Unpopular AI opinion: Doing data analysis yourself is an important learning exercise. Using AI to do it in your race to be more 'efficient' that means cheat yourself out of important thought and discovery processes that drive creativity, innovation, and utimately things that make you win.
I would assume but I haven't tried it yet either.
Here's how to approach this:
1. Add an annotation documenting the launch
2. Watch New Users for bumps (not daily, don't go wild)
3. Prepare stakeholder language if questions come up
Nothing dramatic, just aware monitoring.
And you can find my expanded thoughts here: kpplaybook.com/resources/go...
This is privacy-preserving behavior working correctly. Browsers shouldn't share cookies with each other.
But it creates an analytics interpretation challenge: Your stakeholders see "new users up 15%" and think growth.
You know it's just people trying a new browser.
But here's the important part: when you import your Chrome data into Atlas, you get bookmarks + passwords + history. Great!
You know what you DON'T get? Cookies.
Which means GA4 can't recognize you as a returning visitor. You're "new" again, even if you've been visiting that site for years.
We installed Atlas yesterday to test the analytics behavior. First thing I checked: user agent string.
Result? Identical to Chrome. EXACTLY the same. Which means GA4's Browser dimension is going show Atlas as "Chrome" not as its own thing.
New browser! Exciting! But I need to talk about something I'm seeing with ChatGPT's Atlas browser because I have thoughts 🧵👇
The short version: if you serve tech-savvy audiences, your GA4 "new users" metric is about to get weird for a few weeks.
Full walkthrough here: youtu.be/l_gz2SRrMec
If you're dealing with this, hope the video helps. Reply if you have questions or comments, and I will share updates if I find better solutions or if Google fixes this.
#analytics #GA4 #dataQuality
I just recorded a quick video showing how to filter it out using browser version segments in GA4 explorations. It's not perfect - browser version isn't available as a custom dimension outside explorations (GA4 limitation) - but it's what we've got for now.
Here's what's happening: People are seeing massive spikes in organic search traffic in GA4, but Search Console is completely flat. The engagement rate is terrible. It's spam traffic coming from Chrome 139.0.0.0 on Windows 10.
@rustybrick.com covered it here: www.seroundtable.com/ga4-surge-or...
Guess what! You might have spam traffic flooding your GA4. Just started this week because of course it would, right before a long weekend. 🙃 (Thanksgiving here in Canada)
Thread on the spam traffic spike you might be seeing (and how to filter it out) 👇🧵
Stop Explaining GA4 Unassigned Traffic - Rename Confusing Channels - via @danaditomaso.com #seo
Thanks for sharing!
The difference this makes is incredible. Clean platform names, easy totals, professional reports that make you look good.
Here is the full breakdown with all the regex patterns: kpplaybook.com/resources/tr...
Questions? Ask away!
#analytics #GA4 #socialmedia #marketing
Here's the process:
1. Create custom channels for each platform using regex patterns (I have a list for you!)
2. CRITICAL: Reorder these channels ABOVE "Organic Social"
3. GA4 processes top-to-bottom, so order = everything
The fix is a custom channel group, and they aren't difficult to set up, BUT the channel order matters! If you don't reorder them correctly, your lovely new channels never get used.
GA4's default channel grouping system wasn't designed for how social platforms actually work.
When someone clicks your link from the LinkedIn mobile app vs desktop vs a shortened link, GA4 sees three different sources instead of just one LinkedIn channel.
Okay, social media managers, let's talk about something that's probably making your life way harder than it needs to be.
GA4 lumps ALL your social media traffic into one generic "Organic Social" bucket. When you try to see which platforms are actually performing, your reports become a mess.
🧵 👇
Here is my full breakdown with step-by-step guides: kpplaybook.com/resources/re...
And the replay of the webinar where I went over this process: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw0z...
Questions? I genuinely want to hear about your GA4 experiences!
#analytics #GA4 #marketing #AIanalysis
The framework I shared in my recent webinar works because it acknowledges LLM limitations while leveraging their pattern recognition strengths.
Your business context is what turns AI-identified patterns into actual strategic insights.
Here's what to do:
1. Create a custom channel group in GA4 using my regex pattern (10 minutes of hands-on time)
2. Set up text highlighting tracking for AI Overviews (another 15 minutes)
3. Build a framework for AI data analysis
(And check with legal first to make sure you can use AI)
Here's the thing that really gets me excited: AI traffic is QUALITY traffic.
Visitors from AI tools show higher engagement rates, spend longer on the website, and view more pages than your average visitor.
This isn't just a measurement exercise - it's a revenue opportunity hiding in your data!
🧵 AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are sending visitors to your site right now, but they're buried in your referral traffic, or worse Unassigned (because these platforms don’t know how to properly set UTM parameters).
Thread below 👇
Hey friends! I'm hosting a free webinar October 21st with @britneymuller.bsky.social, discussing what marketers get wrong about AI.
I'm really looking forward to it. You can register here, it's free! www.linkedin.com/events/73727...
Didn't take long to make a new friend at #brightonSEO. Who else will I see here this week?
We used to say tab hoarders but then we were thinking that's a bit making fun of the actual mental illness so let's come up with something better.
Full breakdown with screenshots: kpplaybook.com/resources/ga...
Video walkthrough: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNI6...
Questions? Let me know!
#analytics #GA4 #marketing #clientreporting
Here's what works:
1️⃣ Create custom channel group in GA4
2️⃣ Add "Other" channel with regex \S+
3️⃣ Add "Tab Collectors" with regex .*
4️⃣ Make sure that Other is always 2nd last and Tab
Collectors is last in the channel list.
Your reports suddenly make sense to humans 🎉
You could spend meeting time educating stakeholders about GA4's session timeout behavior...
OR you could just rename the confusing channels to something that makes sense.
Guess which approach saves your credibility AND meeting time?
I call mine "Tab Collectors".
