Since moving to GA4, many of my clients have been complaining that GA4 is too complicated for someone who isn’t hands-on with Analytics every day to gather simple information, such as where their visitors are coming from or which keywords their website is associated with.
I’ve come to understand that keyword data isn’t included in GA4 and they should use the Search Console instead, is that correct?
Because they’ve been told that Analytics is essential to their businnes, they are asking me if there is a service that uses GA4 data but presents the information in a way that is more suitable for a plain user, not a marketer.
Yup. However, as I understand it, you can also link the search console to GA4 to get access to a Google Organic Search Queries report, which will let you see the keywords.
I abandoned GA years back because of the hoops you have to jump through in order to use it in Europe (esp. Germany). Since then I have been using Matomo which is more than adequate for my needs.
That said, there are several tools which integrate with GA. A quick search turns up things like Looker Studio, but I am reticent to comment, as I don’t use any of them.
Correction: GA4 does not use cookies anymore, but it does still send visitor data to its own server. That falls under the privacy laws as well and needs permission from the visitor, too. So, if not already regulated by those laws, that will soon follow.