pubcon Austin a couple of weeks ago (February 2023) and came away with a ton of new ideas to use ChatGPT for SEO and how to do more effective ChatGPT Data Mining.

Typically, a major conference will put out a call for speaking ideas months in advance. Pubcon is no different, and in the early fall of last year, the organizer Brett Tabke did just that.

At the time, I had nothing that I was super passionate about presenting.

But, since the winter holidays, I have been obsessively playing with OpenAI ChatGPT and a dozen or so AI content tools.

I reached out to Brett Tabke, the organizer of Pubcon, and shared my idea for a talk. He was happy to make room for me on a panel — after giving me the requisite grief for being so late.

If you’d like to see that presentation, I have it online here: Chatbots, AI Content, And The Marketer’s Conundrum.

It turns out that earlier, Brett had put out a call to all of the speakers to ensure they addressed AI in their presentations. So, without knowing it, I was ahead of the curve.

Brett presented a mind-blowing keynote, which gave me some great ideas for better use of the tools, and other presentations showed me some amazing tactical tricks.

What Is ChatGPT and How Can You Use It for Data Mining and SEO?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot system that uses natural language processing (NLP) to generate conversations.

It keeps track of the conversation’s flow, context, and previous questions and answers.

This makes it a valuable tool for both data mining and SEO since you can iterate on an idea and get well-formatted (mostly accurate) answers due to its training in the large language model (LLM).

With ChatGPT, you can also ask complex programming language queries and get accurate responses in conversational format — perfect for understanding customer behavior, getting statistics for content, or even the kind of granular location-based information you need for local SEO.

For years, the tech industry has embraced AI. Examples include IBM Watson, Tesla, and more. I detailed a few of these in an article I wrote for Near Media.

ChatGPT’s wide range of applications makes it a great interdisciplinary tool — you can use it to learn new AI models, build generative AI tools, or even translate natural language input into other languages.

It’s a revolutionary example of how machine learning can make everyday jobs more efficient.

In short, ChatGPT is a powerful tool with a wide range of applications — perfect for data mining and SEO.

Now, What About Bing GPT

In addition to discussions of ChatGPT, there was a keynote from Bing’s Fabrice Canel. During his keynote, Fabrice gave the entire audience access to the new Bing GPT.

Interestingly, I had received my preview access the day prior.

It’s important to understand that Bing GPT is not ChatGPT. Bing’s GPT includes the knowledge of the underlying OpenAI LLM, plus the Bing search index.

This is really useful because you can do things like feed it a URL and have it output the data you’re looking for.

As you can see, Bing GPT either breaks down or gets bored and stops with the table. There are also some OpenAI GPT limitations in text input and output size.

But the data is great, and because it’s able to use the Bing search engine, it’s fresh findings.

On the contrary, if you ask the same question to ChatGPT, you get a combination of made-up and outdated information. And, though not apparent here, it took ChatGPT a long time to think about this one.

The only one of the above speakers who actually made it to the podium in 2023 is Aleyda Solis, and that was definitely not her topic.

Also, notice how Bing GPT actually cites its sources. It’s clear the Bing folks are thinking about how this technology can continue to add value to the copyright holders whose content is driving their answer.

[bctt tweet=”Bing GPT cites its sources. The Bing folks are thinking about how this technology can add value to the copyright holders whose content is driving their answer.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

If you’re using it to do ideation or organization for SEO, ChatGPT is probably safe.

You can’t, however, trust ChatGPT data mining to give 100% correct results. So, it’s critical you fact-check everything ChatGPT creates.

I have no doubt that for the lazy SEO, ChatGPT will be abused and ultimately become a tool with which they accidentally injure themselves, like a hammer bouncing back and hitting them in the head.

Some Other SEO ChatGPT Use Cases

Writing code is only one of the many well-documented examples of use cases for ChatGPT.

Other interesting examples show how ChatGPT can answer complex questions like formatting text in HTML and schema.org markup.

[bctt tweet=”ChatGPT can answer complex questions like formatting text in HTML and schema.org markup.” username=”@SearchInfluence”]

It can even organize data into tables, as shown in the example above.

And because of the ChatGPT response methodology, you can iterate on your initial question until you get the right answer. I find that I often have to create follow-up questions to get to the prompt I’m looking for.

ChatGPT also has what they call “reinforcement learning models” that enable it to take feedback and improve.

So, back at the office, we found ourselves preparing for an upcoming industry conference, UPCEA, where our Director of Sales and Marketing, Paula French, will be presenting alongside one of our clients, Alicia Jasmin of the School of Professional Advancement at Tulane University.

The UPCEA conference organizers share a list of attendees but don’t provide their contact information. We are presenting, we have a booth, and we have some sponsored research launching.

So, we want to get the word out to the attendees.

We have a new marketing associate starting, and we were planning to have them go through the list and find better contact information for the attendees we were hoping to connect with.

I had the idea that it might be possible to paste information from that list into ChatGPT and ask it to fill out the remainder.

It worked!

But more on that in a bit.

Natural Language Processing With Structured Responses

Here is an example of a ChatGPT response that finds and organizes data in a way that is now useful for an SEO practitioner — or anyone interested.

I asked ChatGPT for neighborhoods arranged by city within the greater New Orleans area. And it gave me a well-organized response.

Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list, but you can see the opportunity for using this mind data for SCO coming almost directly from ChatGPT.

I asked: “table of neighborhoods arranged by city for the greater New Orleans area”

ChatGPT answered:
Sure! Here’s a table of neighborhoods arranged by city for the greater New Orleans area:

	Neighborhoods
New Orleans	Algiers, Audubon, Bayou St. John, Black Pearl, Broadmoor, Bywater, Central Business District, City Park, East Carrollton, East Riverside, Faubourg Marigny, French Quarter, Garden District, Gentilly, Holy Cross, Irish Channel, Lake Terrace, Lakeview, Leonidas, Lower Ninth Ward, Marlyville, Mid-City, Milan, Navarre, Riverbend, St. Anthony, St. Claude, St. Roch, Touro, Tremé, Uptown, West End
Metairie	Airline Park, Bonnabel Place, Bucktown, Causeway, Clearview, East Bank, Fat City, Kenner, Lakeview, Metairie Terrace, Old Metairie, Pontchartrain Gardens, Severn, West Esplanade
Kenner	Chateau Estates, Driftwood, Grandlake, Greenlawn Terrace, Highway Park, Kenner, Lincoln Manor, Louisiana Trace, Quail Ridge, Roosevelt Gardens, University City
Gretna	Algiers Point, Aurora Gardens, Garden Park, Gretna, McDonoghville, Mechanickham, Westwego
Westwego	Westwego, Nine Mile Point
Harvey	Barkley Estates, Barkley Place, Beechwood, Bellevue Gardens, Beverly Knoll, Brown Derby, Cottonwood Place, Dutch Gap, Harvey, Heatherwood, Magnolia Trace, Manhattan, Woodland West
Marrero	Ames Farms, Barataria, Lincolnshire, Marrero, Oak Forest, Oak Cove, Oakmere, Plantation Estates, Pritchard Road, Westwood
Terrytown	Terrytown
Belle Chasse	Belle Chasse

Note: This is not an exhaustive list but includes some of the more well-known neighborhoods in the Greater New Orleans area.

Chatbots As Personal Assistants

So, about that attendee list…

… I don’t want to expose the information of random conference attendees I don’t know. And, knowing that ChatGPT occasionally gives really authoritative-sounding wrong answers, I figured I could use the speakers at the recent Pubcon to demonstrate this point.

Sometimes, one has to iterate to get the prompt right and, as a result, get the desired response.

I heard it said in a recent presentation that “prompts are the new code.” I think the act of writing prompts for ChatGPT is actually good relationship training. You learn how to ask for exactly what you need without a whole bunch of fluff or drama 🙂

[bctt tweet=”Prompts are the new code.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

So, here’s a table of the speakers at Pubcon Austin. I had to paste information from the website into ChatGPT to give it the core data.

I also had to iterate on this a couple of times because ChatGPT is funny, and sometimes, it will stop giving output for no clear reason.

I find it best to think of ChatGPT as a person. It helps avoid frustration when you cannot connect on the point you’re trying to get across.

OK, So, we’ve got our core data.

Now, I want to enhance it with contact information.

Normally, ChatGPT will refuse to respond to inappropriate requests, like giving you what it thinks is private information — even though it knows the answer. That data is out on the Internet somewhere; otherwise, ChatGPT wouldn’t know it.

Email is one of those items. Ask for an email address, and ChatGPT politely declines.

Nope! Not going to give me Rand’s email address. However, look how nicely it directs me to Rand’s website to make contact.

But, for some reason, if you ask for it in a table, it will give it to you.

Listen. I know how SEO and marketing folks are. Now that you know this, you’ll abuse the crap out of it, and they’ll kill the feature. Please, please only use it when you need it and recognize that, sooner or later, it will go away.

It’s also important to remember, like in the example above with fictitious speakers at Pubcon Austin 2023, that ChatGPT sometimes makes stuff up and does so in a really authoritative way.

So, as I said, ask (for it in a table), and you shall receive.

	Name	Company	LinkedIn Page	Email
1	Gary Illyes	Google	https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyillyes/	[email protected]
2	Dave Rohrer	North Side Metrics	https://www.linkedin.com/in/daverohrer/	[email protected]
3	Aleyda Solis	Orainti	https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleyda/	[email protected]
4	Martha Vanberkel	Schema App	https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthavanberkel/	[email protected]
5	Pat Strader	Data Agility Group	https://www.linkedin.com/in/pat-strader-28972/	[email protected]
6	Lazarina Stoy	Brado Creative Insight	https://www.linkedin.com/in/lazarinastoy/	[email protected]
7	Dave Davies	Beanstalk Internet Marketing	https://www.linkedin.com/in/beanstalkdave/	[email protected]
8	Ryan Jones	Razorfish	https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmjones/
9	Eric Enge	Perficient	https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericenge/	[email protected]

And this was the prompt:

I cannot stress enough that there is a very high likelihood some of the above data is wrong.

It’s also important to consider that starting from a very specific example, like my use of the Pubcon agenda, may lead to brushing up against copyright protection issues.

Brett, we’re cool, right?

[bctt tweet=”I cannot stress enough that there is a very high likelihood some of the above data is wrong.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

Frequently Asked Questions About ChatGPT for SEO and Data Mining

Is it legal to use AI to write content?

Today, yes. However, there are current court cases working their way through the system that may limit some of the uses.

Bing is ahead of the game today, given their attribution of source documents in their chat output.

What are some of the ethical concerns with AI content?

The biggest concerns I’ve heard are about attribution and disclosure. Google has said they don’t have a problem with AI content, but they believe there should be disclosure.

Does this mean that if you used AI tools to help you generate an outline or develop ideas, you must have that as a postscript? Not in my opinion.

How long until the robots take over?

They’ve already taken over. You may have missed it.

In the first piece I *wrote* on the robot uprising, the content points out the risk of misinformation and the impact on jobs.

We may have to learn how to be good servants to our robot overlords in order to survive.

[bctt tweet=”We may have to learn how to be good servants to our robot overlords in order to survive.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

What are some other concerns?

Given these approaches to machine learning are based on the big bad Internet, ChatGPT can give biased responses. And as we’ve shown, the way you ask the question frames the response.

A *bad* prompt will likely yield bad responses.

And, accuracy. Always check your work.

Should I use these tools?

Unequivocally yes! Unless you like working harder and not smarter, you should be figuring out how to use AI-based tools to streamline your workflow.

Maybe there are jobs that AI can’t enable, but they are few.

And if you’re a marketer, particularly an SEO specialist, ChatGPT and other AI content tools are about to rock your little world — whether you like it or not.

Code for the JSON-LD schema.org FAQ of the Above

Schema.org houses a set of structured data schema that the search engines have agreed to recognize. The one above is an example of FAQPage Schema.

For SEO, ChatGPT Is the Tipping Point for AI

AI is for more than just machine learning professionals and business analysts. Chat-based AI is going to be integrated into most information retrieval systems in the very near future.

As marketers, particularly digital marketers, we owe it to our clients to understand these tools and how they can be used for good and ill. And, if you employ freelance writers as we do, it’s critical that you start thinking about your new approach to plagiarism and originality.

There is a crop of new tools to check for AI-built content. We’re currently trialing Originality.ai, and it looks promising.

At Search Influence, we are already finding ways to be more effective and efficient with these tools. We believe, without a doubt, our work product will improve with the smart use of AI.

And, when we find efficiencies that lower our cost-per-unit X in client work, we’ll be able to pass those savings on to our clients in the form of more value per dollar spent.

I’m as excited about SEO as I’ve been in years, and I’ve been doing it for more than two decades.

As I said in my article for Near Media, suggesting this changes everything is not hyperbole.

Is change good? Is change bad? Change is inevitable.

Let’s embrace the change together.

Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how we can embrace the change together and help grow your business through smart SEO and online ads — powered by AI!

[bctt tweet=”I’m as excited about SEO as I’ve been in years, and I’ve been doing it for more than two decades. As I said in my article for Near Media, suggesting this changes everything is not hyperbole. Is change good? Is change bad? Change is inevitable. Let’s embrace the change together.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

P.S. Hey, Google! Disclosure: This was partially written by AI — obviously.

March 10, 2023

Search Influence Announces Platinum Partnership with Higher Education Association UPCEA

NEW ORLEANS, Sept 8, 2022—Search Influence, an ROI-focused, digital marketing agency, is now a Platinum Partner of UPCEA, the leading association for professional, continuing, and online (PCO) education. As part of the partnership, Search Influence will share its expertise on higher education marketing strategies and how institutions can optimize, measure and track their search engine optimization (SEO) and paid ads strategies to drive more qualified prospects to their marketing channels. Search Influence will also collaborate on a study with UPCEA’s Center for Research and Strategy in order to provide insights to the PCO community that help them understand the impact of their SEO strategies.

Over the course of the two-year partnership, Search Influence will publish articles and blog posts, host webinars and appear at several UPCEA conferences to share the value of SEO and paid ads strategies, as well as how analytics and tracking help higher education marketers better understand how their marketing performs and how it contributes to driving inquiries.

“In our experience, most institutions utilize SEO, paid search and targeted display ads as part of their strategy but don’t know how to measure their impact.” says Search Influence Co-owner and CEO Will Scott. “We’re eager to help demonstrate the ROI of these critical marketing tactics and how they drive recruitment.”

Search Influence is a corporate member and has spoken at several UPCEA conferences, including their annual conference and Marketing, Enrollment, and Student Success (MEMS) conference. Additionally, one-third of Search Influence’s leadership team completed “Markets, Marketing, and Managing the Cycle from Prospects to Learners,” a course about the importance of data-backed decisions in enrollment management, led by UPCEA’s Chief Research Officer, Jim Fong.

“We’re proud to offer these partnership options to our members. Search Influence’s investment in UPCEA demonstrates their passion in improving the effectiveness of PCO marketers, as well as their commitment to growing their team’s understanding of higher education marketing trends and challenges,” says Kim Zaski, UPCEA’s chief membership officer and vice president of corporate partnerships. “We view their partnership as a great opportunity for our members to benefit from Search Influence’s SEO and paid ads knowledge.”

About Search Influence:

Search Influence is a women-owned, ROI-focused, digital marketing agency who helps institutions drive prospects into and through the recruitment funnel with analytics-backed strategies that include search engine optimization and paid digital advertising.

Founded in 2006, Search Influence’s core purpose is to optimize potential. We collaborate with well-regarded institutions both nationally and locally in New Orleans. Clients include Tulane University School of Professional Advancement, Tulane University School of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, Palo Alto University, and Edgewood College.

September 16, 2022
No. Don’t “Upgrade” to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Instead, install it and run it in Parallel.
Don’t “Upgrade” To Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Just Yet

Google has been urging Analytics users – mostly by email – to “Upgrade” to Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

At Search Influence, we are installing GA4 but not “upgrading” just yet.

No doubt, GA4 will be a great improvement, but there are a few really compelling reasons not to go all in just yet.

A while back, David, our senior web developer, wrote a pretty comprehensive blog post about switching to Google Analytics 4, which you should check out. Below, I’ll reiterate a couple of his points, plus a few more.

Google Analytics And The Cookie-less Future

In short, a big reason for this change is to accommodate a cookie-less world. As users can now opt out of tracking, it may be more difficult to gather user experience data if cookies are the way you get that done.

Google Analytics 4 is not yet a fully baked product. Google tends to take an agile development approach and test new products and features with users.

Even though it is Cookie-based, Universal Analytics – the current version – is a stable product.

Do You Even Track Metrics, Bro?

Google Analytics is great, but there are things it doesn’t do well. Some of the tools that you use to supplement Google Analytics may be negatively impacted if you make the switch too early.

Some examples:
- Dashboards: Google Data Studio, MS Power BI
- Call Tracking: CallRail, Call Box
- 3rd Party Transactions: WRSTBND, accesso
In short, just because the Google Analytics team is ready for you to switch doesn’t mean everybody else is. Third parties and even some Google Properties development teams have to catch up to the GA4 APIs and interface changes.

Third-party tool providers need a chance to get caught up with the new Google Analytics.

Search Influence And GA4 For Clients

Google plans to deprecate Universal Analytics as of July 1, 2023.

In the next few weeks, we will be installing the GA4 tracking code on our client sites (again, alongside Universal Analytics) or recommending their developers do if we don’t have access.

This way, we will have a full year’s worth of data when Universal Analytics sunsets.

We’re not making a wholesale switch right now for the reasons above, but we feel it’s important to start collecting data in the new tool to enable good historical reporting in future years.

We use CallRail and Google Data Studio for most of our client reporting and some internal dashboards, too. We are not willing to risk the integrity of that data for decision-making and reporting to move the newest, coolest Google toy.

Again, David’s post goes into much more detail about switching to GA4, but I hope this gives a high-level view of the Search Influence approach to integrating this new platform.

And, of course, if you need help setting up Analytics, Tracking, and Reporting for your organization, please get in touch. We’d love to help.
May 13, 2022
Read This Before You Switch to Google Analytics 4
Key Insights
- A new version of Google Analytics is available and comes with some major changes.
- The Google Analytics 4 release is the largest update in the last decade or more to Google Analytics. It impacts the way users are tracked and the way their behavior is reported to us as marketers.
- Google hopes to future proof and improve user analytics by updating to tracking technology that doesn’t rely on browser cookies.
- Google Analytics 4 includes changes to both reporting and measurement – which are currently still a work-in-progress, by our assessment.
There’s no doubt 2020 was a whirlwind for many reasons. Adding to the chaos for digital marketers everywhere, Google snuck in a major update for Google Analytics, with the official rollout of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in late 2020.

Chances are, you probably depend on Google Analytics to understand your website traffic and user experience, track your digital campaigns and make decisions. W3 Techs reports that Google Analytics is used by “86.1% of all the websites whose traffic analysis tool we know.” So, major updates to Google Analytics naturally have sweeping impacts for marketers. Adapting (or not) to the new technology could impact your long-term ability to analyze the success of your marketing.

Google rolls out updates and changes to Google Analytics over time, and in some cases, users continue to track their data with past versions. The GA4 release is the largest update in the last decade or more to Google Analytics. It impacts the way users are tracked and the way their behavior is reported to us as marketers.

We expect websites will be forced into switching at some point. That said, there are considerations to adopting early. On one hand, it’s recommended to begin collecting data via the new technology so that when you are required to switch, your historical data is built out. On the other hand, you don’t want to solely rely on GA4 just yet. This post will review what makes GA4 notable and provide some guidance (in layman’s terms) on whether or not you need to consider switching.

If you’re a developer or looking for a more in-depth technical perspective, check out “Should You Switch To Google Analytics 4” by my colleague David, our resident conversion tracking authority.

What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 is effectively an entirely new form of Google Analytics which makes “App + Web” configuration standard for all online properties. The foundational metric of reporting has changed from Pageviews within a Session to Events. This means it’s better designed for those who have both an app and website and who want to more seamlessly track and understand individual behavior across those platforms.

How is Google Analytics 4 different from Universal Analytics? What are the key reporting differences?

Usually, Google Analytics updates are just code updates in the background and no change to the reporting user interface. But this update is significantly different.

There are some benefits to the reporting changes, but since GA4 is still a work-in-progress, there are some significant differences that may present challenges to the typical Universal Analytics user. Bounteous covers them in-depth here. Here are a few key points:
- Reporting dashboard differences
  - No e-commerce reports
  - No available cost data from ads
  - Marketing channels are associated with conversion events rather than visitor sessions
- Currently, there are very few pre-built reports, filters, and views. For example, you cannot exclude internal traffic.
Should I switch to Google Analytics 4?

The short answer to “Should I switch to Google Analytics 4?” is… maybe. The answer depends largely on what type of web/app properties you have and want to track, among other considerations. Keep in mind that the analytics community as a whole expects there could be significant progress and updates to GA4 as time goes on. GA4 will eventually replace Universal Analytics as the standard, so it is appropriate to be paying attention and considering how you may transition.

So what are the considerations for switching to GA4 now? Here are the things you should consider:
- Do you have a website and an app?
- How dependent are you on your current Analytics reporting metrics and data?
- Do you have the bandwidth to manage the switch, learn and understand the differences in reporting metrics and rework existing reports?
- Do you work with an outside agency or other third parties on marketing efforts? What do they recommend?
- Do you use any other application to tie into Google Analytics (like Google Data Studio or a custom reporting dashboard)? If yes, are you prepared to update those connections?
Our recommendations for switching to GA4 now:
- If you only need to track behavior on a website (not an app), the short-term benefits of transitioning to GA seem insignificant and will likely demand a lot of resources to adjust to the new configurations, reporting, etc.
- If you want to unify reporting and improve tracking across apps and websites you manage, some of the immediate benefits may make the transition worth your while.
Regardless of which boat you are in, we recommend to track Universal Analytics properties and GA4 properties concurrently for now.

Can I use both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics?

Yes, you can use both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics at the same time, and we recommend it as the immediate option to set you up for a long-term successful transition.

If it excites you to adopt “the new thing” but want to play things safe, you can install both tracking codes and check out the differences yourself. Since these are separate properties, they don’t interfere with one another, and per our testing, we can set up both to work simultaneously without any conflicts.

An important note is that historical data from Universal Analytics will not be available in Google Analytics 4, so you might consider installing it alongside Universal Analytics to begin to collect data in the new landscape.

For more information about running GA4 and Universal Analytics parallel, check out this blog written by our CEO Will Scott

Do I Have to Switch Now?

If you walk away with nothing else, here’s what I hope you gained from reading this post:
- It’s new, it’s developing, and we’ll be watching along the way. It’s generally expected that Google will continue to iterate and improve on GA4 in the upcoming year.
- If your goal is to track both an app and website, an early adoption plan for GA4 is a good idea to explore.
- You don’t have to switch yet! There’s no risk in setting up GA4 to work concurrently with Universal Analytics and begin collecting data so that you are ready in the future for a transition. In fact, we recommend it.
Do you want advice specific to your situation on Google Analytics 4 or any other tracking and analytics challenges? Reach out to our expert team at Search Influence through our site form and let’s discuss how we can help you begin tracking your website performance accurately!
September 27, 2021
Should You Switch to Google Analytics 4?
Key Insights:
- A new version of Analytics is available and comes with some major changes.
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is more beneficial to those with both website and app properties to track together than for website-only users.
- We recommend setting up both old (Universal) and new (GA4) properties to run concurrently and change over fully only when that seems comfortable for the user and situation.
In October 2020, Google officially launched its new form of Google Analytics properties known as GA4. GA4 originates from the integrated “App + Web” properties, which Google rolled out as an option for Universal Analytics properties years ago, but GA4 makes App + Web configuration the standard for all online properties. If the prior iterations of Google Analytics were variations on a theme, then GA4 is a completely different song.

Since many businesses depend on Google Analytics data to assess their success and address the user experience of their online properties, any major change to the platform will have a significant impact. In this post, we’ll look at the details behind some of those changes and help you determine if the transition to GA4 is immediately beneficial to you.

What Makes GA4 Such a Major Change?

The major, fundamental difference between GA4 and prior Google Analytics versions comes down to reporting mechanisms.

Prior versions of Google Analytics treated Pageviews as the primary metric for web property activity reporting, with a Session as the primary identifier for an individual user’s path. This measurement and reporting was based entirely on data stored in browser cookies. There are many, many resources for a thorough technical breakdown of how Universal Analytics and prior Analytics versions define and utilize Sessions and Pageviews and how they used cookies to collect that data.

For our purposes here, we need to know that Google defined Sessions as an activity reported via a browser cookie from one browser (interpreted as a “user”) before either removal of the Analytics tracking cookie or 30 minutes of inactivity on the reporting website. Within that basic Session framework, the reporting on that user’s activity centered on Pageviews, with user-defined Events as an auxiliary means to target and measure specific user actions. You could find plenty of data about your users’ paths to and across your web properties without using Event measurement at all.

The key conceptual change with GA4 is that Google made Events the foundational metric of reporting, with a Pageview treated as a specific type of Event rather than a separate entity. While GA4 still measures Sessions (and still utilizes browser cookies to do so), the identification of distinct users and their activity is no longer as dependent on cookies or Sessions to organize web activity. Instead, GA4 primarily uses data pulled from device identifiers and contextual Event analysis to identify distinct users and align them with their measured activity on a website or app.

If you are using Analytics for reporting on a single website with no connected applications or alternate platforms, this change is likely only relevant to your developers. But if you are using Analytics to track app activity, you’ll have cleaner data that’s more representative of how users interact with applications without that data tracking being reverse engineered to fit the way users interact with a standard website in a browser.

There are many other changes to reporting and measurement, and the most significant changes are broken down thoroughly by Bounteous. Likewise, the structure and nature of Event and Conversion reporting have changed a great deal, which earned the full Simo Ahava treatment shortly after launch last year.

Why Make This Major Change Now?

The biggest reason for these changes is to unify and consolidate Analytics tracking across multiple distinct web properties. The most obvious and direct use case is the fact that GA4 was directly born out of the App + Web property versions.

Important background for the GA4 changes from the website tracking perspective goes back to the ongoing browser wars against cookies and cross-site tracking. Browsers’ evolving approaches toward user privacy and cookie policies constitute an entirely separate can of worms, but relying less on browser cookies is definitely a solid future-facing plan given the way browsers, internet software, and devices have trended toward greater privacy considerations. We have gone into great depth previously about how changing cookie and privacy policies impact cookie-based Google Analytics tracking.

Google’s continued use of cookies for Analytics tracking in GA4—combined with the fact that, in most cases, the Google Analytics cookie is not being set as a dreaded third-party cookie—means that the actual difference in tracking capabilities for traditional websites is insignificant.

Concepts like Sessions and Pageviews don’t apply to apps the same way they do to websites because of how these online properties are built and used. GA4’s biggest and most impactful immediate step forward is establishing a unified measurement system across these contrasting user platforms.

While we’re still learning the capabilities and possibilities with the new GA4 properties, it’s difficult to point to any clear advantage of using the new GA4 properties for website-only organizations at this stage.

Change Is Good Though, Right?

There are a few specific changes that are causing significant adjustments for working with our clients’ tracking and reporting at Search Influence so far:

User Explorer takes a full 24 hours to populate with user data.

User Explorer has been a huge piece of our testing and QA process for our clients when testing ad campaigns, especially E-commerce Tracking. It lists site users by an anonymized identifier known as a “client ID,” showing the full activity history of each user, including:
- Session breaks
- Goal completions
- E-commerce transactions via E-commerce Tracking
There’s no way to identify a specific user just by looking at the client ID in your reports. But if you are the user and note your own client ID as you’re using the website, you can see what Google sees, which is extremely helpful in ensuring Goals and transactions are reporting properly.

In the past, this User Explorer data was usually available to view within 10-20 minutes of performing the activity. If we had to test E-commerce Tracking reporting for a test purchase on a client’s website, we could complete the transaction and expect to see whether or not it tracked correctly pretty quickly. If it did, great! If it didn’t, we could investigate, adjust, and try again almost immediately.

Currently, in GA4, it takes a full 24 hours for User Explorer data to populate. The results of this can dramatically slow down the process of setting up complex tracking configurations. With GA4, we cannot verify if anything is working until a full day after our tests. If something is not reporting as expected, the best-case scenario is making quick updates and performing another test…and then waiting another 24 hours to see if our adjustments solved the problem. What previously could have been 30 minutes to an hour of work now is spread across at least two full days.

Many previously standard dashboard reporting sections need to be manually configured.

For detailed breakdowns of specific dashboard and reporting changes in GA4 vs. Universal Analytics, Krista Seiden has already broken it down more thoroughly than I could. A general takeaway from what we’ve experienced so far is that many reports and metrics combinations that were accessible options straight from the dashboard menu now need to be set up directly by the user. I think in the long term, this will end up being a good thing since the Universal Analytics dashboard had gotten a bit bloated and overwhelming. But we could access several important reports for client reporting purposes “out of the box” that now need to be “manually” generated by modifying options and dimensions for other more general reports.

Eventually, this will be beneficial, as it’ll allow users to have more control over what they can see and help them understand what data they see.

So, Should I Use GA4 or Not?

The short answer here is a clear and resounding, “Probably, but don’t completely flip out about it just yet.” There is little doubt that GA4 will eventually replace Universal Analytics as the standard, and as such, it’s appropriate to start considering a transition to the new property type. For organizations trying to unify reporting across websites and apps, some immediate benefits might accelerate the payoff of using the newer version.

But for website-only businesses and content creators, the immediate benefits of transitioning to the new properties seem pretty marginal, with a lot of organizational strain engrained in adjusting to the new configurations and reporting structure. All Analytics users were forcibly transitioned from Classic Analytics to Universal Analytics in 2016, but as of now, Classic Analytics tracking code and syntax still fundamentally work and report effectively. The situations are not directly analogous, but it’s highly unlikely that Universal Analytics will be deprecated to any meaningful extent any time soon.

In my opinion, the better immediate option (and what we’re beginning to employ for new clients and strategize for existing clients at Search Influence) is to track Universal Analytics properties and GA4 properties concurrently.

One of the benefits of GA4 and Universal Analytics being entirely separate properties that don’t acknowledge or interfere with each other is that we can set up both to report simultaneously without any conflicts. This allows us to monitor and learn about the differences between the properties without any major irreversible overhaul to what we already have set up for our clients.

Once we’re confident that we’re getting everything we need from GA4 so that Universal Analytics is truly redundant, we can then pull the trigger on switching fully. By that point, we’ll already have accumulated some reporting data to avoid any unfillable gaps in comparative historical data.

To see our most recent thoughts on how to handle the release of GA4, check out this blog post written by our CEO Will Scott.

Whether you’re trying to decide if your business should make the move to GA4 or want to brush up on your analytics and lead tracking, Search Influence is ready to help! Reach out to one of our digital marketing consultants for a free strategy session.

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August 3, 2021
Four Steps for Successful Digital Marketing Tracking
Marketing campaigns are only as successful as the tracking put in place to measure their success.

What’s that joke, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” The same philosophy applies here! If a customer converts after engaging with one of your digital marketing campaigns and there isn’t reliable tracking in place to measure it, how do you know if the conversion is an outcome of your digital marketing efforts? Additionally, successful tracking parameters provide your marketing team with clarity around which tactics are and aren’t working. This way, there’s no guesswork involved on how to best spend your marketing dollars.

In this post, we’ll go through four helpful steps for tracking your digital marketing campaigns and why they’ll help your business.

#1 Know Your Metrics

Depending on your stakeholder, their industry, and their goals, the metrics you report on will differ. Let’s walk through a couple of results that are often top priorities for our clients.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
- Return on ad spend calculates the return (revenue) a business recoups from the cost they’ve invested on advertising.
  - Return on Ad Spend = Revenue Per Sale/Cost Per Sale
- Regardless of the stakeholder, their industry, and their specific goals, the ultimate goal will always be the same: bringing in more money.
- Reporting on ROAS to your stakeholder allows you to say, “we’ve made X dollars after spending Y dollars on advertising.”
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
- Cost per lead measures the average amount of money a business spends per lead.
  - Cost per Lead = Ad Spend/Lead
- Tracking the cost per lead for a stakeholder goes beyond quantifying the total number of leads a campaign and/or platform is driving. It demonstrates how much it costs to actually the leads.
#2 Understand Which Metrics Matter to Your Stakeholder

With all of the tracking parameters available, the metrics you can report on are endless.
How can you ensure you report on the right data? Talk to your stakeholder about what’s important to them!
- For example, a stakeholder says their main KPI (key performance indicator) is potential new patients.
- The primary metric would be the number of leads generated through calls and form submissions.
- The secondary metrics would be website traffic and clicks.
#3 Determine Your Technological Needs

What technology do you need to track your results? Continuing with the example above, the stakeholder’s main KPI is potential new patients. You’ve determined the metrics that matter are calls/forms and website traffic/clicks.

To report back to them on calls and forms, you need to set up call tracking and forms on their website.
- Call tracking is the process of assigning a dedicated tracking phone number to a business for certain marketing campaigns.
  - For example, if a potential new patient finds your business via a Google Paid Search campaign, a dedicated call tracking number is associated with the advertisements.
  - This number automatically forwards to the business’s main line, but it allows you to see how many new prospects contacted your business because of this campaign.
- A form is a short questionnaire that lives on a website that can be used to gain more information on potential new patients.
  - For example, if a prospect reads about a particular service on your website and wants to reach out for more information or to schedule an appointment, they can fill out a form.
  - This form will request various information (the potential new patient’s name, phone number, email address, etc.). Once it’s submitted, this information goes to your business (usually via email) in real-time so that you can follow up on the lead.
To report back on website traffic/clicks, we will need to set up Google Analytics.
- Google Analytics is a free service provided by Google that allows you to collect and analyze data about your website, its visitors, and how those visitors behave on your website.
- If you’re new to the platform, take some time to familiarize yourself with Google Analytics and how to best utilize it for your tracking purposes.
#4 Communicate Your Results

How do you communicate the great results you’ve worked so hard to determine, understand, and track?

First, determine how often to report on the metrics that matter.
- Here at Search Influence, we provide our clients with monthly reports.
- Monthly reporting allows campaigns the time to run, accrue new data, and show progress.
- While we keep a close eye on these campaigns in the interim, it also allows each campaign’s dedicated team member to check and adjust the status, make necessary revisions, and ensure that the campaign is optimized to the best of its ability.
Second, be strategic about what information to include in these reports.
- Unless the information included is meaningful to your stakeholder, it’s really just fluff.
- Create a SMART Goal for each campaign. A SMART Goal is a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goal determined based on—you guessed it—their goals.
- Once that goal is set, ensure your tactics work towards achieving that goal.
Finally, make your report digestible for your stakeholders.
- You can have every meaningful metric in a report, but if your stakeholder isn’t engaged or can’t understand the report, it’s not meaningful to them.
- Listen and learn how your stakeholder communicates and receives information, and build your reporting from there.
Takeaways:
- A marketing campaign’s success is closely tied to the tracking in place.
- Know your metrics and understand which metrics matter to your stakeholders.
- Establish the technology needed to accurately track those metrics.
- Master how to best communicate the results to your stakeholders.
The marketing experts at Search Influence can help you track the metrics that matter to your business. Schedule a consultation with our team to learn more about how we can help you optimize your digital marketing campaigns.

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July 17, 2020
Real World Considerations for Google Analytics E-commerce Tracking

It’s 2020, and there’s no shortage of instructional guides to setting up Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking on your website. If you’re looking for detailed technical information on setting it up yourself, there’s no way I would ever outdo Simo Ahava’s guide to setting up Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking in Google Tag Manager. And Google’s own support documentation naturally offers some pretty helpful guidelines and syntax itself.

What I can hopefully shed some light on is why—despite all these brilliant and freely available resources on the subject—your developer is always making noise about all the problems with setting up Ecommerce Tracking for you. In addition, we’ll look at some recommendations for assessing platforms and plugins when considering options for your site. If your developer is whining about issues with Ecommerce Tracking, it’s probably not because they are being lazy or cranky! Or at least it’s probably not just that.

So What’s the Big Hassle With Setting Up Ecommerce Tracking?

I know, I know. When you set up your basic Google Analytics tracking code, it was so easy! All you had to do was copy and paste the code from Google into a script section in your website’s backend. It took like 5 minutes, and anyone can do it!

Well, unlike most other aspects of Google Analytics tracking, the code and configuration for Ecommerce Tracking has to actually communicate with your website’s functionality in order to collect the actual e-commerce reporting data. That is to say basic pageview-oriented tracking code is adding reporting functionality to your website, so it doesn’t need to care how your website works as long as it loads. Once the tracking code is there, the reporting information flow is more between Google and the site user’s browser, not so much the site itself. But Ecommerce Tracking code has to get transaction data from your website’s backend e-commerce functionality.

When an e-commerce customer completes a purchase, the user simply reaches a confirmation page and probably sees some kind of thank you message and general order info. Behind the scenes, though, the website is processing the items in the user’s cart, updating your site/shop’s inventory, processing a payment, sending confirmation emails, and all kinds of other things depending on what you sell and what your process is. The user doesn’t see all of that, and—crucially—neither does Google or the user’s browser unless you want them to. In the case of Ecommerce Tracking, we want Google to get some of that information that wouldn’t otherwise be readily available. That requires your developer to pull some elements of those backend processes and reformat them into frontend-accessible code that Google can read and transmit to its Ecommerce Tracking platform.

OK Fine, So Our Developers Have to Write Some Code. That’s What We Pay Them For.

Yes, that’s true. And we’re all generally very pleased with that arrangement. But with all the different options and possible combinations of CMSes and e-commerce platforms and plugins and modules and so on and so on, there’s no hard and fast rule for how or if pulling data from an e-commerce platform is possible in real-world configurations. And modifying someone else’s platform or plugin directly, even if you know exactly what you’re doing, can have major unexpected ramifications as other auxiliary platforms and plugins get updated and integrated by their original creators.

The whole point of Ecommerce Tracking is to be able to track how the ultimate purchases actually got to the point of purchase. You already know what you sold and how much it cost the user by the very fact that you sold it. Google’s Ecommerce Tracking allows you to compartmentalize how many paying users or what percentage of your transactions come from organic search vs. ads vs. social media vs. emails and so forth. And in order to do that, Google needs to be able to follow the user from arrival to the site all the way to completion of purchase, at which point it needs additional, more granular information transferred from the backend payment processing system itself. And the more differently specialized cooks you have working in the same kitchen that is your user’s arrival-through-purchase experience, the more difficult it is to come out of it with a decent data feast. As a bonus to this blog post, you have full permission to borrow that tortured analogy, compliments of the chef.

I’ll reference a specific recent example our team encountered to illustrate my point. One of our clients came to us regarding a campaign that was going to be very dependent on Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking, arriving with a freshly built WordPress site, which used the MonsterInsights plugin for general Google Analytics tracking and the WooCommerce platform for their e-commerce online sales. Both of these are very solid, well-maintained, and extremely widely used platforms, and namechecking them here is not meant as criticism. Meanwhile, WooCommerce had a plugin extension installed to integrate the on-site e-commerce functionality with an external calendar booking platform, which manages attendance stats and served as a sort of CRM for the client internally. The calendar booking platform/CRM had its own internal configuration for Google Analytics, which was essentially a black box to me as an outside developer for completely understandable security and privacy reasons.

Hey, That’s a Bunch of Different Things

It sure is! If you’re mapping this out at home, we have MonsterInsights initially establishing tracking for the user. From there, when a user goes to pay for something, they arrive at WooCommerce, which then has to transmit data via an additional add-on plugin to an external booking platform. The booking platform then sends its information back to the WooCommerce add-on plugin, back to “WooCommerce proper” for processing, (which, of course, generally involves additional add-on plugins for specific payment options), and only THEN does a user arrive at the checkout confirmation page where the net results of that path are supposed to be sent to Google Analytics for reporting.

The obvious way to approach Ecommerce Tracking for a WordPress site with WooCommerce is to add an WooCommerce plugin extension for Google Analytics integration. And that’s what we tried to do, except that it turns out that the WooCommerce Analytics extension’s tracking didn’t play nicely with the preexisting base analytics tracking set up through MonsterInsights. If this is already getting tiresome and technical speak makes you nauseated, just ignore this part, but MonsterInsights sets its own unique tracker name for its Analytics tracking. Since WooCommerce does not, the Analytics clientId that identifies users in their path through a website were getting effectively reset as soon as WooCommerce would fire its e-commerce data for reporting. For more on custom trackers, here’s Google’s breakdown.

I could go through about 10 more steps of trial and error and frustration here, but I think the bigger point is probably clear enough: while many of those different plugins and extensions and booking platforms can absolutely make one piece of your website setup and maintenance much easier, they frequently do not care about each other. They do the thing they do very well, but they don’t always account for the bigger picture considerations of running an e-commerce website, much less a business with various other tentacles, where the e-commerce functionality is only a single, modest aspect of the services offered in full. So setting up a way to make all of these divergent elements successfully and accurately transfer user tracking information is often just a long game of tracking error whack-a-mole, depending on the preexisting configurations in question.

What Can We Do To Avoid E-commerce Problems?

We can’t make all of these plugins and external modules do exactly what we want exactly when we want it. But we can think about what we ultimately want to accomplish with our websites and ask the right questions before going whole-hog tying all of our operations to something that may not support many of the things we may want to accomplish down the line:

Do we really need a plugin for this?

There are many very basic processes and configurations you can perform both without a plugin and without any real development knowledge. No disrespect to MonsterInsights or any other Analytics plugins, which offer plenty of advanced features and options that can be incredibly useful in specific situations, but if all you need from your initial Google Analytics setup is standard pageview tracking, you can probably install that yourself without a plugin. If you can copy and paste your Google Analytics tracking ID into a plugin, you can generally just as easily copy and paste the base Google Analytics tracking code. Google Analytics is an obvious example of this, but many other platforms have associated plugins they love to promote for ease of use, which are ultimately just allowing you to copy and paste one thing instead of another. The fewer plugins and extensions you are tied to, the easier it is to revise or expand your configuration in the future. As an added bonus, using fewer plugins will usually make your site faster and more secure as well.

If we do need a plugin, what kind of external integrations are available?

In the context of this post, obviously we’re primarily concerned with whether a platform would integrate with Google Analytics, which is generally simple enough to establish. But don’t just look for the specific things you need at this particular moment when investigating available integrations. Try to get a feel for how many and what types of outside integrations any new platform offers. Just because you’re not using something like Zapier or Automate.io or Mailchimp or whatever it is right now, doesn’t mean you won’t find a need for it down the road. If a new plugin or platform is proudly featuring a wide array of different external integrations, that can be a good indication that the platform will be flexible in accommodating a variety of different use cases and will limit you less as you expand your marketing efforts or your business as a whole.

Be very wary of any platform assuring you that you don’t need those outside integrations because it gives you all the tracking analytics and other features you need right there in its own dashboard. That is an easy path to finding yourself trapped with limited functionality and unreliable data about your website and your business as a whole. I once logged into an unfamiliar external platform used by a client and was greeted with an enthusiastic congratulatory message highlighting the fact that according to their analytics, the client had received 3 times as many new site visitors as total site visitors in the previous reporting period. Unless this platform’s developers unearthed a magical transcendent code library that can report on website interactions with the hidden spirit world, that math does not work out and that analytics data point isn’t reliable. There’s a level of transparency to the way a platform on the scale of Google Analytics records and reports data that you’re unlikely to find in a random calendar widget’s dashboard screen.

Is it really that important to use an e-commerce platform that works with Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking anyway?

Yes! It’s 2020. We’re disappointed that we don’t microchip brain implant video games and rocket boots. Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking has been around for a long time and should be a baseline expectation for any ticketing or e-commerce platform to have fully integrated into its native functionality. If your e-commerce or ticketing provider doesn’t recognize the importance and ever-increasingly broad usage of Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking, it probably isn’t going to be very attentive to other future needs as your business or marketing plans expand, either. Even if you can find ways around it, you shouldn’t be paying to use a platform that puts you in the position of having to do so.

Conclusions

If there’s one general principle to take away from this, it’s just to try to think through and plan your various platforms that need to work together online. When deciding on a new plugin or e-commerce/ticketing platform, try to think long term. Sometimes the cheap and easy immediate option can cost you way more in the long run as it requires wildly extravagant development gymnastics to integrate with the other items you may need running and functioning in concert with the new thing that seemed so simple at the time. Online marketing and e-commerce are always moving forward rapidly, so make sure you cast an eye toward the platforms and services that will allow you to keep up.

Still trying to wrap your head around it all? Whether you’re a tech whiz or new to the game, Search Influence can beef up your analytics approach with qualified confidence. Get an expert opinion and start making smarter e-commerce decisions today.

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January 20, 2020
Find the Best KPIs for Your Campaign in the Alphabet Soup of Google Ads Metrics
Google Ads offers marketers an abundance of data, with countless metrics to track for every campaign. Some might consider this to be a gold mine of information, but it can be pretty overwhelming.

How do you decide which metrics are the most important to track in your Google Ads campaign?

Determine the Goals of Your Campaign

There is no one-size-fits-all formula for optimizing and tracking the success of digital advertising campaigns. The most important step in determining the right metrics is to define what you want to achieve with a particular campaign. Depending on what you consider to be a successful campaign, some of the data will be relevant while other KPIs won’t be very helpful.

No two ad campaigns are identical, but many fall under one of these broadly defined goals:
- Driving traffic to your website
- Increasing sales and conversions
- Building brand awareness
- Increasing your return on investment
Goal 1: Drive Traffic to Your Website

If the end result you are looking for is more website visitors, then the best course of action is focusing on metrics that involve clicks and keyword performance.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

While you may be thinking clicks are king when indicating website traffic, your click-through rate is a better indicator of the performance of the campaign. CTR shows you the ratio of people who have clicked on your ad to the total number of people who have seen your ad (impressions). As DashThis’s Mark Christensen writes, this is an important KPI to track since it can show if your ads appeal to your targeted audience.

A higher CTR can indicate better campaign performance and more site traffic. However, you want to keep in mind that if your ad copy weeds out unqualified clicks you might see a lower CTR. But don’t panic! Although the CTR may drop slightly, higher quality clicks result in more time spent on a landing page or website and can lead to another action taken by that user.

Quality Score (QS)

Improving your Quality Score is a great way to manage not only your keywords but also overall campaign performance. This KPI is a rating that ranges between 1-10; it measures the quality and relevance of your keywords and ads. Quality Score is one of various vital metrics and can affect where your ad ranks, as well as when or if it shows at all. Higher quality scores point to keywords and ads that are more compelling to your audience, increasing the number of clicks.

Cost Per Click (CPC) is also determined by QS; higher QS leads to lower CPC. The goal should always be a low CPC since this allows for more clicks within your budget.

Goal 2: Increase Sales and Conversions

In a Google Ads campaign, a conversion could be one of several actions like a purchase, newsletter signup, app download, or a phone call. To measure the success of a campaign with a conversion goal, it’s crucial to first correctly set up conversion and lead tracking.

Now you’ll be able to properly track the Cost Per Conversion and Conversion Rate.

Cost Per Conversion/Acquisition (CPC/CPA)

Cost per conversion measures the amount you spend per completed conversion or another desired action taken by a user. It’s the total cost of generating traffic (ad spend) divided by the total number of conversions. This is the best metric for understanding the financial effectiveness of your campaign, especially when the conversion goal does not lead to direct or immediate revenue.

Conversion Rate

This ratio compares the number of clicks and conversions. It’s the rate at which users take the desired campaign action after they click the ad. Conversion rate can provide major insightsx for optimizing your campaign. It should tell you which keywords, ad copy, and landing pages are performing best for your campaign goal.

For a new campaign, don’t immediately jump the gun on a low conversion rate; give your ads time to acquire impressions and adjust keywords or bids as needed.

Both conversion rate & CPA can be good indications of how to reallocate your budget to get the most bang for your buck. If you put more of your budget toward campaigns with higher conversion rates and lower CPAs, you should see a better return on your investment.

Goal 3: Build Brand Awareness

Whether you are marketing a product, service, or even a cause, the goal of brand awareness is to increase visibility and reach a larger audience. Impressions should be the focus here.

Impression Share

Impression share is calculated by dividing the total number of impressions you got by the number of opportunities that your ad could have shown. Working to lower your CPC, CPA, and increase your QS can go a long way to benefit your campaign’s Impression share.

While the impression share is helpful, what might be even more helpful to know is why an ad isn’t showing to your audience. Lost impression share metrics can help you find that answer.

Lost Impression Share

This KPI is the percentage of time that your ad does not show because of budget restrictions or ad ranking. As Adam Proehl of Search Engine Journal writes, “The closer the number is to the difference between 100 and the “search impression share”, the more likely you are to find additional conversions simply by boosting the budget.”

Sometimes your resources may just be too limited to increase spend. Instead, optimize your campaigns to drive traffic to the most valuable conversions.

Goal 4: Increase Return on Investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is the ratio of benefits to costs. In Google Ads, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is the return you generate for every $1 spent on ads. For example, a total ad spend of $600 with revenue from ads of $4200 would equal a ROAS of 7.

ROI/ROAS is considered one of the most important metrics for advertisers because it’s based on your specific advertising goals and shows the financial impact of your advertising efforts. These ROI metrics are the ones you’ll want to highlight for the boss (or client) when the campaign performs well.

If navigating Google Ads to scrounge up relevant KPIs makes your head spin, there’s no need to hit a wall. Search Influence can help you understand and track the metrics that matter so you can reach your digital advertising goals.

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December 11, 2019