At the recent Marketing Innovations Keynote, Google announced the release of cross-device tracking to Google Analytics.

This is a very exciting – and long-desired – feature to better understand how people are actually using our websites, especially as mobile internet browsing continues to grow.

Up until now, when we have measured “Users” in Google Analytics, we have actually been measuring unique devices, e.g. smartphone, tablet, desktop or laptop computer.

With people owning an average of 3.5 connected devices we’ve known for a long time – including personal experience – that we often start viewing a website from one device, then switch to another.

For website analysts, this has caused many breaks in understanding actual website use, engagement and conversions, especially for products and services with long purchase and research cycles.

The new Cross Device Tracking data will only be shown for:

1. Users who have logged into multiple devices with the same Google account, and
2. Have opted to share this data with Google

This does not share any personally identifiable data, and it is important to note that these new Cross Device Tracking reports (which use Google signals) must be activated to show data, so get them activated as soon as you see it rolled out to your reports!

The below video will provide more information and demonstrate the steps involved to enable the reports.

We will bring further updates about the reports and how to use them once we have more information about them.

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!

Read more about Google signals here.