Keeping track of significant business events in Google Analytics through annotations ensures that you have contextual information to interpret your data better. This guide will help you add annotations to your Google Analytics view, allowing you and your team to easily log and access important events.
To add an annotation to your Google Analytics view.
An annotation is logged into Google Analytics and accessible by other Google Analytics users.
You need to have Google Analytics set up on your website. If you haven’t done so yet, you can follow SOP 009.
Note: The specific steps in this SOP apply only to Universal Google Analytics (not Google Analytics 4). If you set up Google Analytics before October 2020 or followed other Click Minded SOPs to create your Google Analytics account, you most likely have a Universal Analytics property.
Analyzing Google Analytics data without proper context might lead to inaccurate conclusions. Events that affect your business (like a sale, a launch, or a competitor sale), your website (like a redesign), your marketing campaigns, or your Analytics implementation should all be considered while analyzing data. Annotating your Google Analytics ensures you have a solid logbook of what happened and when, allowing you to better interpret the data.
In Google Analytics.
Every time there is an event that might impact your data on Google Analytics.
Everyone in the organization should be responsible for logging events of their respective business areas.
Note: Google released a new version of Google Analytics in October 2020. This new version can be set as a property alongside the standard version “Universal Analytics”. Universal Analytics properties will likely be supported by Google for years to come. Currently, all Click Minded SOPs support Universal Analytics exclusively.
Note: You can identify your Universal Analytics property by noticing the ‘UA-’ prefix in the Property ID below its name.
2. Select the View
3. Navigate to Reports
4. Select the Time Period
5. Create the Annotation
That’s it! You’ve added your annotation. All annotations are displayed on the chart with a “Speech Bubble” icon, and simply clicking on them will allow you to read them.