What Is the Audiences Report in Google Analytics?
The Audiences report in Google Analytics provides information about users who visit your website. By grouping them according to various attributes, you can get lots of useful information about them, e.g. how many users regularly return to your site, how much time they spend there and who are the visitors to your site in general. These are essential facts that allow you to introduce changes to the website on an ongoing basis and adapt it to your target audience profile.Basic Metrics Related to Website Visits
What Does Google Know About People?
In order for Google Analytics to correctly identify users while collecting the relevant data, it is necessary to recognize which visits were generated by particular users. For this reason, each of them has a unique and persistent identifier, sent during each of the actions taken, e.g. as a Google Analytics cookie or by using User-ID.How Does Google See Us?
Google assigns users' interests, age, and other features, which are displayed later in Google Analytics, based on their account settings, searches, and online activity. On their basis, the search engine also displays Google Ads which are targeted according to their behavior. To check how Google sees you, all you have to do is go to your Google Account in the Ad Settings section. By clicking on "Ad personalization", you will see all the information Google has collected about you. You can edit them, delete interests, or add new ones.Google Analytics and GDPR or CCPA
Google only collects information in accordance with the privacy acts and regulations, such as the European Economic Area’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or California's California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). By definition, personal data consists of information necessary to identify a specific user. Data such as, for example, age, interests, and country are not enough to identify a particular person unambiguously, therefore they are not considered personal data. What is important, some time ago Google also introduced auto-delete controls in its settings. Remember that if you want to disable Analytics data collection and advertising personalization, Google gives you such a possibility. If you want to discover how to do it, check the privacy controls in Google Analytics.Audience Overview
The basic data provided in the Audience section related to the users visiting our website are divided into the following parts:- Sessions - user activity on your website at a given time. By default, the session time is 30 minutes, if the user is inactive during this time, his/her further actions will be attributed to a new session. If, on the other hand, the visitor returns to your website for half an hour, the session is counted as the original one. For example, if the user visits your website twice in one day (for the first time in the morning, and then again in the afternoon) it will generate altogether 2 sessions, but it will still be counted as 1 user (unless cookies will be deleted in the meantime). The session duration can be changed in the Google Analytics tool, which can be useful e.g. on pages with videos or long-form content, where it can take more than 30 minutes to watch a video or read the whole text.
- Users - the number of users who visited your website. This number is identified by cookies. One user can perform multiple sessions.
- Pageviews - the number of pages viewed. For example: if the user visits 4 different pages during one visit, it will generate 4 pageviews in total but will be counted as 1 user.
- Average session duration - the amount of time on average users spend on your website.
- Bounce rate - the number of visits during which users have visited only one page as compared to all visits; this rate is calculated as a percentage. Simply put, bounce rate informs you how many people visited only one page and then left your website.
- What’s more, in the Overview section, you will see a chart presenting the percentage of returning and new visitors in a given period.
Active Users
In this section, you can check the number of active, unique users who have reached your website and generated a session. By default, the panel displays a graph of users active during 1 day, however, it is also possible to view a report for 7, 14, or 28 days.Data on Website Visitors
1. Demographics and Interests
In these reports, you can identify the visitors to your site and learn more about their age, gender, and interests. The data is available in five dimensions:- age: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65+,
- gender: female or male,
- affinity categories: different types of users divided by their lifestyles, e.g. movie lovers, value shoppers, foodies, beauty mavens,
- in-market segments: division according to the products-purchase interests,
- other categories: more specific data on users’ interests.