Learn
Reading GA4 the easy way, and the free Plausible-style alternative.
For most publishers, "cookieless" is not GA4 breaking. It is consent refusal, Safari's 7-day cookie cap, and AI-driven search quietly understating your real audience. Here is what actually changes, and what to measure instead.
Read → GA4 & PlausibleGA4 already holds the numbers publishers need. A free dashboard just reads them through Google's read-only Data API, adds no tracking script, and gives you a plain view of traffic, revenue signals and the growing slice of AI referrals GA4 undercounts on its own.
Read → GA4 & PlausiblePlausible gives you a clean, privacy-flavoured read, but it costs per pageview and needs its own script. If you already run GA4, a read-only reader gives you the same calm dashboard for free, with no new page weight and a sharper view of AI traffic.
Read → GA4 & PlausibleGA4 is free and powerful, but it thresholds your data, caps granular history at 14 months, and buries much of your AI traffic in Direct. Here is a plain, honest look at your real options, and when you can keep GA4 rather than replace it.
Read → GA4 & PlausibleA plain-English guide to what GA4 engagement rate actually measures, what a healthy number looks like for a content site, and why you should judge it against your own trend and channel mix rather than any universal benchmark.
Read → GA4 & PlausibleGA4 gives ad-funded publishers dozens of numbers and almost no guidance on which ones move revenue. Four do the work. Here is how to read them, and how to find the AI traffic hiding in your reports.
Read → GA4 & PlausibleGA4 buries the handful of numbers publishers actually need under an event model built for app developers. Here is how to get a clean read of the data you already collect, no new tracking script required, and why AI traffic still slips through the gaps.
Read →No guides match that search.