Last Modified on August 23, 2024
Technology has come far since the early days of analytical tools and that means there are more and more features available today than we had 10 years ago.
Google Signals isn’t entirely a new thing; it has been a feature that was first seen in Universal Analytics. But with Google Analytics 4’s arrival, it got many more bells and whistles.
But what is Google Signals and how can it be helpful (or not)? Should you even use it? We’ll learn about these things and more in the following topics:
- What is Google Signals?
- GA4 Google Signals Explained: Features
- How to Enable Google Signals
- Google Signals Use Cases
- Should You Turn On Google Signals?
Right, let’s see what these signals are about!
What is Google Signals?
First introduced in 2018, it’s a Google Analytics feature that allows you to track users across different devices on sites and apps where they are signed into their Google accounts and those who have turned on Ads Personalization.
This linking of signed-in users with the data enables cross-device remarketing and exporting the key events (aka conversions) to Google Ads. All of this data is session-scoped.
The main aim of Google Signals was to deal with the increasing privacy challenges, especially in the light of GDPR. Compared to third-party cookies, it aggregates the personal user data so it’s anonymized and not processed by third parties.
However, it still gives contextual information on what users are doing on the website.
It’s important to note that when GA4 is connected with BigQuery, then it exports event data associated with pseudonymous cookies, which means the same user being counted multiple times across different devices.
So, there will be a disparity between the data you see in GA4 and BigQuery.
GA4 Google Signals Explained: Features
Google Signals brings four important features when enabled:
1. Cross-Device Reporting
It enables cross-platform reporting by connecting data about devices and activities from different sessions if you use a User ID. This allows understanding of what your users do from the beginning till the end, i.e., converting and even afterward.
This cross-device activity is tracked when users are logged into their Google accounts on the following devices:
- Google Chrome
- Google Chrome web browser
- Other web browsers
- Client and other apps that require a Google account
- Android devices
- iOS devices (For iOS 14+ devices, you have to use User-ID for cross-device tracking)
2. Remarketing
You can create remarketing audiences in Google Analytics 4 and share them with your linked ad accounts like Google Ads and other Google Marketing Platform (GMP) advertising products.
This allows to show ads in cross-device eligible remarketing campaigns to users who have turned on Ads Personalization.
3. Advertising Reporting
It provides a holistic view of the customer journey and interactions on multiple browsers and devices when users have enabled Ad Personalization.
For instance, a user sees an ad, then visits your website on the laptop, and later on comes back to convert on the phone.
However, it’s important to note that signed-in Google data expires after 26 months. However, if the Data Retention settings in your GA4 property are set to less than 26 months, then this data will be deleted according to that.
4. Demographics and Interests
GA4 collects data related to demographics and interests when Google Signals is enabled, which is possible through device identifiers and users who are signed into their Google accounts with Ads Personalization turned on.
If you deactivate these features, then you don’t get remarketing for the impacted regions, and downstream key event modeling and reporting in linked Google Ads and Search Ads 360 accounts also take a hit.
How To Enable Google Signals
To enable Google Signals, you need Editor or Administrator permissions in GA4. You can then follow the following three steps after you log in to your GA4 property:
- Go to Admin → Click Data Collection and Modification → Click Data Collection.
- Turn on the Google Signals data collection toggle.
- By default, Google Signals is enabled for all 307 regions when you turn it on. But you can choose to turn it off/on for specific regions by clicking on the cog next to the “Google signals data collection is allowed in 307 of 307 regions.”
Once you’ve selected to turn off/on Google Signals for each region, you can click on the Apply button.
If you disable collection for a region, then GA4 maintains any historical data that you’ve collected based on your data-retention settings, but no more data is collected from the time of the change forward.
If you disable the collection of Google Signals data, you will not have access to remarketing lists based on that data, advertising reporting features, or demographics and interests.
So turning it on/off is not that complicated given you have the right permissions and understanding of the regions you want it turned on for.
But if you’re using a server-side Google Tag Manager setup, you’ll have to configure it differently. Here’s a guide from Google to get started.
Google Signals Use Cases
There could be several use cases depending on what you want to achieve, but it’s not only limited to that. How you use the available data is completely up to you. These are:
- Accurately report on user numbers vs devices which includes 1-Day, 7-Day, and 0-Day active users.
- Analyze and understand the user journey across different devices with active users based on user-based reports like Funnel and Path Explorations.
- Understand how different groups of users behave on your website so you can target the most valuable segments.
- Understand cross-device marketing performance, i.e., channels, campaigns, etc., so ad spend can be optimized.
- Serve relevant ads to users by remarketing them across devices which will have a higher chance to convert them into customers.
Now, these use cases make a case for Google Signals, so should you turn on Google Signals?
Should You Turn On Google Signals?
Up until a few months ago, Google Signals being turned on meant it would be part of the selected Reporting Identity, which had an impact on how the data was displayed for users, called ‘Thresholding.’
Then things were shuffled again and you could choose whether you’d want Google Signals to be part of your reporting identity or not.
Finally, Google decided to completely strip off Google Signals from the reporting identity, which resolved the thresholding issue altogether.
However, using Google Signals means that you should have all the necessary privacy disclosures to let your website users know that their data is being collected.
For this purpose, you should have a privacy policy on the website that includes information about this feature and how it collects personal data in aggregated form.
On top of that, having a cookie policy that mentions how Google Signals places cookies on your users’ devices would also ensure that you’re doing the job of informing the users.
This is often communicated with Google’s Consent Mode and a Consent Management Platform (CMP) that shows a consent banner on your website, allowing users to give their consent for this sort of data collection.
It is also a good idea to get your legal team’s advice on collecting and storing user data depending on the regions or countries you operate in.
The above use cases are a few reasons to turn this feature on, but it’s important to understand that overall data in GA4 is reported on an aggregated basis.
In addition, Google uses the HyperLogLog++ (HLL++) algorithm to estimate cardinality for large datasets, even for the most used metrics like Active Users and Sessions. You can read more about it here.
On top of that, there can be tracking issues. So, as long as you keep in mind that data is never truly accurate and your legal team is on board, you will be fine turning it on.
Summary
Google Signals is a feature that’s here to stay. It will keep improving to provide more accuracy and value – at least that’s the hope.
In this Google Signals explained post, we covered what Google Signals is and its four important features. We also looked at how to enable it from your GA4 property’s interface. Don’t forget that you need an Editor or higher permissions.
We learned about some use cases and how they can be beneficial for us, but they are not the be-all and end-all. How you use the available data is also up to you and your business model.
Lastly, we discussed some legal implications and requirements of using Google Signals and why it’s important to get your legal team on board.
We also learned why having a privacy policy, a cookie policy, and managing users’ consent is more important today than ever before!
Talking about Google Analytics 4 features, there’s a recent one about Google Analytics 4 Trend Change Detection that might interest you.
So, have you turned on Google Signals for your/your client’s property? How has it changed things for you? Let our readers know in the comments below.
