Hey Reader!
This past week I was discussing two reports with a client, one in GA4 and the other in Domo. The reports cover the exact same website, the same traffic, the same month — and they completely disagreed about how much traffic and conversions came from organic versus paid. The discrepancy was large enough that you’d make different decisions based on what report you were looking at.
Of course, the instinct is to ask "which one is wrong?" And I get it, because when you're in a meeting and someone's waiting for an answer, a single clean answer feels like a safe solution. But in this case, neither one is “wrong”, exactly. Instead, they're answering different questions. Once you look at the attribution models, lookback windows, and definitions of what counts as a “session”, the discrepancy makes sense. Neither is broken, it’s just both tools doing exactly what they were designed to do, in their own ways.
I know this is a theme that I talk about a lot but it’s because it comes up all the time for me and I’m sure for you as well. These two systems are the result of two different questions, not just two different answers to the same question. Instead, ask "which question do I actually care about, and which tool is the best option to answer it?"
So the next time two reports won't agree, try not to pick a winner. Figure out what question each one is actually answering first, then decide where to go from there.
Google Tag Gateway vs Google Tag Manager
Is Google Tag Gateway just a new name for Google Tag Manager, and if I set up one do I still need the other? It's a completely fair thing to be confused about so instead of explaining this only individually on client calls, I wrote up the differences. The short version: GTM is the management layer (what fires and when), and Tag Gateway is the routing layer (where those Google signals travel after they fire), and they're complementary, not competing. The post walks through who should bother with it, who's better off looking at server-side GTM instead, and what it won't do for you.
Read it here →
Articles Worth Your Time
———•
|
Google Business Profile data now connects to GA4
Thanks to Claire Carlile for spotting this! This change is live now, and to be honest, it's pretty underwhelming. When you link one or more Business Profiles, you get a single "Google Business Profile" reporting “collection” but just one overview report: interactions, calls, website clicks, direction clicks, messages, bookings, and menus. That's it. You can't modify the report and you can't drill down into anything. If you manage multiple locations, the information is summed across all profiles and with no way to segment it. Honestly, I'd rather Google had waited and shipped something more useful than what's essentially a screenshot.
Learn about this “feature” here
How to track on-site search in GA4 (and what to do with it)
Another new post from me. If your site has a search bar, there's a useful pile of data sitting right there! It’s your visitors telling you, in their own words, what they came for and couldn't find. The catch is GA4 doesn't give it to you in any standard report, so you have to go dig. Your most-searched terms point straight at content that's buried, content that's unclear, or content you haven't written yet. My post covers setup, building the report, and what to do with what you find.
Get searching
Measuring AI performance: the metrics are starting to crystallize
Tory Gray pulled together a useful rundown of what AI citation data is actually available right now, and it's a helpful checklist for what you can and can’t do. While the list itself is fantastic (and you should keep it handy), here's the thing I'd add before using any of this in a report and it’s that we still don't have a shared definition of what a "citation" even is. I've seen it mean "the bot visited your site, probably in response to a user question" and "your site was returned in the answer," and those are very different things. If you're going to report on it, define exactly what you mean, every time.
Thanks Tory for putting in the work
Where You Can Find Me
———•
|
NAED Annual Marketing Summit
I'm speaking at the NAED Annual Marketing Summit in August. I really enjoy these industry-specific conferences because I get a much clearer sense of what in-house folks are actually wrestling with in analytics and reporting. If you've got an industry conference you think I'd be a good fit for, let me know!
That's it for this edition of The Huddle. As always, if you have questions or want to share what you're working on, just hit reply!