Coming to you live, I am writing this on March 23th.
This is an update for the Behind the Build Series where I am documenting the journey of LookerStudio.VIP for the π world to see (or at least the world of very invested Looker Studio Users)
Last week Google Announced the Depreciation of Universal Analytics. Read Google’s Announcement Here

Which has caused a ruckus over on linkedIn of gurus, bloggers, and analytics people giving their hot take on the fact that either GA4 is Dead or how they are getting their clients ahead of the curve.
What I am Doing About GA4 + GDS for LookerStudio.VIP
While I write this, GA4 + GDS connector sucks… like really sucks. We need that fixed before I can show you how to do just about anything.
It is a flaming hot pile of π© , with flies, maggots and all.
You can not:
β get the custom parameters
β View built segments/audiences
β Group sources in GA4 & send them to Looker Studio.
β Do much customization in GDS π
For Mediauthentic.com Clients
We are currently onboarding three clients at the same exact time this month. They are all around the world and I’ve really had to think…. what are we going to do???
Countries are: Australia, Canada, & one based in Ireland.
Random I know: wait until I tell you I’ve worked with dating coaches, Sex coaches, SaaS, & religious nonprofit in the same month? That’s a different story.

We are making the call to set up Universal Analytics to get some quick WINs for answer to deep questions.
Then 4 months before The Great Migration to GA4 we will really QC & audit GA4 to make sure it is collecting everything we need.
Then 3 months before The Great Migration we will duplicate all GDS reports to GA4 (hopping by then GA4 & Google has their SHIT together)
Until then we are just going to try to customize the living daylightsππ½π€βοΈ out of GA4 to make it sing and break it again and again until it does what I want it to.
Build A Dashboard That'll Get People Talking!
Still not sure?
Frankly, this is half the reason I started LookerStudio.VIP. I get to test and break everything with no consequences. Only I suffer if my reports break.
Launching The Site
I pushed publish on March 15th Just like I said I would in this post archiving my “launch plan”

It wasn’t finished, but now it is in a good spot π
Live Pages:
- /Icons ~ Which give people easy wins in customizing GDS
- /Visualizations ~ To help people wow their bosses & clients
- /videos ~ to show off the amazing GDS Community & share the love
- /cheatsheet ~ to get some leads & give people a simple framework for success
- /learn ~ Where I am posting all my tutorials π
I think I’ve got a framework for success with these core pages π
Just need to keep myself accountable with posting a new article each week. 3 are live currently so that is a WIN!
I will be using ONLY GA4 on this site from here on out
As you can see I am just dominating the world with this traffic lol (its a joke 90% is probably me)

It is quite fun to try and get the answers I want out of my own site with the vision of what all our clients will need in the months to come.
SEO Help?
So I am by no means an SEO person, I understand the basics, but other than that we are SOL.
I am doing the basics:
β
Adding a featured images
β
Excerpts for every post
β
Writing bombdiggity content that will genuinely help people.
But beyond that? IDK π€·ββοΈ
Do Plugins actually help?
Where I am struggling is with freaking pluggins and what they have to offer the world.
We got Rank Math & Yoast as the two big players. Both have integrations (whatever that means) with Elementor.
But for the life of me I can not figure out what I NEED to do besides make super helpful content.
I found two people who have written articles which have some solid advice.. Keep it lean & keep it helpful.
– Article by Brendan Hufford ~ Are “SEO Plugins” Killing Your Website.
– Article by Matt Giovanisci~ SEO Impossible Experiment
But there are 1Million articles on what you “Should be doing”

If someone, anyone wants to give some guidance…. I am all ears, Email me jj(at)LookerStudio.VIP
Other than that, I have some really great articles coming your way, so be sure to subscribe wherever it is currently possible on the site in the future π