Why Not Ditch GA4 and Build My Own Analytics?

2 years ago

Yours will not be better than theirs but it will use up resources to create.

Originally Posted by CWDynamic

Hey all,

So is there any reason why I shouldn't exclude GA4 and instead build my own serverside tracking tool to track users, page visits, events, drop a first-party cookie to track their entire historical site visits and actions over time then store that data in a data platform and a BI front end?

The only things I see that I would lose unless there are better options are:

1. Google Signals, so I wouldn't get cross-device attribution unless I have them login.

2. Demographics Gender / Age, which is going to be limited at best, I think, and probably even less valuable really if I have a general idea of my market based on lead research.

3. Re-targeting - I'm not sure how accurate this is going to be anyway after they remove 3rd party cookies on chrome. And of course currently on safari and firefox?

Anything I'm missing or reasons why my only 3 concerns are bigger than I'm making them out to be?

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2 years ago

Originally Posted by DABK

Yours will not be better than theirs but it will use up resources to create.

Additionally, if you rely on just your own, you will not have a complete picture of how Google sees your site.

I guess the real question should be ... "Is there any reason why you would want to waste your time building your own?"

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2 years ago

Originally Posted by dave_hermansen

Additionally, if you rely on just your own, you will not have a complete picture of how Google sees your site.

I guess the real question should be ... "Is there any reason why you would want to waste your time building your own?"

The main question will be "Why shouldn't we use it? Isn't it free?

"

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2 years ago

Originally Posted by expmrb

The main question will be "Why shouldn't we use it? Isn't it free?"

Well, NOT really "free" in reality.
You can use it for "free" IF you accept and abide by their TOS and Privacy Policy.

Did you ever really read their TOS and PP, to discover their cost of "free"?

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Andy
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2 years ago

The time and energy to build your own wouldn't be worth it unless you just really love the building part itself. So just as the other comments mention, why wouldn't you use GA4? Is there something else you are trying to achieve by building your own analytics?

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2 years ago

Thanks all, The reasoning to go with our own would be to have serverside historical tracking tied to a user in our CRM, which I don't see we can do natively in GA4.

I'm doing a pretty good job of this with Tag manager at the moment anyway, but it's still not readily available in our CRM.

I'm trying to convince higher-ups we can't get rid of GA4, but I assumed I would get better answers if I asked from their perspective. I agree it doesn't make any sense to me. I'm trying to understand if there are advantages I am not seeing or other reasons I might forget to bring up why it's a bad idea.

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2 years ago

Without knowing what you're tracking users in your CRM for, hard to tell if it's worth your while...

A while back, I would send people letters with a link to a sales page that had their name in the url, and tracked that way.

Do you want to see if they go to a particular page after you send them an email/letter? Do you want to see all the pages they go to once they get to your site? Do you want to see where they go from your site?

What's the goal?

Google's toy is better than yours but it does not tie users to a particular name. For that, you do have to create your own. But why can't you use both? If you use Google's you do know how it sees your site, as David said. If you do not, you lose that and it might end up biting you in the ass.

Originally Posted by Casey Whitcher

Thanks all, The reasoning to go with our own would be to have serverside historical tracking tied to a user in our CRM, which I don't see we can do natively in GA4.

I'm doing a pretty good job of this with Tag manager at the moment anyway, but it's still not readily available in our CRM.

I'm trying to convince higher-ups we can't get rid of GA4, but I assumed I would get better answers if I asked from their perspective. I agree it doesn't make any sense to me. I'm trying to understand if there are advantages I am not seeing or other reasons I might forget to bring up why it's a bad idea.

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2 years ago

meanwhile, I am disabling that new acct - one acct per member only allowed - though I understand what the point was in using an unknown name.

I will wait a day or so to do that so you can copy this discussion if you want.

kay

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2 years ago

thanks, kay! I was actually just trying to figure out my original account, I haven't used this forum as much as I should! Thank you for consolidating!
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2 years ago

Self-orbitin' is a deloosion.

Trackin' pre-tracked tracks is trackin' pre-tracked tracks.

Gotta figure when you jackin' yusself off what is subject & object, I guess.

I endeavor to observe this distinction whenevah I am able.

Store. Bar. Home. Zoo. Riot.

Like William Carlos Williams said, "no one will believe this of vast import to the nation".

Hey, but we all sooperlative slackahs here on WF, so mebbe I can slip this one through ....

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