Popular, but hardly used: Has Google Analytics been to the detriment of Web Analytics?
Tom Alby · 2023
Since 2005, Google has been offering a free version of Google Analytics, allowing website owners to access detailed user behavior data. However, while more and more features and tools have been added to the Google measurement suite since then, it is unclear if the free availability of these tools has really helped users to derive actionable insights for their websites. Earlier studies based on a small number of interviews have suggested that users tend to play with the tools as they lack data literacy, but a broader analysis has been missing by now. Our contribution is a large-scale study of Google Analytics implementations to examine what advanced features are used, allowing conclusions to be drawn about the webmasters’ analysis capabilities. In addition, we detail how difficult it has become to conduct such a study due to the arrangements that website owners have to put in place to comply with the GDPR requirements, but also due to the possibility of obfuscation with the latest development of web analytics software.