What Companies Use Google Analytics?

Curious about who really uses Google Analytics? The short answer is a massive number of companies, from the corner bakery to global tech giants. This article will show you what types of businesses rely on GA, look at some famous examples, and explain why it has become the default analytics tool for a huge portion of the internet.

What is Google Analytics, Anyway?

Before diving into who uses it, let's quickly cover what it is. Google Analytics (now in its fourth version, GA4) is a free web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic and user behavior. In plain English, it’s a powerful tool that helps you understand what’s happening on your website. Businesses install a small snippet of code on their site, and Google begins collecting anonymous data about visitors.

This allows website owners to answer fundamental questions like:

• How many people are visiting my site?
• Where are my visitors coming from (e.g., Google search, social media, ads)?
• What pages are they looking at, and for how long?
• Which marketing efforts are actually driving sales or sign-ups?
• What percentage of users are on mobile devices versus desktops?

Its massive popularity comes down to a few core reasons: it’s incredibly powerful, it integrates perfectly with other Google products like Google Ads, and most importantly, the standard version is completely free. This combination makes it an unbeatable starting point for nearly any organization with an online presence.

Who Uses Google Analytics? The Short Answer: Almost Everyone.

According to data from W3Techs, some version of Google Analytics is used by over 55% of all websites on the internet. BuiltWith reports show well over 29 million active websites using the tool. It's not limited to a specific industry or company size, its versatility makes it valuable for literally anyone who wants to understand their audience.

Let's break down the most common types of users.

1. E-commerce Businesses

For online stores, data is currency. E-commerce businesses rely on Google Analytics to track the entire customer journey, from the first ad they see to the final "thank you for your purchase" page. They can see which products are most popular, at what point shoppers are abandoning their carts, and how much revenue each marketing channel is generating.

Example in action: An online clothing retailer uses GA to see that a specific TikTok campaign drove $10,000 in sales for a new line of hoodies, confirming that their ad spend delivered a strong return.

2. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) Companies

SaaS companies have a longer customer journey that often involves multiple steps: reading a blog post, signing up for a webinar, starting a free trial, and eventually upgrading to a paid plan. They use GA to track conversions at each of these stages. By analyzing user flow reports, they can identify where potential customers are getting stuck or dropping off, helping them optimize their website for more sign-ups and demos.

Example in action: A project management SaaS business notices in GA that visitors who watch a specific demo video are 3x more likely to start a free trial. They decide to feature that video more prominently on their homepage.

3. Content Creators and Media Publishers

If you're a blogger, a news organization, or a media company, your success is measured by audience engagement. Publishers use Google Analytics to see which articles get the most traffic, how long people are staying to read them, and where that traffic is coming from. This data informs their content strategy, helping them decide what topics to cover next to grow their readership and Clicks Per Mile (CPM: Cost Per Thousand Impressions).

Example in action: A popular food blog finds that recipes using an air fryer get 50% more organic search traffic than other types. They greenlight a whole new series of air fryer content to capture that audience.

4. Marketing Agencies

Agencies live and breathe data. They use Google Analytics to manage and report on the performance of their clients' websites. It's the primary tool they use to prove their value, showing clients tangible results like increased traffic, higher conversion rates, and a positive return on investment (ROI) from their campaigns. With a single manager account, agencies can easily access and monitor dozens of different client GA properties.

Example in action: An SEO agency presents a client with a report built from GA data showing a 200% year-over-year increase in website leads from organic search after six months of work.

5. Small Businesses and Local Services

You don't need millions of visitors to benefit from analytics. Plumbers, dentists, restaurants, and other local businesses use GA to understand their digital storefront. They track crucial actions like clicks on their phone number, submissions to their contact form, and clicks on their address for directions. It helps them see if their online presence is effectively driving offline business.

Example in action: A local mechanic checks their GA report and sees that their "Book an Oil Change" page has a high exit rate from mobile users, indicating a potential design issue that needs fixing.

6. Large Enterprises and Global Brands

Global brands deal with massive amounts of traffic across multiple websites, apps, and regional domains. While many use the free version of GA, a large number opt for the paid enterprise version, Google Analytics 360. This premium tool offers higher data limits, unsampled reporting, more advanced analysis features, and deep integrations with other enterprise platforms like Salesforce. Huge companies use it to get a high-level view of market trends and campaign performance across the globe.

Example in action: A multinational consumer goods company uses GA 360 to analyze how a new digital advertising campaign in Europe is impacting traffic patterns across their German, French, and Spanish websites.

Big Names, Same Tool: Companies You Know That Use Google Analytics

If you ever wonder if Google Analytics is truly a professional-grade tool, just look at the list of companies that have its tracking code installed. While many large enterprises layer other analytics tools on top, GA often remains a foundational piece of their data stack. Here are just a handful of household names that use Google Analytics:

• Uber: Tracks user behavior on its website for rider and driver sign-ups.
• Spotify: Analyzes traffic to its marketing and subscription pages to convert free users to premium.
• Airbnb: Measures visitor flow, booking funnels, and the effectiveness of destination pages.
• The New York Times: Relies on it for deep analysis of reader engagement, article popularity, and subscription conversions.
• Twitter (X): Uses it to understand traffic patterns and user acquisition funnels on its web platform.
• LEGO: Tracks online store performance, product page engagement, and campaign success.
• Mastercard: Monitors traffic to its consumer and business information portals.

Beyond Just Traffic: Why These Companies Really Use GA

For successful businesses, Google Analytics is far more than a simple traffic counter. It's a strategic tool used for making objective, data-backed decisions instead of relying on guesswork or intuition.

Answering Critical Business Questions

At its core, GA is an answer machine. Savvy companies use it to find clear answers to the questions that directly impact their bottom line, such as:

• "Which marketing channel provides our most valuable customers?" By analyzing the Acquisition reports alongside conversion data, they can see if customers from Facebook Ads spend more than customers from organic search.
• "Where is our website's user experience failing?" Funnel exploration reports allow them to visualize where users drop off during critical processes like checkout or contact forms, highlighting opportunities for improvement.
• "What content is our audience truly interested in?" Engagement reports show which pages, blog posts, or landing pages are holding users' attention, guiding future content creation.

Understanding the Modern Customer Journey

Years ago, the path to a purchase was straightforward. Today, a customer might see an ad on Instagram, search for reviews on Google, watch a YouTube video, see a TikTok, get a message from a friend, and finally visit a website to make a purchase. The latest version, GA4, was rebuilt to better track this complex, multi-platform journey. Its event-based data model helps businesses connect the dots between all these touchpoints to get a full picture of how customers interact with their brand before converting.

Are There Alternatives to Google Analytics?

Of course. Despite its dominance, GA isn't the only option, and some companies have specific reasons for choosing a different path. The main alternatives fall into a few categories:

• Privacy-Focused Analytics: Tools like Fathom, Plausible, and Matomo have grown in popularity, especially in Europe. They offer a simpler, cookieless alternative that is often more compliant with privacy regulations like the GDPR out of the box.
• Product Analytics Tools: For SaaS and mobile apps, tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude offer more granular event tracking and user cohort analysis focused on in-app behavior. They are designed to answer questions about feature adoption and user retention more so than website traffic acquisition.
• Enterprise Suites: At the very high end of the market, tools like Adobe Analytics offer a powerful but expensive alternative, often chosen by enterprises that are already heavily invested in Adobe's broader marketing and cloud ecosystem.

Final Thoughts

From one-person blogs to Fortune 500 companies, Google Analytics remains the dominant, unifying tool for measuring and understanding the digital world. Its unique combination of power, flexibility, and free access ensures it’s the first (and often only) analytics tool for millions of businesses aiming to grow smarter and faster through data-driven decisions.

While gathering all that data in Google Analytics is a great first step, turning those complex reports into clear, actionable answers can still take hours of manual work. At Graphed , we help you skip the busy work. By connecting directly to your Google Analytics account and other data sources, we let you build dashboards and get insights just by asking questions in plain English. You can instantly see what’s working and why, all in real-time, without having to become a data expert.