Google Analytics - Gathering Data

About

Google Analytics has essentially two ways of gathering data:

• hit collection
• using Data Import.

Ways

Hit Collection

(by sending hits) collected by:

• the JavaScript tracking code,
• the mobile SDK
• or the Measurement protocol,

Advantages of Data Import over hit collection

While you can augment the hit data with custom data by passing parameters in the page URL or using the Google Analytics API, there are a number of reasons why this may not be the best approach, such as:

  Augmenting hit data requires a knowledgeable developer to write custom code.
  The data is sensitive, e.g., user data, so you don't want to send it in clear text.
  The amount of data is large so you don’t want to append it to each hit.
  The data might not be available when the hit occurs.

Importing data in asynchronous batches resolves these issues.