Almost all of our global clients use Google Analytics, and some use other additional website analytics tools as well, such as Baidu Tongji.
On July 1, 2023, Google ceased data processing of the older “Universal Analytics”. “Google Analytics 4” is the new version that everybody will need to learn to love.
To get the most out of Google Analytics 4 for China, there are a few things you need to know.
Table of Contents
How to Access the Google Analytics Interface
Google Analytics’ Data Collection For China Is Pretty Good
Tag Your Ads on Baidu, Weibo and Other Platforms
Watch Chinese Traffic The Simplest Way (Google Analytics 4 Comparisons)
Watch All Chinese Traffic (Google Analytics 4 Segments)
Watch Chinese Traffic Via Audiences
Summary
How to Access the Google Analytics Interface
While Google Analytics can pick up data from people that visit your philippine number for whatsapp website without a problem, the website analytics.google.com is blocked in China.
This means that any of your China-based staff will require a VPN to access it. For most Chinese professionals working with the outside world, this isn’t a significant issue, although VPN speeds can occasionally be slow. We use Astrill VPN because it has proven to be more reliable than others. You can find more information on Astrill in this post.
Google Analytics’ Data Collection For China Is Pretty Good
Google Analytics will pick up most data from your users but might miss a small percentage. This is likely to be less than 10%, although we’ve observed discrepancies as high as 30%.
If meticulously tracking each goal or transaction is crucial for you, it would be best to manage this via back-end systems. For example, for a Drupal-based e-commerce website we promote, we compare Google’s data against the sales recorded by Drupal. There’s always some discrepancy, but the data from Google Analytics definitely has a strong enough correlation with real purchases that it is useful for our decision making process.
Tag Your Ads on Baidu, Weibo and Other Platforms
Baidu, along with other Chinese search and social platforms, allow you to add URL parameters, which will tell Google Analytics where the traffic is coming from.
In the case of Baidu, you can add these parameters:
utm_source = “Baidu”
utm_medium = “CPC”
utm_term = Enter Chinese characters for the targeted keyword, using UTF8 code.
utm_campaign = Use this to identify your ads by group (based on your preferences). We usually insert the campaign name here.
utm_content = Baidu doesn’t support the dynamic insertion of an ad ID, so we usually use this for ad groups instead.
As a bonus, if you’ve tagged your traffic properly, you should be able to merge the data from Baidu ads and Google Analytics in Google Looker reports.
Watch Chinese Traffic The Simplest Way (Google Analytics 4 Comparisons)
If your website is both for Chinese people and other people, it can be helpful to compare the two different groups of people. This can help reveal problems and opportunities for you to address.
There’s two ways you could do this without editing any custom settings in Google Analytics 4.
Compare Chinese-language traffic.
Compare traffic from mainland China.
To compare Chinese-language traffic, first navigat