Noise or Music?
How to Get Cookie Consent Right (98% don’t!)
Getting a website’s privacy and consent process done right is difficult. In fact, my research shows 98% of websites get consent wrong! In this post I go through all the things you need to be aware of in order to understand what needs to be done.
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.
Data-Driven or Data-Informed?
An interesting discussion was developing on LinkedIn by a fellow data author Brent Dykes: Data-Driven vs. Data-Informed, and I wanted to contribute to it here also. A more philosophical post from me.
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.
Definitions & Myths on “Good” Cookies
According to the ICO: analytics is not defined as necessary or covered under legitimate interest. That means the vast majority of websites are breaking the law! But how seriously do we need to take this?
Analytics Predictions 2019
Now and then I tease myself by trying to predict the future, and so in preparation for this years’ attempt I found myself reading the recent Forrester Prediction 2019: Business Insights report.
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.
Google Analytics Anonymize IP – An Impact Study
Universal Analytics collects and stores visitor IP addresses by default. These are used to provide geolocation information about your visitor – such as which city, country, continent visitors connect from. In the new GA4 however, no IP addresses are stored. That’s a big change in approach. In this post, I investigate what impact that will have on your data.
What Is PII versus Personal Data?
GDPR terminology is confusing and often difficult to understand. Here I define a key concept of what defines personal data…? And how is Personal Identifiable Information (PII) different…?
Google Analytics Data Retention Settings Explained
The Data Retention setting is confusing – it is surprisingly badly worded by Google. The assumption is that ALL data older than NN months is going to be deleted i.e. a cliff-edge effect where any report older than say 26 months is going to be empty. The setting is important, but its effect is not a dramatic as you might first think…
GDPR Consent & Google Analytics Guide
In this post I address a key question that is troubling many a website owner using Google Analytics (the “Controller” in GDPR terminology): Is explicit consent required before I can track my visitors?
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.