Websites

Resource Guide

Website Tracking and Reporting

General Updates & Notices

12/6/23: Google Analytics website tracking will be impacted by the official launch of cookie consent banner on all Drupal sites with the Drupal Update taking place on December 6, 2023. With the cookie consent banner, Google Analytics (and Google Tag Manager) codes will NOT load until the user clicks "accept" in the cookie consent banner; we expect around an 80% traffic decrease on all sites. The UREL team will be monitoring traffic for the next few months and will determine the best next steps from there. 

9/11/23: Key metrics from Universal Analytics were saved into the campus's data warehouse, Big Query, in August 2023. An official update email to campus was sent on Monday, 9/11/23, with details on the project and how to access this historical data using the Web Analytics for Campus Partners (UA) Dashboard. 

8/31/23: If you are a campus partner interested in learning how to optimize your multi-channel marketing efforts, join me in my session "What's working and what's not: Track your campaigns with UTM parameters" at the UCR Marketing Communications Conference on September 13-14, 2023!

7/14/23: Internal link click tracking is not currently available for ucr.edu sites by default due to Google Analytics 4 limitations. If you are interested in tracking clicks on internal links on your site, you will need to set this up with Google Tag Manager. Please reach out to University Relations’ Marketing Data Manager (stephanie.nguyen@ucr.edu) for next steps.

GA4 Dashboard Updates

8/31/23: "Top Campaigns" report was updated and a supplemental campaign report called "Other Campaign Details" was added to the GA4 dashboard. These reports can be used to monitor UTM parameters for campaign tracking. 

7/14/23: “Top Search Terms” report was added to the GA4 dashboard. Use this report to view the top searched terms on your site.

7/14/23: "Audience" report was separated into two different reports in the GA4 dashboard - "Location Breakdown" and "Language/Tech Breakdown". These reports have cross-filtering ability on so you can click on an attribute and see the pages that contribute to that number.

Google Analytics 4 Transition

Overview

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

Live Training/Recordings

GA4 Basics (hosted in October 2022)
GA4 Official Reporting Rollout
Campus Partner Essentials (hosted in May 2023)		 Zoom Recording (5/24/23)
Passcode: $cotty1954

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.