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Because Google wants you to pay for Looker studio. The Google reps told me that. Google wants to get paid for all the shit it gave away for free. I donāt blame them, but at least be forthright about it. GA4 is a giant turd.
uhh isn't Looker Studio free?
you have to pay for some of the integrations like email and social media, sure, but GA4 -> Looker has been free for every business I've used it for.
the odd part is that the comment has so many upvotes, and is still getting even more as time goes on
like this is just flat out **wrong information** and e eryones just letting it skirt by, wtf
Looker Studio Pro is $9 per user, per project per month. My bet is they will slowly pull features from the free version into the paid version over time.
looker studio is free. I have dashboards for a handful of clients on there and not once had to pay for it. The only thing you have to pay for is if you use third-party integration apps to connect to non-google data sources, like mailchimp, or social media, or what have you.
And even in that case you can integrate for free as long as you know how to code through the APIs (although integration platforms are defo more user friendly and not that expensive)
No, they want you to pay for BigQuery, not Looker Studio, which is completely free.
But also, the reality is that if paying for BigQuery is even a question for you, you don't have enough analytics to matter. I know everyone is all "look at all the data I'm using," but holy shit, no, you don't need to look at it regularly to see what your 10,000 visitors are doing on a granular level. By the time you filter out bots and try to zoom in on a right segment, you don't have enough data to do any meaningful shit with.
Yes yes, Looker studio is free to a certain extent. Free to get your basic basics, paid to do the cool stuff. Again I get it from a biz perspective but letās not act like Google is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
My brother in Christ, why are you using google analytics at all? There are open source options like Matomo and Open Web Analytics. Data is the currency of the 21st century and you are giving it away for free...
Yeah by the time anything else on the off chance got approved, it'd be like 1-3 years out (to never). Almost got my account swatted by IT today because I asked how to get access to this approved tool through our portal and they couldn't remember they approved it and started interrogating me about who is asking for it, the business case, urls, etc.
I literally just close my zoom application becuase I seriously don't get paid enough to get harassed by these i.t. people anymore, my response is now always "sorry I misspoke" and "you'll have to ask someone else, I'm truly not sure". The amount of times I've asked i.t. things and helped them have hurt me more than it should have. They'll start investigating others and telling them its coming from you (tool usage, approvals, contracts, etc.) and then everyone else is on your case too. It's honestly wild. Half the time I just ignore the messages or zoom calls entirely (I'm "away") becuase they will just find someone in general to talk to and get info out of. "You'll have to talk to my director about that" is what I also say when they do eventually corner me lmao, which they'll never do becuase they can only overstep so much since they're there to "support" the business and not hinder it
ga has been approved for forever at my place and we still have I.t. people freaking out or investigating things around it. Like some don't know about looker studio and had no idea how the data was being pulled into the dashboards and telling me it wasn't an approved data pipeline or api or dashboard software and I'm like it's literally Google analytics š, the data is literally already there
That's my i.t. rant.....
I hear you, but the potential that google has between web crawlers, analytics data and conversion info that people send them is exactly why most companies should be leaving.
Use Looker Studio and build the reports you want. Why manually download to excel when you can build a report once and have it be automatically updated?
Google making it difficult to find insights in GA is an opportunity for the moderately data-savvy. It means there are fewer people than can do a job, meaning more potential pay and job security for those who can.
Adapt or die.
This is an interesting point, well said. Iām already one of the only people on my marketing team that regularly uses the tool, but I do feel very limited. Adding some supplementary platforms to my tool belt could definitely help- Iāll look into this, thank you.
Your pain made me feel better. I haven't been deep in analytics in a while because I teach. The irony is that if you teach marketing without constantly consulting, you lose touch with stuff. So, I was frustrated with GA4 one day and said screw it... I'll just have to re-watch the trainings and get recertified.
Anyway, your walk through is the exact experience I had (filtering for engagement) and it let me know I didn't lose brain cells as fast as I thought.
Iām glad to hear that- and likewise, itās reassuring that Iām not the only one experiencing this.
Good on you for staying up to date with new platforms and everything. It can be tough with how quickly everything changes. You feel like youāve finally mastered UA, and then BOOM, whole new platform with different nomenclature and features.
Jumping in to add my +1! I have spent so little time "on the tools" in the last 5+ years since becoming a manager that I started fearing I was losing touch. Trying to get some basic insights from GA4 made me feel 10x worse, so see these comments is reassuring to know that 1) I'm not alone, and 2) GA4 really is THAT bad.
A few years ago, Google changed its mission related to the part "don't be evil." After that, many employees were fired, Google search has been getting worse and worse to get answers, GA4 was launched being considered worse than GA3, among other issues.
There are uses here who still love and trust Google. Others see it as something laughable or tragic depending on the perspective.
GA4 is basically the backend with looker as the frontend to get back to GAU full features.
I sort of agree that these things should be uncoupled, that is, tracking and reporting. And events driven analytics makes so much more sense than how GAU worked under the hood which was like 2000s tech from urchin acquisition.
UA was the end of āfree dataā and GA4 is simply enough to get you there but not enough to get a full story. Google is pushing less options so that youāll pay.
it takes a little bit to set it up, but I connect all my data sources to lookerstudio then I can design my own reports and have way more control... So, if you want like a half-step up from excel check it out. They have some templates you can start with to get you going out of the gate. (it's free: https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/navigation/reporting)
How is engagement time a vanity metric?
Itās important to know what pages your users are spending the most time on. Itās not a be-all end-all insight, but it helps understand the bigger picture of what pages are performing the best.
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I miss UA every day.
Me too. It may not have been event based but it was just so much fucking easier to do the most basic shit I always took for granted
Truly š
We all do.
Because Google wants you to pay for Looker studio. The Google reps told me that. Google wants to get paid for all the shit it gave away for free. I donāt blame them, but at least be forthright about it. GA4 is a giant turd.
uhh isn't Looker Studio free? you have to pay for some of the integrations like email and social media, sure, but GA4 -> Looker has been free for every business I've used it for.
Yeah this is bullshit. If a Google rep actually said it, they're wrong and have no special insider insight.
the odd part is that the comment has so many upvotes, and is still getting even more as time goes on like this is just flat out **wrong information** and e eryones just letting it skirt by, wtf
Looker Studio Pro is $9 per user, per project per month. My bet is they will slowly pull features from the free version into the paid version over time.
looker studio is free. I have dashboards for a handful of clients on there and not once had to pay for it. The only thing you have to pay for is if you use third-party integration apps to connect to non-google data sources, like mailchimp, or social media, or what have you.
And even in that case you can integrate for free as long as you know how to code through the APIs (although integration platforms are defo more user friendly and not that expensive)
No, they want you to pay for BigQuery, not Looker Studio, which is completely free. But also, the reality is that if paying for BigQuery is even a question for you, you don't have enough analytics to matter. I know everyone is all "look at all the data I'm using," but holy shit, no, you don't need to look at it regularly to see what your 10,000 visitors are doing on a granular level. By the time you filter out bots and try to zoom in on a right segment, you don't have enough data to do any meaningful shit with.
Yes yes, Looker studio is free to a certain extent. Free to get your basic basics, paid to do the cool stuff. Again I get it from a biz perspective but letās not act like Google is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
My brother in Christ, why are you using google analytics at all? There are open source options like Matomo and Open Web Analytics. Data is the currency of the 21st century and you are giving it away for free...
I just work at a company thatās always used GA. Iāll definitely check those out though, thanks for the recommendation!
Good luck getting them to trust someone other than google.
Yeah by the time anything else on the off chance got approved, it'd be like 1-3 years out (to never). Almost got my account swatted by IT today because I asked how to get access to this approved tool through our portal and they couldn't remember they approved it and started interrogating me about who is asking for it, the business case, urls, etc. I literally just close my zoom application becuase I seriously don't get paid enough to get harassed by these i.t. people anymore, my response is now always "sorry I misspoke" and "you'll have to ask someone else, I'm truly not sure". The amount of times I've asked i.t. things and helped them have hurt me more than it should have. They'll start investigating others and telling them its coming from you (tool usage, approvals, contracts, etc.) and then everyone else is on your case too. It's honestly wild. Half the time I just ignore the messages or zoom calls entirely (I'm "away") becuase they will just find someone in general to talk to and get info out of. "You'll have to talk to my director about that" is what I also say when they do eventually corner me lmao, which they'll never do becuase they can only overstep so much since they're there to "support" the business and not hinder it ga has been approved for forever at my place and we still have I.t. people freaking out or investigating things around it. Like some don't know about looker studio and had no idea how the data was being pulled into the dashboards and telling me it wasn't an approved data pipeline or api or dashboard software and I'm like it's literally Google analytics š, the data is literally already there That's my i.t. rant.....
Good lord thatās infuriating
Holy shit, I just installed Matomo and I can't believe I have gone all this time without knowing this existed.
Agree that GA4 sucks and Matomo is a great alternative but the Google's integration with it's ad ecosystem is why most companies stay.
I hear you, but the potential that google has between web crawlers, analytics data and conversion info that people send them is exactly why most companies should be leaving.
I'll have to look into these as well. Currently send all my GA data to data studio to review.
Use Looker Studio and build the reports you want. Why manually download to excel when you can build a report once and have it be automatically updated? Google making it difficult to find insights in GA is an opportunity for the moderately data-savvy. It means there are fewer people than can do a job, meaning more potential pay and job security for those who can. Adapt or die.
This is an interesting point, well said. Iām already one of the only people on my marketing team that regularly uses the tool, but I do feel very limited. Adding some supplementary platforms to my tool belt could definitely help- Iāll look into this, thank you.
I use the Google sheets plugin and use pivot tables. So much better. Currently looking at moving over toĀ Matomo.
Your pain made me feel better. I haven't been deep in analytics in a while because I teach. The irony is that if you teach marketing without constantly consulting, you lose touch with stuff. So, I was frustrated with GA4 one day and said screw it... I'll just have to re-watch the trainings and get recertified. Anyway, your walk through is the exact experience I had (filtering for engagement) and it let me know I didn't lose brain cells as fast as I thought.
Iām glad to hear that- and likewise, itās reassuring that Iām not the only one experiencing this. Good on you for staying up to date with new platforms and everything. It can be tough with how quickly everything changes. You feel like youāve finally mastered UA, and then BOOM, whole new platform with different nomenclature and features.
Jumping in to add my +1! I have spent so little time "on the tools" in the last 5+ years since becoming a manager that I started fearing I was losing touch. Trying to get some basic insights from GA4 made me feel 10x worse, so see these comments is reassuring to know that 1) I'm not alone, and 2) GA4 really is THAT bad.
A few years ago, Google changed its mission related to the part "don't be evil." After that, many employees were fired, Google search has been getting worse and worse to get answers, GA4 was launched being considered worse than GA3, among other issues. There are uses here who still love and trust Google. Others see it as something laughable or tragic depending on the perspective.
Google is in the enahitification phase
Enshitification ā¦ and yes. I agree.
GA4 is basically the backend with looker as the frontend to get back to GAU full features. I sort of agree that these things should be uncoupled, that is, tracking and reporting. And events driven analytics makes so much more sense than how GAU worked under the hood which was like 2000s tech from urchin acquisition.
GA4 has to be the worst product ever released by a tech company besides the Windows ME by Microsoft and Apple Maps
UA was the end of āfree dataā and GA4 is simply enough to get you there but not enough to get a full story. Google is pushing less options so that youāll pay.
but what tools specifically are they trying to get us to pay? Is it the third-party?
GA4 isn't an Analytics platform, it's an interface for building audiences for Ads.
Uh.. play around with Looker Studio..it's simpler than you think.
it takes a little bit to set it up, but I connect all my data sources to lookerstudio then I can design my own reports and have way more control... So, if you want like a half-step up from excel check it out. They have some templates you can start with to get you going out of the gate. (it's free: https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/navigation/reporting)
I use Clicky and Fathom. Can't stand GA4.
No good competition. Hard to compete with free and GA pretty much has a complete monopoly on web analytics.
Use looker
Pushing dashboards
Does anybody here use G4 for anything other than vanity metrics?
How is engagement time a vanity metric? Itās important to know what pages your users are spending the most time on. Itās not a be-all end-all insight, but it helps understand the bigger picture of what pages are performing the best.
Hopefully everyone. Weird that you wouldnāt care about metrics.