What Data Does Google Analytics Prohibit Collecting?

You should know that Google Analytics does not permit the collection of personally identifiable information (PII) like:

SKU(s)
Billing city
Purchase amount

The Google Analytics terms of service, which all customers must follow, prohibit the transmission of PII to Google Analytics. PII refers to information that Google can use to identify a person, such as a person’s name, billing address, email address, and other details. It is important to know about these if you are seeking information on what data does google analytics prohibit collecting.

If you are not proficient with Google Analytics, hiring a professional SEO agency will be recommended. They will take care of your data protection and privacy needs while doing search engine optimization of your website.

What Does Google’s Terms Say?

The prohibition on sending personally identifiable information (PII) is mentioned in Google Analytics’ Terms of Service. As a result, before using Google Analytics, each person who registers must agree to these terms. The main reasons for prohibiting PII processing are security and regulatory compliance.

Google Analytics wishes to avoid data leakage and the disclosure of personal user information. Google Analytics reduces the risk of attackers learning how a specific person uses a website by limiting the collection of personally identifiable information. The abusers will also be unable to access any billing or financial information.

Privacy

The collection of personally identifiable data such as name, email address, or billing information is prohibited by the Google Analytics Terms of Service. If you are curious, you should look into a website’s privacy policies to see what information they are gathering about you.

Assigning user IDs and measuring across devices

While Google Analytics does not allow you to collect personally identifiable information, you can assign IDs (such as a customer ID) to multiple sessions across multiple devices. It is important to know what data does google analytics prohibit collecting before you assign the IDs.

Individual users are not tracked by Google Analytics

There are always a few things to keep in mind. Although you can configure some user-level properties, you cannot include any Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as an email address, name, or company. So any marketing or targeting to specific users based on their email address based on tracked data is simply not an option.

Understanding your users and how they interact with your website or product is critical for making data-driven decisions. Because Google Analytics tracks based on device type and browser rather than individual profiles, there may be critical gaps in your reporting capability. User data is also frequently scattered across multiple sources.

Bringing all of your user data to one platform greatly expands your reporting capabilities. Google Analytics typically only supports live streaming data, and importing from other sources can be difficult or impossible. Using a different tool overcomes this limitation.

How can I prevent Google Analytics from collecting information about my activities?

If you do not want websites to collect website usage data about you through Google Analytics and are not sure about what data does google analytics prohibit collecting, you can do the following:

Cookies should be disabled in your browsers.
Javascript should be disabled in your browser.
Use Google’s Opt-out browser extension.
Use a third-party app like Disconnect, Ghostery, or Do Not Track Me.

The first two options will have an impact on your online experience (some features or functionality may not work).

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Conclusion

Privacy is one of the most important concerns for businesses these days. To take care of your business and personal privacy needs, ensure you do not enter your information on any untrusted or unverified platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Google Analytics Track Individual Users?

While many marketers believe that tracking individual users in Google Analytics is impossible, it is not. If your application or website has a login authentication system, you can use Google Analytics’ User ID tracking feature to track users.

How Accurate Is Google Analytics?

In most cases, Google Analytics is a reliable tool that produces accurate results. However, it is not completely accurate due to some glitches and problems. There are some common errors that may cause its data to be inaccurate. However, you can always find easy tips and tricks to get rid of these errors.

Does Google Analytics Use Cookies?

Google Analytics employs first-party cookies in a Javascript script that is added to each page of your website. This enables you to track user behavior on your website, but it relies on third-party cookies from third-party sites to scrape referral data.