10.3 Google Analytics
This is where you’ll manage your Google Analytics account once you’ve authenticated it for use with Beehive, either during the Quick Setup or on the Accounts screen.
10.3.1 Statistics (Analytics)
The statistics tab allows you to view all of your stats from one area.
Visitors
The Visitors panel displays traffic and activity data across multiple metrics, and using the available filters, will display comparative data over selected time frames.
Use the dropdown at the top-left to switch between the old Universal Analytics and the newer Google Analytics 4 data if you have both of them configured on your site.
The data for each metric during the currently selected time frame is displayed along the bottom of the panel. Click any metric to view a chart detailing that metric’s activity over time.
These metrics are defined as:
- Sessions – The number of unique user sessions during the selected time frame. A session is defined as a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a given time frame.
- Users – The number of unique individual users who interacted with a site during the selected time frame.
- Pageviews – The number of pages that were fully loaded into a browser at the request of users. A user who views five pages in one session will result in a single session and five pageviews.
- Pages/Session – The average number of pages users viewed during a single session.
- Average Time – The average amount of time users spent interacting with a site during a single session.
- Bounce rate – A bounce occurs when a user leaves a site shortly after arriving without interacting with any elements on the page. The bounce rate is the number of these events as a percentage of all sessions during the selected time frame.
Time Frame Filter
Use the time frame filter to display data for a variety of periods, including custom data ranges.
Changing the time frame will refresh the data for every chart on the Statistics page, so all charts display data for the same period.
Compare to last period
Select the Compare to last period option, and then click a metric to see a comparison of the current data for that period and the data for the time frame preceding the current time frame.
For example, the lighter-colored line in the image below shows a site’s pageview data for the last month, while the bolder line shows the same metric for the month immediately preceding the last month.
Real-Time Visitors
View the real-time data of your site’s visitors, which is categorized by device. This panel displays the total number of current visitors, as well as a percentage breakdown by the following devices.
- Desktop
- Tablet
- Mobile
Mediums, Search Engines, and Top pages
Beehive displays key Search Engine Optimization data in three circle charts directly below the Visitors data.
These charts show traffic data in the following categories:
- Medium – The various sources for site traffic: organic, direct, referral, and so on.
- Social Networks – Traffic that was referred to a site from a social network.
- Search Engines – A ranking of search engines based on the amount of traffic derived from those sources.
Top Countries
The Top Countries chart uses color coding to show, geographically, where traffic is coming from to a site and the number of visitors from each country during the selected time frame.
Top Pages
A list of a site’s most visited pages and the number of visitors who viewed the pages during the selected time period, as well as the average amount of time users spent on that page and the percent change since the previous period.
The list contains links to the listed pages. Click any link to view that page.
10.3.2 Account (Analytics)
IMPORTANT
Google has announced that they will be discontinuing Universal Analytics as of July 2023. Google Analytics 4 is the new API from Google that is now the default for all new properties created in your Google Analytics account. But you can also create a new GA4 property from an existing Universal Analytics property and they will be nicely integrated.
To learn all about it and how to set it up if you haven’t already, see the following Google articles:
You can configure both Google Analytics 4 and/or Universal Analytics options below if you wish, and toggle between the two when viewing the statistics in your site admin. See the Statistics (Analytics)chapter above.
You can create multiple views or data streams for each property (domain/site/network) in Google Analytics. This allows you to create more narrowly tailored reports, which has the added benefit of cleaning up the data as Google separates it from the rest.
Analytics 4 Profile
Once you have authenticated your Google Analytics account on the Accounts screen, click the Analytics 4 Profile dropdown menu and select the data stream you want to use for your site.
Then paste in the Measurement ID for that stream in the field provided to send data to your Google Analytics account.
Note that if you don’t need to view analytics data in your wp-admin, you can simply paste the Measurement ID for the stream you want to use in the field provided to send your site data to your Google Analytics account.
Linking Multiple Analytics Account
If you have multiple Google Analytics accounts linked to your Google account, then the data from only 25 of these streams will be displayed in the analytics dashboard to enhance your site’s performance.
However, If you want to increase this limit you can add the following filter in your theme or custom plugin’s function.php file
add_filter( ‘beehive_google_analytics_ga4_accounts_page_size’, function ( $limit ) {
// Increase the limit to 50
return 50;
} );
Note: Increasing the limit may introduce timeout errors due to an increased number of requests.
Universal Analytics Profile
Once you have authenticated your Google Analytics account on the Accounts screen, click the Universal Analytics Profile dropdown menu and select the view you want to use for your site.
If you have set up your own API project for this connection, check the Automatically detect Tracking ID checkbox to have Beehive automatically fetch that for you for the selected view, and add it where needed.
If you need to use a different Tracking ID, or just want to send analytics data from your site to your Google Analytics account, be sure that box is unchecked. Then manually enter the tracking ID in the field below.
10.3.3 Settings (Analytics)
Admin pages tracking
By default, only the activity on the frontend pages of your site is tracked. However, by enabling this Admin Page Tracking feature, activity in the wp-admin is also tracked.
IP Anonymization
Google does collect IP addresses in order to report geolocation data, but those addresses are never reported and are stored in an anonymous state. When enabled, IP Anonymization modifies collected IP addresses so they cannot be used by Google and allows you to ensure your audience that you are not leaving it up to Google to protect their data.
Multisite Super Admins have an additional option that, when selected, forces all subsites to anonymize IP addresses, as well.
Display Advertising
When enabled, this feature adds Google advertising cookies to your site or network so you can do things like:
- Create Remarketing Audiences based on specific behavior, demographic, and interest data, and share those lists with Google Ads.
- Use demographic and interest data in your Analytics reports.
- Create Segments based on demographic and interest data.
Keep in mind that you may need to update your privacy policy if you wish to enable this feature.
Exclude Roles from Tracking
If you don’t want certain users’ activity to be tracked and added to your analytics, you can exclude them by roles. Search for the user role and select it to ensure that when any users with that role are logged into the site, their activity will not be tracked. You can add multiple roles if you wish.
Statistics in post types
This allows you to display the statistics meta box on custom post types. By default, posts and pages are already included but you can remove these by clicking the x icon next to the name. Simply type in the name of the post type and select it from the dropdown.