Google Analytics

Anyone running a website initially has no idea who is visiting it. Google Analytics fills this gap. It is a service from the company Google that can be built into your own site free of charge. Afterward, an overview shows how many people have accessed the site, which subpages they viewed, and how long they stayed. The device, the approximate country, and the path to the site are also recorded, for example whether someone came via a search engine or a link on Instagram. The service has been the most widely used tool of its kind on the internet for years.

Why almost every website is measured

Without measurement, every decision about a website remains guesswork. An online shop otherwise wouldn’t know whether customers drop off during checkout. A news site wouldn’t know which topics are being read. Google Analytics makes such patterns visible in numbers. That’s why the service is embedded on millions of sites worldwide.

It is especially important for advertising. Anyone spending money on ads wants to know whether this leads to purchases. Analytics can track whether a visitor actually placed an order after clicking on an ad. This connection between spending and outcome is called conversion in marketing. It is the reason companies are reluctant to do without such tools.

At the same time, the service is controversial. Several European data protection authorities decided around 2022 that its use in certain configurations violates the European General Data Protection Regulation. The core of the dispute: data from European users ended up on servers in the USA. Since then, website operators have had to check more carefully how and whether they are allowed to measure.

From tracking pixel to event log

Technically, Analytics works via a small piece of program code. The operator builds this script into their site. When the site is accessed, the browser loads the script along with it and sends a message to Google. This message contains, among other things, the address accessed, the screen size, and the IP address, i.e., the network identifier of the connection.

To recognize the same visitor again, so-called cookies were long used. These are small text files that the browser stores. They contain a random number by which the site recognizes the visitor next time. There’s no name in it, but there is a recognition value. This is precisely why permission must be requested beforehand in the EU, which explains the familiar cookie banners.

The current version is called Google Analytics 4 and works differently from its predecessor. Previously, the page view was the focus. Today, every action is stored as an individual event, such as a click, a scroll action, or starting a video. This fits better with apps, where there are no classic pages at all. A common misconception, by the way, is to consider the numbers exact. Ad blockers and rejected cookie prompts mean that some visitors never show up.

Between cookie banner and quarterly figures

You encounter Analytics most visibly in the cookie banner. If an entry like “Google Analytics” appears there in the detailed list, you are deciding right then whether your visit may be counted. If you decline, the site still works. Only the operator’s statistics become less accurate.

In business news, the numbers appear indirectly. When a news site talks about reach or a shop reports visitor numbers, these figures often come from such measurement tools. Fines and court rulings on data protection also regularly mention the service by name.

There are alternatives that deliberately collect less data, such as Matomo or Plausible. They partly store data on European servers and forgo recognizing individual users. For companies, this is a trade-off between legal certainty and the close integration of Google Analytics with Google’s advertising system.