How you can benefit of starting using server-side tracking and increase your data accuracy?

Stanislav F.

5 minutes

May 14, 2022

As you know Ad blockers, ITP browsers, 3rd party cookie restrictions, regulations like GDPR made analytics harder and really limited the data collecting processes. Server-side tagging allows moving third-party tags off your site and into a cloud server. In this case, third-party pixels are loaded directly from the could server rather than your site.

Here are top 4 main benefits:

1.More accurate user tracking. With SS AdWords and Google Analytics, you will have more accurate data since tracking pixels won’t be blocked by ITPs’, Adblockers and other tracking restrictions.

2.Cookie lifetime extension in Safari (and other browsers that use Intelligent Tracking Prevention). As you know from 2020 Safari decreased cookie lifetime to7 days, sometimes just 24h. It means that if a user is not revisiting your site every seven days, they will be considered new. Decreased cookie lifetime might have a significant impact on your analytics data. Let’s say a user on Safari saw your ad in Google AdWords, clicked on it, and then returned to the site after seven days and made a purchase. In this case, Analytics will attribute a conversion to the direct/none traffic source. It means that you won’t be able to correctly calculate ROAS for your PPC campaigns and make proper decisions while optimizing your AdWords account.

3.Better page speed. Site speed will be improved because tracking scripts won’t be loaded in a user browser. From my experience, some platform tracking scripts are really huge and can harm the speed of load (for example FB or Snapchat)

4.Enrich data about your users. With the help of server-side tagging, you can push data from your CRM (like phone orders, upsells, etc.) to Google Analytics or any other analytic tool that supports S2S tagging.

Migration to GA4 is more involved than simply changing old code to new code.

We recommend migrating your GA4 database in phases, as data is now collected differently. This includes, but is not limited to:
Pageview tracking
Event Tracking
eCommerce Tracking
Inter-platform integration
For a phased approach, we would recommend:
Phase 1: Create a GA4 property that tracks pageviews and “standard” events.
Phase 2: Implement KPI-related events (e.g. form fills)
Phase 3: Implement e-commerce events
Phase 4: Implement other custom tracking (e.g. non-KPI events, custom dimensions, integrations)
Phase 5: Once the data is collected, an audit of the implementation and any necessary adjustments will be made.
Once the implementation is complete, GA4 will be able to provide information about

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How you can benefit of starting using server-side tracking and increase your data accuracy?

Here are top 4 main benefits:

Migration to GA4 is more involved than simply changing old code to new code.

We’d love to talk with you.

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