Is Google Analytics still necessary since GSC?

[mikepcservice]

Since GSC pretty much covers everything is there any reason to use Analytics?

 

[Justin Mosebach]

@mikepcservice Google Analytics is definitely still worth using. GSC shows how organic users got to the site, but that's it. Google Analytics shows more sources of traffic and how all users interact with the site.

Examples:

• Goal/Event tracking (ex. see number of contact form fills).
• See non-organic traffic, such as referred traffic (from other websites), paid traffic, etc.
• See what pages users are bouncing from.
• ...and a lot more.

 

[Conor Treacy]

As @Justin Mosebach said, use both. They're very different tools. Knowing how a user flows through the site, what pages they're spending time on, where they exit, how they found you, etc - all of that can be done in Google Analytics.

We then extend a little further and use Google Tag Manager to get extra things like did a user scroll down the page, where they exited, abandoned cart issues, conversion optimization, speed, and lots more.

The three are really very different tools that all work in harmony.

 

[dgrunited]

Since GSC pretty much covers everything is there any reason to use Analytics?

Yes, if you are running Google Ads, you'll need Google Ads to be linked to Google Analytics for various reasons.

 

[mikepcservice]

Anyone using Google Lighthouse? If yes, I am not understanding how to use it with page speed insights?

https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse#psi

 

[ElizabethRule]

Anyone using Google Lighthouse? If yes, I am not understanding how to use it with page speed insights?

https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse#psi

Can you be more specific about what you don't understand?

Lighthouse is a dev tool PageSpeed Insights uses to show performance metrics on your site, so you can understand what elements you need to fix to improve page speed. So when you run a PageSpeed Insights report, you are already using Lighthouse.

 

[mikepcservice]

Oh, I had thought it would be a standalone GUI like any other Audit tool. Thx.

 

[Conor Treacy]

Oh, I had thought it would be a standalone GUI like any other Audit tool. Thx.

Inside of Chrome, use the Inspect Element, then on the far right you'll see Lighthouse (or Audit) depending on Chrome version.

From there, you can run your reports for mobile or desktop, including the things you want to audit, and then generate a report.

A word of advice - use a "non-logged in" account. Not just not logged in, and not just incognito, but use the "Guest" account or something similar. Essentially, you don't want any Chrome Extensions to be loading and skew the report results.