Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for keeping track of the performance and stability of your site. It helps with this and provides detailed reports and statistics to help you with advertising.
It’s a critical piece of kit if you want to increase the number of site/page views you get and optimize your site any way you can to improve the SEO score or even just the speed and performance of the site.
We’ll show you how to add Google Analytics to Squarespace. We’ll be using Google Analytics 4 because, at the current time of this writing, Universal Analytics is being deprecated and will no longer be supported soon.
Difference between UA, GA4 & Squarespace Analytics
UA stands for Universal Analytics and is the previous, soon-to-be deprecated version of Google Analytics. It still works perfectly fine compared to GA4 but will no longer be supported by Google from July 2023.
GA4 stands for Google Analytics 4. This is the newer version of Google Analytics and is the primarily supported version. We highly recommend you use this if settings up Analytics on your site for the first time. We strongly recommend migrating to GA4 from UA if you already have it.
Squarespace Analytics
- It doesn’t count internal traffic when logged in.
- Reliable on-site commerce & overall tracking.
- No control over restricting specific IPs from attributing to comprehensive data.
- Directly calculates traffic from total visitor activity.
- Identifies visitors by location.
- Requires a Squarespace business plan, costing $33/month. ($23/month if paid annually).
Google Analytics
- Counts internal traffic when logged in.
- Set up filters to block specific IP addresses from counting towards overall data.
- It’s reported that Google sometimes misses orders relating to commerce traffic.
- Calculate traffic based on a sample of visitors while retaining accuracy.
- Identifies visitors by location, although with a different method to Squarespace, this can sometimes lead to slightly different results.
- Free to use.
Squarespace & Google Analytics are great options for tracking unique traffic and monitoring website performance. It’s hard to say if one is better than the other as they both have their advantages & disadvantages when it comes to running a site on the Squarespace platform.
It’s worth noting that when it comes to potential bot traffic, both Squarespace and Google Analytics have their own measures.
They both handle bot traffic and unique traffic well although Squarespace might be just a little bit more accurate in this area due to being directly integrated with the platform rather than operating from an external source.
Squarespace analytics are only available with their business plan or above. If you have the Personal Squarespace plan, you won’t have any access to analytics.
Adding Google Analytics to Squarespace: Step-by-step
If you don’t have a Google Analytics 4 but have a Universal analytics account, we strongly recommend you upgrade as soon as possible. You can look for further help with working with Google Analytics if you get stuck through this content.
What you’ll need:
- Google Analytics account.
- An active Squarespace site & account.
Start by finding the “External API Keys” menu. This is within the advanced settings menu on the Squarespace dashboard.
You can access this by following the below steps from your Squarespace dashboard:
- Select “Settings“.
- Go to “Advanced“.
- Choose “External API Keys“.
You should now be in the “External API Keys” menu. From here, you need to copy in your Google Analytics tracking ID.
1. Locating your GA4 tracking ID
First of all, log into your Google Analytics account. Once you’ve done this, we must link your Squarespace site to your GA4 account.
If you’re still editing your site and haven’t published it yet, you can either publish the site with a password so only specific individuals can access the site, or you can use the built-in domain.
You can access your built-in domain from your Squarespace dashboard by going to “Settings” > “Domains“.
Now, let’s get that GA4 tracking ID.
- Go to the Google Analytics site.
- Select “Admin” in the bottom-left corner.
- Find “Data Streams“.
- Choose “Web” out of the 3 options.
- Copy your site URL into the box labeled “Website URL“. (Ensure you don’t copy the “https://” part of your URL. This is automatically included).
- Make a name for your site. This is what Google Analytics will list the site as.
2. Copy your tracking ID into Squarespace
If you followed all the previous steps, you should have a tab open where you can paste your Google Analytics tracking ID code into Squarespace. If you haven’t, follow the steps above to find the “External API Keys” menu.
Once you’ve selected “Save“, the process of linking your Google Analytics 4 profile with your Squarespace site should be complete.
Optional Step: Unlinking Squarespace & GA4
If you ever change your mind and want to unlink Google Analytics 4 from Squarespace, you can return to your “External API Keys” menu and delete the “Google Analytics” ID. This will effectively unlink both platforms.
FAQ
Do I need multiple Google Analytics accounts if I have more than one site?
No, you can link multiple (up to 100) websites to the same Google Analytics account as long as you own the website or can give access to monitor analytics and link the site and GA platform.
What is Google Analytics’ biggest weakness when used with Squarespace?
Accuracy is GA’s biggest weakness is accuracy. While it is not inaccurate in any regard and provides a pretty reliable estimation, it is not 100% accurate. If using analytics to monitor traffic, it’s always best to use on-site analytics such as Squarespace analytics if possible.
Why use Google Analytics 4 and not Universal Analytics?
Google Analytics 4 provides more extensive features and will continue to be widely supported online instead of Universal Analytics. Universal Analytics is due to be deprecated by July 2023.
Conclusion
Using Google Analytics 4 or Universal Analytics with your Squarespace site is seldom considered a wrong choice. It provides many features & tools that aren’t otherwise available with Squarespace analytics while also not needing to sign up on a higher-cost plan to have the option of using an analytics platform.
If you have any questions after reading the content above, don’t hesitate to contact us, we can always add to the content over time if anything seems particularly unclear.
