Data Privacy in Google Analytics 4

Hi everyone, my name is Kendall, and I am a digital marketing associate here at Marcel Digital. Today, I'm here to talk about data privacy in Google Analytics 4, specifically how to ensure you're following best practices for compliance and regulations. As I'm sure all of you know, data privacy is becoming increasingly important with the constant changes in laws and practices. It is essential to stay informed about how to handle user data responsibly. At Marcel Digital, we believe in building trust not only with our clients but also with their users. This means being transparent about how we collect and use data and complying with relevant privacy regulations.

GA4 offers several features that assist us in that. Let's get started.

Now, let's jump into GA4 and see how you can manage your data privacy settings. First, we will navigate to the admin section, which is the gear icon in the bottom left corner. Then, within the data collection and modification column, select data retention. Here you can choose how long you want to store your data before it is automatically deleted. Google offers two options: either two or 14 months. For businesses that do not experience seasonal changes, two months may be enough to analyze data month over month, whereas 14 months would allow businesses that experience higher seasonality to analyze their data year over year.

Additionally, GA4 allows users to submit requests for their data to be deleted. Those can also be viewed within the admin section under the data collection and modification column at the very bottom under data deletion requests. This page will display any deletion requests you've made and show the status of them, whether that be completed or canceled. You can also make data deletion requests in this section by clicking schedule data deletion request and filling out the details about the data you want to be removed from GA4. This can be used to ensure you aren't collecting personally identifiable information (PII) and to remove unwanted or bad data. When you are finished filling out the information, press schedule request. Once the request has been made, you will have 7 days to review your request and make changes if necessary before the data is officially deleted.

There are also some additional features offered, including IP anonymization. GA4 uses geolocation metadata from IP addresses such as city, continent, and country. However, IP addresses are never logged, accessible, or used for anything other than immediate geolocation. GA4 and Google Tag Manager offer a feature called consent mode. It allows you to communicate your users' consent status from your cookie tool to Google. GTM will adjust what tags are allowed to fire, if any, with respect to users' choices.

Additionally, Google has a list of recommended consent management platforms that work well with their own tools, that can be seen here and will be linked down below.

Staying informed and taking the necessary steps towards improved data privacy practices is super important when building trust with your users. And by utilizing these data privacy options in GA4, you can make sure you are collecting and managing your user data responsibly as well as complying with relevant regulations. With that being said, thank you so much for watching. I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.