Google! What’s going to happen to my data? 

With thanks to Karen Young of Ethos Marketing for her information, insight, and special offer

Have you noticed this highlighted notice on your GA home screen recently and wondered what is going on?

It turns out that Google Analytics has been ruled illegal in the EU.

Why?

Breach of GDPR rules in the USA has led to European countries including (so far) Austria, France, Italy and Denmark deciding that Google does not ‘sufficiently guarantee that it protects EU data’.

So, what is Google going to do, and what is going to happen to your data?

Google’s solution has been to provide an alternative, updated analytics platform with better data privacy controls called GA4. The current ‘Universal Analytics’ will stop collecting data in July 2023, and all data within Google Analytics will be deleted by the end of 2023.

Crucially, GA4 will not be able to import any data from the existing Universal Google Analytics.

If you are a business owner who likes to analyse your website data year on year, this issue is now urgent. To have collected a year (11 months now) of historical data to view at the point of transfer to GA4 then you need to load up GA 4 right away. It’s not that easy (we’ve tried) so like us you may want to quickly enlist some expert help.

Local business owner Karen Young of Ethos Marketing (who you may have heard speak on this topic at SiGNAL’s BiZHUB event in July) is offering BiZHUB members a 15% discount on the following services:

Basic installation of the GA4 code - £120 + VAT

This includes:

• Making sure that settings are correct - e.g., to retain data for the maximum allowable period of time
• Setting up email notifications (for example, to notify you if there is a problem with your website or data) 

Installation of GA4 code plus customisation - from £390 + VAT depending on requirements

This tailors your Analytics to your own website.

Depending on what you need, this could include:

• Setting up custom events - so you can track things like form completions, email, and phone number clicks, PDF downloads, video views, etc
• Setting up custom audiences - so you can track groups of customers depending on behaviour
• Connecting GA4 to other platforms (e.g., Google Ads)
• Creating custom reports within GA4
• Excluding unwanted traffic from your referral data
• Verification that data is tracking correctly for the first 4 weeks after completion.

Creation of a live dashboard - from £450 + VAT depending on requirements

We can build you a dashboard so that you can see the metrics which are most important to your business at a glance, without having to learn how to dig into the GA4 platform.

This can be a custom dashboard with data from Google Analytics only, or from multiple sources - e.g., Google Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mailchimp, etc.

You can contact Karen via email on [email protected] - just say you are a member of the SiGNAL BiZHUB to qualify for the generous discount.

If seasonal website metrics are important to your business Karen recommends you act right away.

Bonus material: Want to find out if Google Advertising is for you?

We interviewed Karen earlier this year about her Google Analytics consultancy Ethos Metrics and were fascinated by her insights. You can watch/listen to the recording HERE It's about 20 minutes long.