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Google Analytics is kept for everyday jobs — traffic sources, drop-off pages, funnels — and valued as free. The largest complaint group says GA4 is hard to learn; comparisons name Clarity and PostHog alongside it, not instead of it.

First written 27 Oct · what changed · from 135 posts by 118 people

Tracking posts that say “google analytics”

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as of 27 Oct · checked once a month

First written 27 Oct. When what people say changes, it shows here.

Tone· 59 posts from 52 people· written 27 Oct

How do people feel about Google Analytics?

The biggest theme by people is everyday usefulness (24 people): traffic sources, drop-off pages, funnels. Behind it, 11 people still name Google Analytics their pick and 8 stay for the free price, while 7 are enthusiasts and 3 are disappointed.

The largest theme is the everyday use. People describe sorting pages by visits and deleting or merging the bottom ones nobody reads, finding the page where patients or shoppers drop off, and building a funnel from product page to add to cart to checkout. Others use it to see which countries already engage with their content, or to notice that AI assistants are already a top traffic source.

Free is why several stay. One writes "I pay $0", and another keeps data in Google Analytics because it is "unlimited and free" and stays put where a smaller tool might shut down, while allowing that it offers limited insights. A further group simply answer "Google Analytics" when asked what to use — some out of habit after ten years, one citing the Search Console integration. 7 are enthusiasts, addicted to checking it or delighted that an AI agent can read the data for them. 3 are disappointed: they call it bloated, or say they don't like it.

  • Useful in daily work24
  • Free and good enough13
  • Still their pick12
  • Loves it7
  • Disappointed3
See 5 of 59 posts
Max Rovensky@MaxRovensky

tbf I would not trust anything production to Marc Lou either his audience is very much toymakers and yeah, a lot of them can just make their own toy for their toys now, so OP is right in that regard most people continue to use Google Analytics as they have for 10 years

Vipin@vipinxtwt

Wow! My Google Analytics shows AI assistants are already my biggest source of traffic. 🤯 I think AI assistants could become a primary source of website discovery in the future. 👀

5 of the 59 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 54, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Pain points· 50 posts from 46 people· written 27 Oct

What do people complain about with Google Analytics?

Complicated and hard to learn is the biggest complaint by people (13 people): too much digging for simple answers, too much to learn. Broken source data (8) and outages (6) follow.

The largest group of complaints is about how hard GA4 is to use. One post describes a dashboard full of numbers with no idea what actually matters; small-site owners call it too complicated, and one says setup takes "3 hours of tutorial videos" just to check whether ten people visited. A long-time user building an alternative says simple answers took too much digging.

Attribution is next. People describe a customer journey that ends in "good luck tracking that", UTM mismatches that break ad-cost imports, UTM tags on their own banners splitting sources, and a big pile of Unassigned or Direct traffic. Related: AI-assistant visits land in Direct, and one analysis found Direct sessions up 141% while engaged sessions stayed flat.

Breakage shows up as missing real-time data, delayed reporting, tags not detected, and one postmortem on an iOS crash outbreak traced to a Firebase Analytics SDK configuration. Smaller groups raise bots counted as visitors, reports that mislead (245 leads against a real 14, today's hours against a full day), privacy — GA loading before consent, recording mouse and scroll — and owner access left in a contractor's personal login.

  • Complicated and hard to learn13
  • Attribution and source data breaks9
  • Outages and breakage7
  • AI and chat traffic lost as Direct5
  • Privacy and cookie consent5
  • Bots inflate visitor numbers4
See 5 of 50 posts
Paul Mit@pmitu

The customer journey in 2026: 1 - sees your tweet 2- Iignores you 3 - sees another tweet 4 - follows you 🎉 5 - forgets you exist, never likes posts 6 - watches your random video 3 months later 7 - asks ChatGPT about your product 8 - buys Good luck tracking that in PostHog or Google Analytics

Kevin_Indig@Kevin_Indig

How much AI traffic is hiding in the Direct column in Google Analytics? I looked across 12 sites and couldn’t reliably isolate AI’s contribution. Between January and September, total Direct sessions on the pages I analyzed rose 141%. But engaged Direct sessions were roughly flat! That matters because there’s a plausible explanation for missing AI referrals. I've seen this in my own studies: someone gets a recommendation, remembers the brand, and visits the website later. Finding it in our analytics would help us understand how much those referral reports leave out. But the data doesn't give that away - yet. Full write-up: link

Haris@harisahmad59

Google Analytics says CodeHype traffic is DOWN 61% today Meanwhile, it’s comparing today’s few hours with yesterday’s entire day 😭 Show me the first 8 hours vs the first 8 hours, @googleanalytics Stop making my 1.7K active users look like a traffic crisis

Shehzad Sadiq|Google Ads Strategist@ppcbyshehzad

Google Analytics showing a big pile of Unassigned or Direct traffic? That’s sales your marketing might not be getting credit for, and it can make good campaigns look weak. Google says Unassigned happens when GA4 can’t map the source to a channel, either because no rule fits, like a made up UTM medium, or because the data lost its session or user identity. Its help page also points to tag setup issues that push up direct traffic. What I’d check: Your UTM tags. Stick to standard medium values like cpc, email or social so GA4 can match a channel. Tag order. Ask your developer to make sure the Google tag loads before any other events fire. Server side tagging. Google says not to run it alongside a separate client side setup for the same property, and to route all active tags through the server container.

5 of the 50 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 45, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Alternatives· 28 posts from 24 people· written 27 Oct

What are the alternatives to Google Analytics?

Microsoft Clarity and PostHog are level at the top (4 people each), and the Clarity crowd runs it alongside GA rather than instead of it. DataFast is behind them (3), with self-built trackers and platform stats close behind.

Clarity and PostHog draw the same number of people, for different jobs. With Clarity, people describe the split: GA shows where visitors came from and which pages they reached, Clarity shows recordings and heatmaps of what they did there. One reply recommends "Google Analytics always, but use Clarity to create funnels".

PostHog is weighed for apps, with people saying it "provides more value or it's easier to use" than GA, running the two side by side, or calling GA plus PostHog the best setup. DataFast is argued on price: one user says $99 a month made no sense for visitor tracking when GA offers those features free, and switched back "despite its terrible UI"; another trialled DataFast, liked the interface, but stayed with GA for the pricing model and past data. 3 people went further and built their own tracker, one listing scroll depth, rage clicks and page speed as things GA doesn't show out of the box. Smaller groups weigh simpler tools — Plausible and Umami for one page without cookies, Matomo self-hosted — platform stats (Bitly, Carrd), Cloudflare's server-level numbers, or tools like Simple Analytics and Humblytics they moved to.

  • Microsoft Clarity5
  • PostHog4
  • DataFast4
  • Self-built analytics3
  • Platform built-in stats3
  • Cloudflare2
See 5 of 28 posts
Valerio Amirani@valerioamirani

They answer different questions. Google Analytics shows where visitors came from and which pages they reached. Clarity shows recordings and heatmaps of what they did on a page. Start with whichever you need first: which sources send traffic, or why one page isn't converting.

Sanja@SanjanaBandara

I mean, unless Marc adds some unique AI insights to DataFast, this one time payments makes sense for a tool like this. When I wanted to use DataFast for my high traffic live video chat app, I had to upgrade to the $99/month plan. It made no sense to pay $99/month for a visitor-tracking tool when you can get most of those features with Google Analytics for free, even though its UI is pretty bad.

Robert @ nuova@TheRobertAvram

Google Analytics who? Thanks to Claude I built my own analytics. 10x better and made for exactly what I need. Here's the stack so you can do it too: → Plain JavaScript tracker → Cloudflare Workers → Cloudflare D1 (SQLite) → Cloudflare geolocation → Daily salted SHA-256 visitor hash → sendBeacon batching → Cron cleanup → Custom admin dashboard interface What it shows me that GA doesn't out of the box: • Scroll depth on every page (GA only tells you if someone hit 90%) • Time spent on each section of the homepage • Click maps by device • Rage clicks and JavaScript errors • Page speed from real visitors • The entire funnel, every visit tied to the account it became, all the way to paid All data on my own servers. The IP address is never stored and it only runs when someone presses Allow. And this is just one tab. It's part of a full admin interface I built with Claude to run Monty end to end, the website and the app. The same can be built for any business to run their own web and app. If you need a custom-coded website or app for your startup, DM me the word "CODE".

5 of the 28 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 23, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Questions· 17 posts from 15 people· written 27 Oct

What do people ask about Google Analytics?

Which tool to pick has the largest group behind it (7): whether GA is still worth using and what else to choose. How to find AI-assistant traffic in GA4 is next (4).

The largest question is a straight comparison. People ask "Still using Google Analytics, or switched?", post polls setting GA4 against Plausible, Matomo and Umami, and ask what tracking tool to recommend; one asks whether anyone still uses GA4 at all, and another asks what GA doesn't give that other tools do. The replies that follow name GA, PostHog, Clarity and Umami.

The next question is how to see AI traffic. The answers are step-by-step: open Traffic acquisition, look for the "AI Assistant" channel, switch to session source to tell ChatGPT from Gemini from Claude, or build a custom channel with a source regex placed above Referral; another suggests checking landing pages, since "some of your direct traffic is probably ChatGPT".

Smaller questions: how Google Analytics differs from Search Console and which one to open, whether GA is having an outage when real-time data stops showing, and how to build a report matching several sources or events at once using the regex generator.

  • Which analytics tool should I use?7
  • How do I see AI traffic in GA?4
  • GA or Search Console?2
  • Is GA having an outage?2
  • How do I build a regex report?2
See 5 of 17 posts
Serhii Yelbaiev@yelbaiev

Google Analytics 4 Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition Look for the new "AI Assistant" channel. Switch to Session source to see ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude. No channel yet? Build a custom one: Source matches regex, placed above Referral.

Harry Sanders@HarrySandersSEO

Some of your direct traffic is probably ChatGPT. Google Analytics: Reports > Engagement > Landing page. Add session source and medium. Typed visits usually hit the homepage. Deep blog posts? Some of that is probably AI. Check landing pages, not the total.

5 of the 17 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 12, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Wishes· 3 posts· written 27 Oct

What do people want from Google Analytics?

Few people post wishes at all (3 people). The larger of the two asks is easier access for AI agents (2 people), specifically a one-click connection so a model can read GA4 data without manual MCP setup.

The clearer wish is that an AI tool could just read GA4 data. One post asks why Codex still lacks a native integration and says setting it up through MCP takes manual configuration; they want to say "look at my GA4" and have it gain direct access without technical setup, and ask why a one-click OAuth connection wouldn't make sense in 2026. Another wants first-party tracking that connects with Google Analytics built into a product.

The other wish is for the older interface: one post misses the era when Google Analytics told you which keyword brought someone in, which site they came from, and where they went after viewing, calling that useful for spotting trends and planning.

With only a handful of posts, this is what the conversation amounts to: nothing here suggests a broad demand, and the requests come from people already using GA rather than from people who left.

  • Easier GA access for AI agents2
  • Bring back old GA reports1
See the 3 posts
Anthony Peres@anperesdc

Why does Codex still lack a simple, native integration with @Google Analytics? It's possible to set it up via MCP (either Google's official version or third-party services), but that requires manual configuration. I'd like to be able to just say, "look at my GA4", and have it gain direct access to the data, without any technical setup. In 2026, wouldn't a one-click OAuth connection just make sense?

Karmendra@karmendra01

The product looks amazing, but there are few recent update from Google about first-party tracking, which you can connect with Google Analytics . If you can integrate that in your product, it will be a crazy combination.

Y.@FlowerInShade

คือจริงๆ คิดถึงสมัยใช้ Google analytics ยุคนั้นมันจะบอกเลยว่าคนเข้ามาดูของเราด้วย Keyword อะไร กดจากเว็บอะไรมา แล้วหลังจากดูของเรา หนีออกไปไหน ซึ่งมันดีมากเว้ย เพราะเราจะได้รู้เทรนด์ แล้ววางแผนชีวิตถูก

In their words

How do people talk about Google Analytics?

The phrases people use most, counted once per person.

  1. 1“page views”3
  2. 2“direct traffic”3
  3. 3“analytics tool”3
  4. 4“traffic sources”2
  5. 5“ai traffic”2
  6. 6“utm tags”2
  7. 7“basic analytics”2
  8. 8“ai insights”2

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