Google Analytics collects data. That's the point, right? We're in the data collection business, like pollsters, like scientists, like governments.
What does it collect? And where does that data end up?
I'm going to have a stab at explaining this. That will help you make informed decisions when setting up your Google Analytics account. There are laws about some forms of data.
To keep things manageable I'm only going to look at where data goes in this post. I'll talk about the nature of the data, the way it's used, and how long it's kept in future posts. Remember you can follow me on Bluesky, Threads or X to learn about new posts as soon as they're published.
Let's begin. When you install Google Analytics (GA) on your website or app, data gets sent to four different places.
1. The data that goes to Google
Firstly, when you install GA you begin passing information to Google about your website/app users.
That's not unexpected: GA needs to see that information in order to serve you. This approach is followed by most other website analytics packages, such as Matomo and Plausible. Without data sharing in this way you'd need to install software on your device itself.
Google is a large organisation which does many things. It's possible that data gets shared with other parts of the company as well as the GA team. For example, SEO experts sometimes talk about the popularity of websites being a key factor in which websites are listed first in Google searches. If that's the case, how would Google know which websites are popular? Maybe they would use data the comes into their organisation via GA.
There's one aspect of this that may surprise you: you're letting Google see more data than you can see yourself. For instance, GA sees the IP address of a user. It then filters that so you can't see the IP address of that user.
Google's view of the user data can be blocked by the setup of the device. For example, use of a private window in the Firefox browser blocks tracking by GA.
2. The data that goes to you
The second place data ends up is, erm, you. When you login to GA you're seeing information about your users' behaviour. The data may end up on stored on your device if you have email alerts set up, or if you download it.
Remember that others with account access can see the data. One example of this would be a Google Analytics Consultant who did some work for you in the past. Many people forget to clear out old users from their GA property.
3. The data that goes to them
When a user visits your website they are doing so virtually. That is, they're always using a device. That device could be a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a phone, a console, a TV, etc
And data is stored on that machine. Not much, admittedly, but at the time of writing a small amount of data is stored by GA in the form of cookies. That information can be used to connect together other data and create a fuller picture.
4. The data that goes to other companies
Lastly, let's talk about other companies. Did you, or your colleagues, connect your GA property to other systems?
For example, Zapier lets you trigger actions based on data in Google Analytics. In this case conversion data gets passed to Zapier.
(Disclosure: I use Zapier for my back office systems. It's not connected to the GA property installed on this website)