Latest GA4 Update from Google: The Use of Benchmarking in Competitive Analysis is Back

Google can concentrate its development efforts on GA4’s analytics features now that Universal Analytics has been retired.

The most recent GA4 feature, benchmarking data for competitor analysts, has been a long-awaited addition. You can see how you stack up against your competitors in a given industry by comparing your performance on important website or app metrics.

In its earlier versions of Google Analytics, Google provided benchmarking reporting and had long promised to provide benchmark data to GA4 account users. Marketers are looking for more reporting options to assess their strategic progress and quickly adjust their decisions, so the decision to launch the feature is timely.

History of Benchmarking

Benchmarking metrics are a sought-after analysis, despite its inclusion or removal from analytics dashboards. Benchmark reporting has been a feature of Google’s analytics reporting for some time. It had benchmark reports built into Google Analytics as an additional report. These reports let users compare the performance of their website to similar metrics based on aggregated data from other websites in the same industry.

Phasing Out and Reintroducing Benchmark Reports

However, before users switched from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google phased out benchmark reports. As Google adjusted its measurements and reports to the changing regulations governing data privacy, the benchmark reports were removed. To meet user expectations, Google needed to ensure that the data it collected for its analytics was anonymized so that it could provide insights without revealing a specific business identity.

Later, Google’s GA4 platform reintroduced benchmark reporting. Google did, however, make a few tweaks to the way access to the benchmark data was set up.

Accessing and Customizing Benchmark Data

Unlike the Universal Analytics report, analysts did not have quick access to the metrics. GA4 accounts were initially set up with no benchmarking data as a default setting, but there was no integrated report available among the menu options. Analysts were required to grant permission for their data to be incorporated into the anonymized data to gain access to benchmark data.

Analysts must also specify the size of the business to ensure that the benchmark data is comparable. If you own a small firm or a startup, you may not want to be unfairly compared to a larger company in the same field.

Finally, analysts must specify their industry preference. The benchmark data can be categorized into 26 categories.

Analysts can view the data once they have acquired permission. To analyze the data, enable the “Modeling contributions & business insights” setting in the GA4 property. It is located in the GA4 Admin panel, from which analysts can select “Account Settings.”

The overview card, a panel on the home page that displays a trendline for each metric, provides access to the benchmarking data. After selecting a desired metric, the analyst selects a benchmarking category. The panel’s highlighted metrics cover acquisition, engagement, retention, and monetization metrics calculated in Google Analytics.

A few fundamental features are provided to users by the Benchmark data panel. A trendline for the account data and the median for the account’s peer group are shown in the panel. The peer group, which ranges from the 25th to the 75th percentile, is also shown in the panel.

As per Google, the benchmarking information is encrypted in an aggregated format to keep up with security. This is similar to how Google Analytics used to treat its benchmark panel in earlier versions.

If another group is a potential insight rather than the initial choice, you can change the 26 categories into which the data are categorized during setup. Combining the metrics and group options lets you choose the best comparison group.

How Your Marketing Strategy is Influenced by Benchmark Analysis

When compared to previous efforts, the improved benchmark data provide more nuanced insights into organizing which analyses ought to be covered. It allows you to more precisely estimate the potential for improvements and pinpoint performance issues.

Using Benchmark Data to Compare Performance

Let’s say you have a few OKRs for increasing sales for your business and want to know if the activity on your website is bringing in a healthy number of new customers. You should check the metrics to see if any of the trends in website visits are similar to what the industry typically experiences. If the number of new visitors fits in the highest quartile of peer performance or lags, the benchmark trendlines can indicate whether your activity is representative of the industry.

You can use this information to prioritize which metrics and, as a result, which OKRs to address to make changes that will have the greatest impact on performance. When a trend is found to be correlated with a segment median, it may suggest that tasks for the metric are not as urgent as those that are performed at a lower level. Benchmark data is intended to be an indication of industry categories that compare your firm to industry trends.

Regularly Refreshing and Applying Benchmark Data

Since benchmark data is updated every 24 hours, analysts should only check the data daily for updates in an analysis workflow.

Using benchmark reports, which provide the appropriate competitive analysis, analysts can compare your online presence to that of your competitors. Comparisons based on the metrics with the greatest potential for improvement will guide your operations. When marketers use benchmark data like this one in Google Analytics to stay ahead of the most prominent competitors, they will be able to make the best decisions.