Google's free web and app analytics for traffic sources, user journeys and conversions, linked to Google Ads and Search Console

Google Analytics is Google’s own analytics service for websites and apps. You add a tag to your site or app and get reports on where visitors come from, what they do and which of them convert. It costs nothing.

It suits founders who run Google Ads or want the most detail without paying. The reports cover cross-platform journeys, attribution across channels and machine-learning forecasts.

Two limits are worth knowing. Data in explorations and funnel reports is kept for 2 or 14 months on the free version (standard reports are not affected), and the data is linked to cookies and identifiers. If you would rather not use cookies at all, look at Plausible or Fathom.

Pros

  • Free of charge, with one property able to cover both your website and your app
  • Integrates with Google Ads and Google Search Console
  • Machine-learning features estimate which customers are likely to take an action next

Cons

  • Ties data to cookies and user identifiers, unlike cookie-free tools such as Plausible and Fathom
  • The free version keeps user-level and event-level data for explorations for 14 months at most
  • Longer retention (26 to 50 months) needs Analytics 360, the paid enterprise version

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