Websites

Resource Guide

Website Tracking and Reporting

General Announcements

12/18/24: New and updated GA4 video tutorials and use cases are now available for campus partners! Scroll down to the "Video Training Library" section to learn:

  1. How to use the Web Analytics for Campus Partners (GA4) Dashboard (updated version as of May 2024)
  2. How to use the new Broken Links and Pantheon Redirect Links reports
  3. How to conduct a basic site audit 
  4. How to monitor your content performance
  5. How to use UTM campaigns to enhance your marketing strategy performance

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GA4 Dashboard Updates

10/2/24: "Broken Links" report was added to the GA4 dashboard. This report can be used to identify broken links ("Page location" column) that lead to a "404 - Content Not Found" page and where that link may have been found ("Page referrer" column). This report is intended to help you start your research - some of the "Page locations" are a bit ambiguous, so it is recommended that you use the "Page title" to make some educated deductions. This is a beta report - please report any issues or feedback to Stephanie. 

10/2/24: "Top Landing Pages" report was added to the GA4 dashboard. This report can be used to identify the pages that acquire the most new traffic and/or the pages that users tend to start their sessions on. 

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Google Analytics 4 

Transition Overview (from UA to GA4)

University Relations and ITS have been in the process of transitioning the campus from using Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and preparing for the sunsetting of UA in July 2023.

From May 2022 to June 2023, main campus GA4 codes were added to live ucr.edu Drupal sites on a rolling basis, and both the UA and GA4 codes were running concurrently to maximize our tracking. Future sites that are spun up will have the main campus GA4 codes added automatically by ITS.

As of July 2023, UA codes are now no longer processing hits and we are now officially only using GA4 codes on our websites. Please see below for more GA4 resources.

If additional customization is desired, campus partners have the option to create and implement their own Google Analytics property and Google Tag Manager container. Please reach out to University Relations’ Marketing Data Manager (stephanie.nguyen@ucr.edu) for more information.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What is Google Analytics?

    Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytics service used to track user behavior on websites with the GA tracking code configured. GA includes features that can help identify trends and patterns in how visitors engage with our websites.

  • What is Google Analytics 4?

    GA4 is not an “upgrade” to UA. It is a completely new version of GA that processes data based on a different model. GA4 is an event-based model, whereas UA is a session-based model. Google recommends against comparing UA and GA4 metrics due to the different models.

  • Why did we transition to Google Analytics 4?

    UA stopped processing data in July 2023. Historical data in UA will be available in the platform up to 6 months after July 2023 (so, up until end of December 2023).

    One of the reasons that Google is discontinuing UA is to address data privacy concerns. Per Google, “UA was built for a generation of online measurement that was anchored in the desktop web, independent sessions and more easily observable data from cookies.” By not relying exclusively on cookies and using an event-based data model, GA4 can operate across multiple platforms (e.g., web, iOS apps, Android apps). This makes GA4 a more future-proof solution.

  • What did the campus-wide transition to Google Analytics 4 look like?

    We used the transition from UA to GA4 as an opportunity to restructure our campus GA account(s) to be more centralized. We are now using two main GA4 codes to track traffic across the entire ucr.edu domain (all live sites hosed on Drupal), with the ability to drill down into specific websites using our report filters.

    We also moved away from advising campus partners to use the native GA reporting as a default and developed a more curated dashboard for a better user experience called the Web Analytics for Campus Partners Dashboard (see below for more details and steps to access). Advanced GA users are still welcome to use the GA platform for research and reporting purposes, if desired.

Trainings and Resources

Process Documentation/Job Aids

Video Training Library

GA4 Basics Live Training (hosted in October 2022)

Web Analytics for Campus Partners (GA4) Dashboard Training Video
Use Case Videos

Other Questions

If you have any questions about Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or website tracking/reporting in general, please reach out to the Marketing Data Manager in University Relations, Stephanie Nguyen (stephanie.nguyen@ucr.edu), or submit a request through Workfront.