Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin.
As of 2019, Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics service on the web.[4] Google Analytics provides an SDK that allows gathering usage data from iOS and Android app, known as Google Analytics for Mobile Apps.[5] Google Analytics can be blocked by browsers, browser extensions, and firewalls, and other means.
Google Analytics, or GA, is an analytics tool that gives you an extremely in-depth look at your website and/or app performance. It integrates with Google's marketing and advertising platforms and products (including Google Ads, Search Console, and Data Studio) making it a popular choice for anyone using multiple Google tools.
Is Google Analytics free?
There's a free and a paid version of GA (the latter is called Analytics 360). Small and medium-sized businesses will likely get all the features you need from the free version. Enterprise businesses need to upgrade if you want:
- Advanced funnel reporting and attribution modeling
- Roll-up reporting
- More views, dimensions, and metrics per property
- Unlimited and unsampled data
Paying for 360 also gives you access to dedicated support, including your own account manager. This alone can make the subscription fee worth it.
And about that subscription fee? It’s not cheap. Analytics 360 begins at $150,000 per year (invoiced monthly) and increases after your site receives more than one billion monthly hits.
360’s cost will price out many businesses. However, if you have the budget for both the service and an agency or in-house analyst to manage your analytics operations, consider investing.
Now, what steps will you need to follow when setting up GA? Good question.
How to Set Up Google Analytics?
Before you start using Google Analytics, you'll have to set up a Google account. This means you must have a registered Google Account email address and password.
Once you've created a Google account, that doesn't mean you automatically have access to GA — rather, you have to register for Analytics (which we'll review how to do in the next section). But the important thing to note as you go to set up GA is that you can only access the tool by using a valid Google account.
Additionally, to set up GA properly, you'll want to understand the various layers of the tool — specifically, the hierarchy.
Google Analytics Hierarchy
Here's a look at the GA hierarchy:
- Organization
- Account
- Property
- View
1. Organization
The organization is the highest level. It represents a company. For example, our organization is AR Printer, Inc. One organization can encompass multiple GA accounts.
Organizations are recommended for larger businesses, but not mandatory.
2.Account(s)
Accounts are not optional. Using Google Analytics requires at least one (sometimes several) accounts.
An account doesn’t mean a user account. Up to 2 or more people can access your website in the same google analytics accounts.
Important details:
- You can assign one property to each account or multiple properties to one account. Every account can hold up to 50 properties.
- You can give user permissions for an entire Analytics account, a property in an account, or a view in a property.
You might be wondering, “What’s better: creating a new account for every property or adding every account to the same property?”
It depends on your use case and goals.
For example, suppose you have one website — the Stark Industries corporate site — and five subdirectories, including the Stark Industries blog, careers section, media resources, case studies, and investor relations information.
You want to create separate properties for each subdirectory so the people on each team can look at how their portion of the site is performing, as well as the larger site.
But maybe you have another site that discusses Tony Stark’s work with S.H.I.E.L.D. You want the S.H.I.E.L.D. team to see data for this subdirectory, but you don’t want them to see data for the rest of the website. You create a new account and property for the S.H.I.E.L.D. site.
3.Property
A property is a website or app. Each property can support up to 25 views.
4.View
At the minimum, you need two views per property:
- One with zero configuration — essentially the “raw” version of the view
- One with filters set up to exclude any traffic from within your company (i.e. a filter for your IP address) as well as bots and spam traffic
A view only captures the information after your filters and configured settings have been applied. And once you delete a view, that data is gone forever. For those reasons, it’s critical to keep an unfiltered view of your data.
Now that you have completed the basis for how to set up GA, here are the steps involved in using the tool.
NOW WE WILL SEE
HOW TO GET GOOGLE ANALYSICT TRACKING ID
Before you learn how to use Google Analytics with WordPress, you’ll need to sign up for a Google Analytics account.
Step 1: First, go to the Google Analytics homepage to sign up.
Then, you’ll see a popup where, if you already have a Google account, you can use your credentials that to sign in.
 | |||
| , Click the Create Account button to start a new account. Step 2: Next, you’ll see a welcome screen giving you an overview of what an analytics account can do for your business. Click the Set up for free button to get started. |
Step 3: The next screen asks you to enter an account name and choose your Account Data Sharing Settings. Simply click your preferred settings and click Next.
Step 4: On the next screen, you have the choice to choose between adding a…
- Website
- App
- App and website
Choose the Website option and click Next.
Step 5: The next screen is where you can enter the details for your site, such as your website name, URL, and more. You can track more than one website in Google’s analytics dashboard, so choose a name appropriate for each site.
Then enter your site’s URL, industry, timezone, and click Create.
You’ll have to accept and agree to Google’s terms and conditions next. So click I Accept to move on.
Step 6: After that, you’ll see a screen that includes your Google Analytics Tracking ID and Google Analytics tracking code. Go ahead and copy your tracking code, as you’ll need to add it to your website, depending on which method you use below.
It’s a good idea to leave this page open in your web browser, as you may need to refer back to it once you’ve installed the Google Analytics code on your website.
Now that you’ve set up your Google Analytics account, let’s look at how to add Google Analytics to your website.
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