Activating GA4 events with GTM Server-Side and Pub/Sub for Fun and Profit

2022-01-04 · 3324 words · 16 minute read

google-analytics · google-tag-manager · cloud-functions · python · big-query · pubsub

Image from https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/758/brief-outburst/?category=solar-system_sun

With Google Tag Manager Server-side (GTM-SS), the scope on what you can do with your GA4 events is much enhanced, since using GTM-SS you have the ability to interact easily with other GCP services, in particular easier Google authentication. This integration can allow you to enrich your data streams or send your GA4 data to different locations other than the Google Marketing Platform. The first example of this has been using the BigQuery API in your GTM-SS templates to export your event data, but what if you need your event data on a more real-time basis? For that, there is Google Pub/Sub.

Why and How I'm writing a GA4 book called 'Learning Google Analytics' for O'Reilly

2021-10-23 · 3035 words · 15 minute read

google-analytics · blogging

If you’ve been within two meters of me recently you may have heard I’m writing a book on Google Analytics 4 and I’m very excited about it. In this blog post I want to write about how it came about, and to give some love to the blog to show its not being neglected for its younger cousin, The Book. I want to cover how the book deal came about in case you are thinking about writing one too, the process of writing itself and how my attitude to writing has changed as a result.

googleAnalyticsR v1.0.0 - GA4 API, Automatic Shiny Dashboarding, Improved UI

2021-04-17 · 3516 words · 17 minute read

R · google-analytics

The original intention for this blog was to announce updates to my R packages, but I tend to rely more on Twitter and other social media for that these days. A lot of documentation is also written for the package websites so I feel little need to put it on this blog as well. But for googleAnalyticsR v1.0.0 there are so many cool new things that I think it deserves a bit more limelight.

Creating your own cookieless analytics tool with GTM Server Side, Cloud Run, BigQuery and Shiny

2021-03-21 · 1907 words · 9 minute read

R · cloud-run · google-tag-manager · big-query

This is an example of how GTM server side can be used to create your own digital analytics tool. It is a proof of concept of what you can do given the power of GTM server side and its BigQuery integration. I customise the stream by adding cookieless tracking, displaying the data in Shiny and running it all on Cloud Run to keep costs down but performance good.

Using Google Tag Manager Server Side to Trigger Webhook Events

2020-09-04 · 1444 words · 7 minute read

google-tag-manager · cloud-functions · pubsub

How to configure Google Tag Manager Server Side so it can send webhooks to services upon certain events

Google Tag Manager Server Side on Cloud Run - Pros and Cons

2020-08-21 · 1709 words · 9 minute read

google-tag-manager · docker · cloud-run

Is Cloud Run viable for running Google Tag Manager server-side?

Shiny on Google Cloud Run - Scale-to-Zero R Web Apps

2020-08-01 · 1753 words · 9 minute read

R · docker · cloud-run

How to create scale-to-zero Shiny apps on Google Cloud Run: pitfalls, how and why

Online payments for data science apps (DSaaS) using R, Shiny, Firebase, Paddle and Google Cloud Functions

2020-06-28 · 2241 words · 11 minute read

R · firebase · google-auth · cloud-functions · python

A bootstrap example on how to create a paid data science app (DSaaS)

Introducing googleCloudRunner - serverless R on Google Cloud Platform

2020-01-18 · 2352 words · 12 minute read

R · docker

googleCloudRunner includes tools for R users to create APIs, cloud builds or scheduled scripts in the Google Cloud Platform

gago: Blazingly fast Google Analytics API downloads with Go

2019-10-09 · 1273 words · 6 minute read

google-analytics

Announcing gago: Go library for Google Analytics API v4 that can speed up API fetches by 85%

R at scale on the Google Cloud Platform

2019-02-23 · 2594 words · 13 minute read

docker · R · google-compute-engine · cloud-run

Current thinking on what I consider the optimal way to work with R on Google Cloud Platform

Auto Google Analytics Data Imports from Cloud Storage

2018-11-29 · 1844 words · 9 minute read

google-cloud-storage · python · google-analytics · cloud-functions · pubsub

Use Google Cloud Functions to auto-load your data imports into Google Analytics form Cloud Storage

Turning GA360 BigQuery exports into partitioned tables using Cloud Functions

2018-10-09 · 1712 words · 9 minute read

big-query · python · google-analytics · cloud-functions

A guide to using Cloud Functions with GA360 exports, including a demo on creating a partitioned table out of the raw exports.

Talking Google Analytics dashboards via R, Shiny and Text-to-Speech APIs

2018-08-15 · 370 words · 2 minute read

google-analytics · google-language · R

A video workshop tutorial on creating a talking Google Analytics dashboard in Shiny

R on Kubernetes - serverless Shiny, R APIs and scheduled scripts

2018-05-02 · 3350 words · 16 minute read

docker · R

Some examples of running R applications on Google Kubernetes Engine

Embedding Google Data Studio into RMarkdown

2018-03-15 · 648 words · 4 minute read

R · google-auth

A quick how-to embed Data Studio in RMarkdown

Comparing Google Search Console queries with Google's Cloud Natural Language API

2018-01-11 · 1640 words · 8 minute read

R · search-console · google-language

With the launch of the Google Natural Language API (NLP API), and the emphasis of machine learning that is said to account for up to 30% of the SEO algorithmn for Google search, a natural question is whether you can use Google’s own macine learning APIs to help optimise your website for search. Whilst I don’t believe they will offer exactly the same results, I can see useful applications that include:

Run RStudio Server on a Chromebook as a Cloud Native

2017-09-05 · 1534 words · 8 minute read

google-cloud-storage · google-compute-engine · R · rstudio-server · docker · google-app-engine

I recently got an Asus Chromebook Flip with which I’m very happy, but it did make me realise that if a Chromebook was to replace my normal desktop as my primary workstation, my RStudio Server setup would need to be more cloud native than was available up until now. TL;DR - A how-to on making RStudio Server run on a Chromebook that automatically backs up data and configuration settings to Google Cloud Storage is on the googleComputeEngineR website here.

Five Ways to Schedule R scripts on Google Cloud Platform

2017-07-09 · 2335 words · 11 minute read

R · google-app-engine · docker · google-analytics · google-compute-engine · rstudio-server

A common question I come across is how to automate scheduling of R scripts downloading data. This post goes through some options that I have played around with, which I’ve mostly used for downloading API data such as Google Analytics using the Google Cloud platform, but the same principles could apply for AWS or Azure.

My R Packages

2017-01-24 · 261 words · 2 minute read

R · google-auth · big-query · google-analytics · google-cloud-storage · google-compute-engine · google-tag-manager · search-console

A full list of R packages I have published are on my Github, but some notable ones are below. Some are part of the cloudyR project, which has many packages useful for using R in the cloud. I concentrate on the Google cloud below, but be sure to check out the other packages if you’re looking to work with AWS or other cloud based services. CRAN Status URL Description googleAuthR The central workhorse for authentication on Google APIs googleAnalyticsR Works with Google Analytics Reporting V3/V4 and Management APIs googleComputeEngineR Launch Virtual Machines within the Google Cloud, via templates or your own Docker containers.