In terms of web analytics, the last few years have been very busy as we found the version of Google Analytics called Google Analytics 4 which changed the European data protection law, it changed the cookie law and made things more important. To make matters worse, it turns out that installing Google Analytics may be illegal.

But don’t worry, because in this course, we will consider all these features, and we will explain the other things we have if we want to understand the situation, organize our entry, and look for other ways.

Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4

On October 14, 2020 (when we were teaching the SEO course), Google released Google Analytics 4. This was previously called “Web + App Properties”. GA4 doesn’t seem to have all the advanced settings we’ve used in previous versions, but that will change eventually. It’s a real mess when you teach a course because many old projects still have Google Analytics 3, but new projects should have Google Analytics 4. In the Web collection process, we chose to introduce these two methods. If you have a new service, we recommend that you install both. If you have an old service, we recommend keeping Analytics Universal and adding Google Analytics 4.

Important! Google has set a death date for global searches. On July 1, 2023, the Universal Analytics feature will stop processing new hits. No choice but to switch to the new system!

Protection of Personal Data

First: you know that we are not lawyers or jurists, or data protection experts. If you have questions about how to apply all of these practices to your work, we always recommend that you seek professional advice.

For our readers in Spain, we think you already know that European data protection laws apply in our country. If you see us from Latin America, your rules are much looser than ours. If you want to help your colleagues, we encourage you to comment on the laws in your country in this article so that we can help each other.

To add Google Analytics directly to Power BI, start from your Power BI desktop. Select Get Data, and work online.  You can do this to any of your businesses like thetradebuzz.com.

This information is more or less clear. The problem comes when we read laws that only lawyers can understand. For this, we again recommend that you contact a data protection specialist.

Cookie Law

We don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when you enter any web page, there’s usually a banner that forces you to accept or decline the use of cookies. In fact, almost no one knows what a cookie really is or what it’s for, and the flag is just something they invented because they thought people would figure it out. That’s how the internet works. In our humble opinion, no one knows anything. No one seems to read the terms and conditions of the contract. Then, cry.

Lawyers have to learn to copy, all they write is what they know, but sometimes they don’t know it. If you continue reading this entry you will see the built-in animations.

In short, if you want to comply with the cookie law, there is a 37-page guide to the use of cookies, which first warns that explicit consent must be obtained within the web page and that access to the web page should not be a problem. The user accepts, along with other cookies.

Look, it’s easy for the EU to write a WordPress plugin for us all to follow, but no, they’ll make a 40-page guide so that we don’t know how to implement the rules without (of course) going through a dedicated manager.

Plugins Follow WordPress Rules

In all, if we want to install Google Analytics, we must create an installation or keep a happy flag that does not carry cookies.

Regarding the first option, we followed the Rank Math tutorial. This allows us to install Universal Analytics without requiring cookies. But please note that if you also have GA4, it will continue to download cookies for data on this device. There are other options to achieve this using other plugins. If you don’t have Rank Math, you can also try this other plugin.

If you are installing Google Analytics (or other measurement tools) and load cookies, you will install the flag. To do this, we just have to look for the GDPR and WordPress plugins tab and choose the best one for us. Be careful! Installing a plugin doesn’t mean you’re following the rules. Maybe installing and configuring it on your site is still illegal. Talk to an expert!