GTM & GA

Google Analytics Turns 20 – The End of an Era, or a New Beginning?

Next week marks the twentieth anniversary of Google Analytics. That is quite something to write. Having been directly involved in its early journey...

Piwik PRO Ends Freemium: My Take

Piwik Pro are sunsetting their free-to-learn analytics plan. I find myself with mixed feelings…

Is There a Future for Web Analytics?

In 2008 as I was walking out of the door at Google, I predicted the next big thing in web analytics was privacy. Of course I was wrong, but it did come eventually in the form of the GDPR. And thank God for that. The wild west surveillance economy was getting out of hand.

Sayonara Universal Analytics

My first Google Analytics data point was 15th May 2005. In this post I look back at what Universal Analytics did for the industry, including my own career, where GA4 fits in (or not), and what I think the future holds.

Consent Mode – Why you should not use it

In theory, the Google Consent Mode is a great idea – it natively builds in consent control into your data collection set up. But there is a considerable flaw in Google’s approach that in my view breaks privacy laws.

How to Verify Your Cross Domain Tracking Setup

Cross domain tracking has always been difficult to get right in Google Analytics – and it still remains a challenge. This audit guide will help you get on top of it.

Why you Should Avoid Tracking Scroll Depth

Since GTM introduced an automatic way of tracking scroll depth in Google Analytics, there has been a proliferation of this tracking. In this post I explain why you should avoid such “noise” and avoid the cost implications.

Google Analytics Audit – An Enterprise Research Study

Part of my job involves the audit of Google Analytics setups in order to establish the quality of the data collected. This video story brings together some of the extraordinary findings of this work. It’s a study of 75 enterprise websites using Google Analytics.

How to Remove PII from Google Analytics – the smart way!

My extension to the GTM Tips post by Simo Ahava (Tip 64!). Essentially, I extend the regex for more rigorous email checks and add prevent other PII types getting in to Google Analytics. You don’t need to ask why this is so important in today’s GDPR compliance world.