What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google that allows website owners and marketers to track and analyse user behaviour on their websites. It provides detailed reports on how visitors find, interact with, and navigate through a site, enabling data-driven decisions to improve performance.
The latest version, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), introduces event-based tracking, cross-device measurement, and improved privacy controls compared to its predecessor, Universal Analytics.
Why Google Analytics Matters
Google Analytics is essential for understanding audience behaviour, measuring marketing effectiveness, and identifying opportunities for optimisation. It helps businesses evaluate what’s working, what’s not, and how to adjust strategies accordingly.
Key benefits include:
- Tracking sessions, users, bounce rate, and dwell time
- Measuring traffic sources such as organic, direct, social, and referral
- Analysing goals, conversions, and e-commerce performance
- Understanding user paths, engagement, and retention
- Integrating with other Google products like Ads and Search Console
With GA4, marketers gain deeper insights through predictive metrics and custom event tracking.
Example in Use
A content marketing team uses Google Analytics to track how users engage with a new blog series. They find that organic traffic is strong, but most users drop off before reaching the lead form. Based on this insight, they update the blog layout and add stronger calls to action.
The following month, conversions improve, and the team attributes the uplift to decisions made using analytics data.
Related Terms
- GA4
- Conversion Rate
- Bounce Rate
- Traffic Sources
- Event Tracking