Google Analytics

Overview

Send your referred Branch data to your Google Analytics dashboard, helping you understand the power of Branch as an acquisition and re-engagement pathway. If you're interested in the segment of users coming into your apps through Branch and want to measure their events against your other cohorts, this guide can help.

How does it work?

Once the Branch SDK is integrated into an app, Branch can detect which Branch Links are leading to opens, installs, re-installs, and down funnel events. Enabling this integration and providing your Google Analytics Tracking Id will result in Branch automatically forwarding events to Google Analytics, in the exact format Google Analytics expects. This includes automatically setting various UTM tags that can be used to determine the source of new users.

Branch Events Sent to Google Analytics

Branch will send referred installs and opens, commerce, content, user lifecycle, as well as any custom events you track with Branch. Clicks, web session starts, and web pageviews will not be sent. Branch also sends over analytics data that is attached to the link, whether it's UTM tags or fields set on the Branch Dashboard (e.g. Campaign, Channel, Feature). This will allow you to analyze which campaigns, channels, etc. are helping you acquire and engage users. You can see the list of fields that we send to Google Analytics here.

What does it look like?

Branch events will appear alongside your other tracked events in Google Analytics. Here is an example of the Sources screen with test information set.

To view installs and opens, as well as any custom events you track with Branch as they are occur, navigate to Real-Time > Events. The event category for all Branch events is BranchEvent.

Prerequisites

In order to enable Google Analytics, you need to have completed the following:

1. Admin access to your Branch Dashboard.
2. Have the Advanced Data Feeds add-on enabled on your Branch account. Advanced Data Feeds can be included as an add-on to both the Engagement and Performance products.
3. Implemented the Branch SDK into your mobile app (iOS | Android)
   • Track events
4. Implement the Google Analytics SDK
5. Admin access to your Google Analytics account.

Enable Google Analytics

1. Retrieve IDs from Google Analytics

Log into your Google Analytics Dashboard. Make sure that you have admin access.

For Google Analytics 4 you need to retrieve your Measurement ID:

• In Admin, make sure that you have the desired account and property selected.
• In the Property column, click Data Streams, then click your web data stream. Your G-XXXX Measurement ID appears in the upper right portion of the panel.

For Universal Analytics (Legacy) you need to retrieve your Tracking ID:

• Go to Admin.
• In the Property column, click Property Settings. Your UA-XXXX Tracking ID appears at the top of the Property Settings Page

2. Connect Google Analytics in Branch

In the Branch Dashboard in Data Feeds → Data Integrations tab, find and search for Google Analytics.

Enter the IDs from the previous step. Enter them into the iOS and Android fields in the Branch Dashboard, and hit Save.

3. Pass Metadata to the Branch SDK

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Developer Required

Developers on your mobile app are required for this step

For a given app session, the unique Google Analytics identifier needs to be passed to the Branch SDK (before the Branch SDK initializes) in order for Branch to properly send events to Google Analytics.

Compatible IDs

Specify the Branch metadata key for your Google Analytics tracking identifier

Pass User ID to Branch

branch.setRequestMetadataKey("$google_analytics_user_id", "USER-ID-HERE")

Branch.getInstance().setRequestMetadata("$google_analytics_user_id", "USER-ID-HERE");

Pass Client ID to Branch

Note: You just need to pass a random UUID on install and store it in local storage for later use for the Branch SDK.

// Add before initializing Branch session.
let uuid = UUID().uuidString;
let branch = Branch.getInstance();
branch.setRequestMetadataKey("$google_analytics_client_id", uuid)

// Need import java.util.UUID
// Call after instantiating Branch in your application's onCreate before you call Branch initSession
UUID uuid = UUID.randomUUID();
String client_id = uuid.toString();

Branch.getInstance().setRequestMetadata("$google_analytics_client_id",client_id);

4. Verify Data Sent

Once the above steps are complete, you are now ready to start launching campaigns. Branch-attributed conversions will be sent to Google Analytics. To verify data is being sent from Branch to Google Analytics, you can look at the Branch Dashboard's Liveview Webhook Records and apply the following filter:

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Wait Period

Please be patient as data may take some time to flow through Branch's attribution systems and onto Google Analytics. If data has not appeared in Google Analytics after 30 minutes of completing a test conversion, review the above steps to see if you may have missed something.

Properties Sent to Google Analytics

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Anonymous Client ID

If for some reason Branch does not receive an advertising identifier or hardware identifier, and you do not explicitly specify $google_analytics_user_id or $google_analytics_client_id, then Branch will send anonymous as the Client ID (cid). This is a required field by Google Analytics.

Troubleshooting

Very short or nonexistent session lengths

Google Analytics will automatically start a session when Branch sends over installs and opens. Because of this, you should remove any code that creates a new session when your application starts up. For example, on iOS, you may be firing an event with the following:

[builder set:@"start" forKey:kGAISessionControl];

You should remove this so that your app does not start a new session. Otherwise, you may see zero second sessions and your average session length drop.

Data not appearing in Google Analytics

1. Check your Measurement/Tracking ID in the Branch Dashboard matches the Measurement/Tracking ID in Google Analytics
2. Ensure you are looking at the right part of the Google Analytics dashboard. The data should appear in Acquisition > Sources > All
3. Check that your Google Analytics Views don't have any filters on them. For example, if your View filters out users in the United Kingdom, and your Branch opens are from users in the United Kingdom, you won't see this Branch data in your View.