Does Google Analytics Violate GDPR?

Wondering if using Google Analytics on your website is putting you on the wrong side of GDPR? You're not alone. The rules around data privacy can feel complicated, especially when you're just trying to understand how people find and use your website. This article breaks down the issues between Google Analytics and GDPR, explains recent legal changes, and gives you actionable steps to use analytics in a more compliant way.

What is GDPR and Why Does it Matter for Analytics?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive data privacy law from the European Union that went into effect in 2018. It governs how organizations must handle the "personal data" of individuals within the EU. The rules apply to any business that offers goods or services to people in the EU, regardless of where the business is located.

You might think, "I'm just counting website visitors, not collecting names and emails." But under GDPR, "personal data" is defined very broadly. It includes information that can be used to identify a person, even indirectly. For website analytics, that includes things like:

IP addresses
Cookies and other tracking identifiers (like Client ID in Google Analytics)
Precise location data
Demographic data (age, gender)
Specific device and browser information

Because Google Analytics (GA) collects this type of data, it falls squarely under GDPR's scope. Businesses must have a legal basis for collecting and processing it, be transparent with users about what they’re doing, and ensure that data is protected.

The Core Problem: Data Transfers to the United States

For several years, the central conflict between Google Analytics and GDPR had little to do with cookies and everything to do with geography. GDPR strictly regulates the transfer of personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to "third countries," like the United States.

These transfers are only allowed if the destination country provides an "adequate" level of data protection that's comparable to GDPR. European courts have ruled that the U.S. does not meet this adequacy standard by default. Why? Because U.S. national security laws, like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA 702), give government authorities broad powers to access data held by U.S. companies like Google, without the same level of judicial oversight or individual protection found in the EU.

A landmark 2020 court case known as Schrems II invalidated the previous data transfer agreement between the U.S. and the EU (the "Privacy Shield"). This created a massive legal headache. Without a valid transfer mechanism, sending any EU personal data to servers in the United States became legally risky.

Google has global infrastructure, but at the end of the day, it is a U.S. company. The data processed through Google Analytics was ultimately transferred to or accessible from the U.S., making it subject to U.S. law. This led several EU data protection authorities (DPAs) — including those in Austria, France, Italy, and Denmark — to rule that the use of Universal Analytics (the older version of GA) violated GDPR because the data transfers were not sufficiently protected from potential U.S. surveillance.

Enter Google Analytics 4: Was it Made GDPR-Proof?

As the legal challenges mounted, Google moved quickly to replace Universal Analytics with Google Analytics 4, a completely redesigned platform with privacy as a central focus. GA4 introduced several important features specifically designed to address GDPR concerns:

IP Anonymization by Default: GA4 does not log or store individual IP addresses. This was a configurable option in Universal Analytics, but now it's standard and can't be turned off. This removes one of the most common identifiers collected by analytics tools.
EU-Based Data Processing: GA4 can collect data from EU users on EU-based servers before forwarding it to other Google data centers for processing and reporting. While the data still ends up with a U.S. company, this initial step provides an extra layer of management within the EU.
More Granular Data Controls: GA4 gives you much more control over what data you collect and how long you keep it. You can disable the collection of granular location and device data, and reduce the data retention period to as little as two months.
No Reliance on Third-Party Cookies: GA4 uses a more modern event-based measurement model and is designed to work in a world with or without cookies, relying more on first-party data and modeling.

While these improvements are significant steps, they do not completely resolve the core issue identified in the Schrems II ruling: the data still ultimately transfers to a U.S. company, which is subject to U.S. surveillance laws. Therefore, even with GA4, some legal risks remain... until recently.

The Latest Chapter: The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework

The situation significantly changed in July 2023 with the adoption of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. This is the new legal agreement that replaces the invalidated Privacy Shield and is designed to allow personal data to flow freely and safely between the EU and certified U.S. companies.

This new framework directly addresses the concerns raised by the EU courts by:

Introducing new binding safeguards to limit U.S. intelligence agencies' access to data to what is "necessary and proportionate."
Establishing a new Data Protection Review Court that EU individuals can access to seek redress if they believe their data was collected unlawfully.

Google promptly certified its compliance with this framework. This means that, for now, there is a new legal framework that allows Google to transfer data from the EU to the United States. This removes much of the legal risk that was present and has largely made previous decisions against Google Analytics outdated. Most privacy lawyers now agree that the use of Google Analytics 4, when correctly configured, can be GDPR-compliant under this framework.

Actionable Steps to Use GA4 in a GDPR-Compliant Way

The new Data Privacy Framework doesn't mean you can just install GA4 and forget about it. Compliance is an ongoing process, not a one-time setup. To ensure you're using Google Analytics responsibly and respecting user privacy, here are some practical steps you must take.

1. Get Valid User Consent (The Right Way)

Under GDPR, you need a lawful basis to process personal data. For analytics, that basis must be explicit consent. Vague notices like "By using this site, you accept cookies," are no longer enough.

Use a GDPR-Compliant Cookie Banner: Implement a high-quality Cookie Consent Management Platform (CMP). This tool should allow a user to clearly "Accept" or "Decline" tracking cookies. The option to decline must be just as easy as the option to accept.
Fire Scripts After Consent: Your Google Analytics tracking script should only load after a user has given their explicit consent. Loading it before they make a choice is a violation. Most modern CMPs can handle this integration for you.

2. Configure Your GA4 Property for Privacy

Don't just use the default GA4 settings. Take a few minutes to configure your property to minimize data collection.

Disable Google Signals: Google Signals collects data for ad personalization and cross-device remarketing. Unless you have a critical need for these advertising features and have obtained clear consent for them, it's best to turn this off. Go to Admin > Data Settings > Data Collection and toggle it off.
Shorten Data Retention: By default, GA4 keeps event data for 2 months, which is great for privacy. If for some reason yours is set to 14 months, consider whether you really need that much historical data. Go to Admin > Data Settings > Data Retention to check.
Review Location and Device Data Collection: In the same Data Collection section, you can disable the collection of granular location and device data if it's not essential to your analysis.

3. Update Your Privacy Policy

Your privacy policy needs to be transparent and easy to understand. It should explicitly tell users that you use Google Analytics.

Clearly state that you use GA4 to understand website traffic.
Explain the type of data it collects (e.g., browsing behavior, non-specific location, device type).
Mention that this data is transferred to Google in the United States, and that this transfer is governed by the protections of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
Link to Google's own privacy policy so users can get more information.

4. Prevent Sending PII to Google Analytics

This is extremely important. You are never allowed to send Personally Identifiable Information (PII) like names, email addresses, or phone numbers to Google Analytics. It’s both a GDPR violation and a violation of Google's own terms of service.

PII is most often sent accidentally through URL query parameters. For example, if your "thank you" page after a form submission looks like www.your-site.com/thank-you?email=jane.doe@email.com, that email address will be sent to GA. Double-check your setup and use data redaction features in GA4 to prevent this.

Final Thoughts

The relationship between Google Analytics and GDPR has been complicated, centered on the transfer of data to the U.S. where privacy laws differ from the EU. While past rulings found older versions of Google Analytics non-compliant, the combination of GA4's improved privacy features and the new EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework in 2023 has provided a clear legal path for its use, as long as it's implemented correctly with user consent first and foremost.

Staying on top of data privacy regulations can feel like another job on top of tracking performance across your different platforms. At Graphed, we focus on simplifying your analytics by bringing all your data sources - like Google Analytics, Google Ads, your CRM, and e-commerce platforms - into one centralized view. You can create real-time dashboards using plain, conversational English, freeing you up to act on insights instead of just gathering data. To see how easy it is to manage your KPI reporting, give Graphed a try.