I hope you don't have big expectations, because I will share with you some of my discoveries that are not solutions, or at least are the solutions that will go well in my life,
but then you will have to put them in place to your needs and understand if they can go well.
Someone knows me, someone doesn't, I've been playing Warcraft for many years, I do it for passion, I do it for love, I don't know, I've been here for a while and you have to continue to support me.
An important thing, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a notary, so today we will not deal with the legal part, because I don't have the skills to answer you,
nor we will do a tutorial on how to install and configure Google Analytics 4.
We will talk by taking a step back and trying to understand if, how, where and why.
And now I'll start telling you, I'll take a step back, but I'll probably do more than one, because to understand why Google wanted to get this far,
we have to start from 2005 when, according to statistics, a thing called Shinistat was used, I don't know if you remember.
So, on our website we used Shinistat, instead the big companies already used software, a little more structured, where they only gave us the pageviews,
but you see, they gave us some more information, a lot of tracking, Google said, now that there is a lot of money,
because I started to become the most important research engine in the world, they said, I'll buy this machine, so they made their own acquisition,
I have to take a step back, because you have to see it with the camera.
Sorry.
Your case has been taken back perfectly.
So, Google Analytics, it's not that, Mr. Google, if you put it now, I'll write it, it has already started as an important database that then evolved.
And after two years of this acquisition, it launched a first version available to everyone, so there was a change of paradigm,
because lately it cost a lot of money.
Instead, Google Analytics was left behind.
Why this thing? Because Google Analytics, that is Google, needed to acquire a number of data that the bad guys would have stolen from him to understand what was going on.
So, our marketing friends tell us, here's a product, geographically, the product is you.
And so, beautiful, everyone, so we threw away Scimista, we went to Google Analytics, wonderful, we started to track,
we discovered this world where, in addition to knowing that our site had 192 visits, we could also see a little bit more,
the why, the how, divided by page, etc., etc.
In 2012, various analytics were born, they moved forward, the dashboard changed,
and so you could really track not only pageviews, but also events, user behavior, campaigns,
there was a whole connection with AdWords, AdSense, it was all integrated, you could also start to track the hero,
so the fact that you arrived on e-commerce from a campaign and you could consider the conversions,
in short, those who did marketing were very happy because they didn't only have the number of views,
but they could also understand what the user was doing, because with the Universal Analytics they are intervening,
they have been available for months, even custom events, so I could add data that I needed to group and then make more accurate reports.
So people were born who were interested in marketing, but in particular in data analytics,
because here I have the blog, I make 100 visits a day, a month, who cares, I see them all,
but who has important sites that make tens of thousands of pageviews a day,
so I had a lot of very important data to look at, those who, here in e-commerce, call it big data,
and so with Google, with the Universal Analytics, you could create reports that could get you out of these big data,
data that could then be chewed, even then, maybe from Labs, from Google Unit, or however, make important decisions.
These big data, however, have become complicated to manage, because Universal Analytics tracks your site,
it's one thing, it tracks your app, it's one thing, or it tracks your O, below it or nothing else,
so then you had to add data, Google also created tools that allowed you to add data, but it was complicated.
So for this and for other reasons, in 2020 Google Analytics 4 was launched,
where paradigms radically change, so the visit is no longer tracked,
but the behavior of the user is tracked in a more structured way, let's see it later.
Launched in 2020, last year we found out that Google has done something that puts us in some difficulty,
because it says, be careful, look, I've been giving you Analytics 4 for two years now,
now either you migrate, or I'll turn it off, so whoever knew it and asked for the job,
and who works with these data, has already begun to face the matter.
I don't know, who maybe has a website and doesn't have a person, who has a website and doesn't do this work,
the analyst was doing well, but now he's faced with an obligatory choice,
which is not easy to manage, because it requires a series of knowledge to be able to get close and read the data.
In Italy and in Europe, however, we have added Settebello,
that is, just to make it more complicated, something that was already complicated,
our friend Grante for privacy said, listen, but you're using Universal Analytics, but you know it's not consistent,
so you should remove it from your site as soon as possible, indeed I'm already doing some checks,
and so even if they still haven't decided to fine anyone, I'm starting to send a series of emails
to big companies that what they are doing is not good, because GPR says,
the data cannot be sent to American servers, so Google Analytics 3, Universal Analytics,
does not allow you to anonymize the whole data, yes we anonymize it, but it is still untraceable,
and in any case we send the data from the other side of the ocean, this thing Grante does not like,
and so he said, no, look, this thing here, it's better if you don't do it.
So I started a series of terrorist companies from different companies,
in which they offer you their thousand different solutions to avoid this thing,
so it is illegal, it is not consistent and different from the legal one,
because the guarantor did not say, if you keep it, I fine you, it is still, as I can say, depenalized,
if you don't do it, I'm starting to tell you that you don't have to do it,
then it is not yet clear today what happens if you continue to use it,
surely we have a clear indication from what is said in Italy and what is said in Europe,
we are invited to avoid this solution, and moreover we still have time until July,
because from July onwards, that is, it turns off, that is, we no longer accept it.
Here is another screen of terrorist companies,
different European authorities declare that the use of analytics is not consistent,
because the information that I was saying before, the collection information,
is sent to the United States and so there are a series of legal notes,
for which this thing, according to GDPR, is not good,
and therefore the solution seems to be only one, Google Analytics 4,
but what is Google Analytics 4?
No, I was saying before, it changes the paradigm,
because one of the most important aspects is that it changes the data stream,
I was saying before, on Google Analytics, on Universal Analytics,
we track the web site, we track the app, we track the subdomain,
if you have configured it recently, maybe you remember it,
it asks you what you are tracking, are you tracking an app or a web site?
There are two different ways that you can go to put together,
to add data, etc., but there are two different things,
here it says, no, don't worry, you create a nice basin
and you put in the data of everything you want,
of a site, of an app, of more sites, of more sections of the site,
in short, you have a, how can I say, a single box
in which different realities converge,
and therefore the data of the web, of the Android applications
and iOS can be kept together, but still analyzed separately,
and you could have more sites with different tracks
based on the language, because maybe you are a multinational
that has a different site in Italy and England,
and therefore two different domains with different logic structures,
but you can put them all together and do an analysis,
at the level of the data, with a complete set.
Data model also changes, because this time the event is being tracked,
that is, what the user is doing, and not the session,
that is, the session wanted to say, I connect with my browser,
within the session I go to visit certain pages,
I pass a series of parameters and then I trace a little
what happens in the session of my browser,
here instead I can trace events, so I make some examples,
if the user is scrolling, if the user clicked,
and you will say, but some of these things I have also with Universal Analytics,
yes, but I had to add and trace,
here instead the tracking is semi-automatic,
because I simply imposed by a very long list,
I want to keep track of all these things,
and then JavaScript that sends to Google to initialize
its Analytics system manages all this type of events,
but we are really talking about many, many types of events,
in fact we have more than 500 events tracked,
some really I do not know what they can be used for,
because then apart from that, that is, the visit, the clicks, the download, the scroll,
the shares that they can make,
I do not know what they can actually serve,
but I do not care about doing Analytics,
so I know that they can be done,
eventually I can, we as developers,
we can give a hand and configure, do,
and then these data are there and then they are analyzed.
Another advantage, and by the way Google could not resume,
because GPR has been talked about for a long time,
it is a very capillary control of the privacy,
so here there is really a different anonymization,
but at the same time Google is able to track a single user
with many different systems,
because if you are logged in to Google,
because maybe you are using Gmail,
maybe you can still understand if you are actually a single user,
even if you have not given the consent for tracking on that site.
In short, the way Google will say if you are a single user,
if you are a digital user,
at the maximum of anonymization is still much more structured.
Now the question that I have asked myself is,
but I really need all this,
because the fact of collecting all these data
means then also being able to read them,
it means being able to create reports
that can really be useful to me.
And so yes, some of my clients,
Google Analytics 4, like it a lot.
Why do they do an online business?
Because they track different streams of data,
and maybe in the company there is someone
who has specific skills to analyze them
and to make strategic and data-based decisions,
and especially because to do online campaigns
in which you have to tell your marketing director,
we have spent this and we have earned this,
and we need this information in detail.
But I also have many other people
who have a personal website
with a relatively small number of accesses,
and the only thing that interests me is to know
that in the last week, after they published the last post on the blog,
72 people arrived,
of whom 35 from LinkedIn and 22 from Facebook,
and the others arrived through maybe organic research.
And then another aspect is that maybe I don't have the skills
to be able to go on Google Analytics,
do the registration, modify the tracking code,
manage this thing with the manager,
but I don't even want to ask someone to do it for me.
So, let's go back to the question before,
do I really need this?
This is a question that only you can answer.
It is certainly a wonderful product
that requires a learning curve,
but you still have to invest some time,
and if you have some data,
an important number of data,
it can give you satisfaction,
but you also have to know how to ask the right questions.
I allowed myself to say,
perfect, but for those who have WordPress,
what are the things,
what are the solutions,
relatively simpler things
that can help us,
and since I was probably not the only one to think about it,
in reality there are many plugins
that do a first-party tracking.
What does it mean by first-party?
It means that they don't send the data
to an American server,
nor to an external server,
they remain in the belly of Google,
sorry, in the belly of WordPress,
so they create their own tables
and start tracking there.
So, be careful,
this is beautiful,
WP Analytics is a well-developed software,
in addition to having global data in a beautiful dashboard,
it also allows us to have page by page,
what happened,
to be able to filter them,
but there are some important aspects,
having statistics in the belly
means that if you have a site that makes a lot of traffic,
it means that you have a lot more writing on the database,
and so this affects the level of performance,
if you make 10 visits a day,
nothing changes,
if you make 100,000 hits a day,
it means 100,000 more writing on the database,
if the tables are corrupted,
rare event, but sometimes it happens,
you have lost your statistics,
so you have to be able to manage a backup
if these statistics are needed to do work analysis,
so keeping the statistics in the belly is a beautiful thing,
because I also believe that it is a data
that is part of the personal wealth of the site,
it is a data of mine,
and therefore I am almost happy
not to share it with many people,
but it also requires a responsibility
in being able to manage it.
Tomorrow my site will change,
because then this thing happens every three times,
I may not manage the site,
but I give it to the X agency,
the X agency makes me WordPress,
and maybe I don't care about the tables,
the net plugin is the first,
so I find myself without it,
when the analysis was easy,
that is, you put the tracking back,
at the limit you lost two days of tracking
because you realize it later,
but you put the same code,
so this is another pro and con,
that a system of first-party statistics
delegates the responsibility to the owner of the site.
This happens with WP Analytics
and with other software of Analytics.
Coco, for example, is a much simpler system,
which really gives you information
a little smarter than the one
that gave you the start,
so the number of page views,
the references, etc., etc.,
but it doesn't even come to a detail per page.
These are software that are evolving,
so only when I, last May or June,
started doing some scouting
to be able to offer some of my clients
alternative solutions,
the situation was like this.
WP Analytics evolved a lot in three months,
because it probably found a series of sponsors
that said,
what you are doing is good,
add this functionality, add this functionality,
add this functionality.
So this is a new territory that needs to be explored.
I have only marked two plugins
that are the ones I have experimented on my person.
In reality I have not experimented,
maybe a dozen, but the other eight,
I have chosen two that I prefer to consider better,
also in terms of management and performance,
but looking for WP Analytics
on the official repository
you will find a lot of them.
So my intervention would end here,
if we don't have some fresh news
from two days ago,
that maybe WP Analytics
is finding an agreement
with the European Union
for the management of data processing.
This means that
WP Analytics is no longer
not recommended,
but still puts us in front of the fact
that, theoretically, Google,
in July of next year,
thanks and goodbye,
I don't have the crystal sphere,
but I have heard many people
more experienced than me
saying that Google will probably
send me this choice,
because they will not be ready.
There is a risk of losing millions
of sites,
because from one day to the next
they are simply not there.
People who have not even asked the question,
but I have to do something,
will probably realize
that Google Analytics 3 will no longer work for me.
This is another factor
on which we have to think and decide
for a few months,
and see what happens.
At the bottom of this slide
there is a whole series of references
for all the slides I made.
If you want to explore
your personal website and statistics systems,
do not stop at the two things I have pointed out,
because it is a period
in which there is a lot of momentum,
there are motivations,
so last April or May
I started to make a plan
for the statistics of my customers,
then I said, let's avoid
hot water, because there are already valid ones.
I don't know if you already knew
about Google Analytics 3,
but it is just to give you an overview.
The installation of Google Analytics 4
and its configuration
is not more complex than Google Analytics 3
in terms of basic configuration,
but being able to recover the data
is a bit more.
If we are already used to having all those reports
we have to learn to ask
the dashboard and the analytics
that we want to give,
also only the page view divided by URL
over a period of time.
This is a question that we have to structure
to have a personalized record.