Jean-Marc says: “Use analytics tools to get better data in order to do your SEO.”

Get better data. What does better data mean in 2026?

“Well, what I mean by that is – let's go back a bit into a historical perspective. When we were using GA3 back in the day (because I'm coming from SEO, and I'm in the analytics domain right now), when we were using Google Analytics back in the day, we could actually extract the data from Google Analytics and then combine them in Excel, for instance, in order to get a better understanding of what was going on: the keywords that were related to some pages, and if those were good pages that were actually showing up in the results.

With the GDPR that has come along, this has become impossible to do with Google Analytics because this is forbidden in Europe. You have to get consent from people in order to use Google Analytics – which is not the case in the US.

If you are in the US, you can still use Google Analytics with your Semrush and everything. If you're in Europe, you can use other tools such as Matomo or other consent-free tools in order to get this information.

You can also use these tools – like Matomo or a TMS (a Tag Manager system), like Google Tag Manager – to implement some very precise tracking. We can go in-depth later.”

Why does GA4 require consent in Europe?

What is it about GA4 that's different from Matomo or other analytics tools that are available?

“Yeah, that's a good question. The point is that Google Analytics is a US-based tool. It's based in the US, the servers are based in the US, and because of privacy concerns, the EU and the US have agreed to allow users of GA4 to implement it – but you need consent because some data would be sent out to the US without proper consent or without any proper data processing, and this might be a problem in terms of privacy.

You could get, for instance, the IP addresses of the people who are going on your website, etc., so Google Analytics is not allowed to be used without consent in Europe.”

This seems a bit nuts! First of all, I get the feeling that many businesses out there are using GA4 without actually asking for consent. Is that the case?

Secondly, you probably won't know the answer to this, but why doesn't Google try to do something about this, and maybe store the information within the EU, so it doesn't have to require consent?

“Yeah, that's a good question. I don't work at Google, and I don't know anybody working there, so I can't answer your question in a very accurate way.

Maybe they think that this would require too many resources in order to migrate Google Analytics to Europe. I don't know right now. The thing is that you can actually use other tools to do that.

One point that you've mentioned is that you see companies using it without consent. Actually, in the US, this is feasible. In Europe, people are not meant to do that without consent (unless there are some very specific implementations, I guess). This is very, very technical. The legal aspects are very important.”

Got you, okay.

Is there no actual difference between the data available in GA4, Matomo, and other analytics tools; it's simply the fact that consent is required for data that's not stored within the EU?

“Well actually, there are some differences. I'm not here to say which one is better than the other.

One thing is that, by default, Matomo would track the data at a complete range. That means that you can get the whole data, which is not really the case with Google Analytics, because it will sample the data in some aspects. So, there are some differences.

The other difference is the interface. GA4 (Google Analytics) is tougher to use than, for instance, a tool like Matomo. People who want to use GA4, in my experience, would have to go through some very tough processes in order to make it work, which is not the case in Matomo. So, there are some differences in terms of using it and in terms of the data. Some things are different in the way they're implemented.

The point is that, when you implement Matomo without consent, you get the whole picture. When you want to use GA4 in Europe, you would only get 50% of the data, or maybe less, because people would click ‘no’ on the cookie banner.”

Absolutely, the famous cookie bar in the EU. Like it or loathe it, it's here, and as a business you have to deal with it.

“Yep.”

Data from any one tool is probably an incomplete picture, especially when you consider the fact that businesses have their own data and you have other tools out there that can add and layer on competitive intelligence information as well.

What other tools do you recommend for bringing in additional data to try and complete the picture?

Then, how do you bring data together to tell a full story?

“Yeah, what I would do is use a process that I've been using for many years. It is about, first off, using Excel to cross-reference all the data.

You would get, for instance the page’s performance in your analytics tool as a CSV file, or as an Excel file, then you will get the page performance in Semrush, with the keywords and everything.

By using some VLOOKUP formulas, you can cross-reference the data and, in this case, get the pages that get organic traffic and the keywords. You can get the same things.

You can also do this with log analytics. This is another level, but you can also do that with analytics – and you can also get information from Majestic, for instance. I'm mentioning Semrush because this is about the keywords, but you can also get information from Majestic, export the data, and cross-reference them again in your Excel file with the export of the pages that are showing up in your analytics tool.”

Now there are obviously different types of SEOs out there. When I was an SEO manager, I got stressed by the idea of using Excel spreadsheets to view tens of thousands of lines of code and really make sense of the data, and some SEO consultants who worked with me absolutely loved that and were passionate about doing that.

The way I wanted to go about doing things was to automate as much as possible, and my instinct is to wonder: Is it possible to do this on a fairly automated basis in Google Sheets and just bring the data together and then actually interpret the data in some more visual way that I would personally engage with a little bit more?

Is it possible to do this using something like Google Sheets on an automated basis, or are you losing too much of that human touch and the intricacies of the data that you're looking at?

“No, actually, this is a good way to do it because it really depends on the size of the website. If you're working with small or medium-sized websites, Excel would do it, and Google Sheets would do it. For sure, if you're trying to do this on very big websites, using some tools like databases or Google Sheets would make it faster. For sure, you would lose some of the, as you said, ‘human touch’, but you would get things done faster.

You can also use AI, for instance, to create some Python files or whatever, in order to extract the data properly. This would go faster in this way.

I think what you're mentioning is another method/step in this process or mindset. That's just another way, but the principle is the same: using a spreadsheet to cross-reference the data altogether. The source is what you want it to be.”

Can you still crunch more data in Excel versus Google Sheets?

“I'm actually using two different tools. I don't use Google Sheets anymore. What I would do is use either Excel or, because I'm also an open-source enthusiast, I would use LibreOffice. It sounds weird, but LibreOffice is, in my experience, able to process more data than Excel can – and Excel would crash sometimes, which is not the case with LibreOffice.

I've done audits on very, very big websites using LibreOffice. There are some drawbacks because, for instance, some tools don't work exactly the same in LibreOffice, but in the end it works properly.”

I haven't really experimented with LibreOffice. Is that tool available online, or is that something that you have to do on your own computer?

“No, you have to do it on your computer. There's another version called Collabora Online that exists, but I would do it on my own machine, in this case.

By the way, something that I haven't mentioned: you can also get the information from Screaming Frog, when you scrape all the pages and everything.

It's Screaming Frog, then your analytics tool, then Semrush, Majestic, etc. The sky's the limit.”

You also mentioned log files as well. What additional layer does log files bring in?

“Well, this is another way to interpret this. The thing is that, when you want to do a log analysis, you would get the data from the logs.

First off, you would have to extract the data properly, if you don't want everything to be messy – and this could count tonnes of gigabytes of information. What you will get is the information about the robots, for instance. This is very important if you want to look at which bot is scraping your website.

Then, you can also find out the actual errors, like 301, 404errors, etc., using this. This is, I would say, another perspective on doing an audit.

I once did both for one customer. The customer wanted to get a view from a traditional audit (using Screaming Frog and everything that is actually available online), and then they also wanted to have a log analysis. By doing both – we were actually two consultants working on this; I did the log analysis, and we got the same results in the end.

It's just another perspective, in my opinion, but this is a good way to get the bots and also – especially right now in the AI era – to get an overview of which LLM is scraping the website.

I also want to mention the TMSs (like Tag Manager) in order to implement some tracking to improve your SEO, but this is maybe another subject.”

Well, we can touch on that in a second, but I just wanted to mention the fact that the way that I received your advice on log files was that it’s almost to test a hypothesis.

If you've got your own results that you've produced from existing data – maybe from GA4 combined with other sources – your log files can almost test the results that you're getting. You can see if you've made any mistakes in your existing data, see if you can tweak it at all, or see if there are some errors in what you've done. It's almost a testing layer.

Would that be a good way to look at it?

“Yeah, I think there are many ways to look at it. In my experience, it was about confirming that what we saw in the audit was true, and also to bring some other information about the bots. So yeah, this is another way to do it.

These exercises, these audits, are very demanding. When you want to do a proper standard audit or a log analysis audit, this is a lot of work in both cases. We have to know which one we want to do, and companies that can do both need some resources in order to do that. This is the extra step.”

Then, just briefly, Tag Manager. What are the key elements? What are one or two key elements that a Tag Manager can assist with?

“Well, most of the time, SEOs, in my experience (me included), don't know or didn't know how to work with a tag manager because this is a very analytics-oriented solution. Google Tag Manager or Matomo Tag Manager are very powerful tools that you have to learn in a deep way in order to actually get some information. What I'm keen to do is implement some tags or some extra tracking to get information that you would get through a crawler like Screaming Frog, in order to get this information directly in your analytics tool, and then to correct some things on the go.

You can get, for instance, the size of a title tag on your page, whether there are any meta description tags missing or not, the length of the page, etc. Everything that you can do in a crawler, you can also do with your analytics tool. You can get an overview of what's going on directly on your analytics – but only for the pages that have been viewed on your website, not everything. This is one of the limits.

The other thing is that you can also implement these things in order to track conversions to see, for instance, if some organic traffic is actually leading to conversions. You can track the clicks on certain buttons on pages and everything.

The goal is to get from attracting people and then see if the page is actually going to convert in terms of business or sales.”

This data crunching is a full-time job in itself.

Is this something that an SEO should be doing on a continual basis or is it something that needs to be done on a quarterly basis, as a one-off project?

“Yeah, good question. I do more analytics right now than SEO. What I do, as an analytics person who does SEO, is implement the Tag Management System in order to get this information directly in my tool, then cross-reference the data directly in my analytics tool.

However, about the other information (how to cross-reference data and everything), this is more about auditing. This is something that you wouldn't do on a daily basis. It's something you can do every six months, for instance.

Most of the time, I do this for companies or organisations that ask me to do that or require a big analysis in order to figure out what's going on on their website. This is very demanding, but one can do a one-shot analysis like this without going too in-depth into the information.

To answer your question briefly, you won't do this every day.”

Jean-Marc, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Some tools, processes, or ways of doing things that we've been doing for a long time still apply today, and cross-referencing data or tools like analytics and TMSs can provide you with more information than what you would get in this era of consent cookie banners and everything, in order to get proper performance.”

Jean-Marc Courtiade is Key Account Manager at Matomo. Find out more over at JeanMarcCourtiade.com.