When Google announced that they would force us to move away from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, I wasn’t happy. The official tracking code is notoriously bloated – weighing in at around 171kB in some instances–and is frequently blocked by various ad-blockers. Given the lack of lightweight alternatives, I wasn’t looking forward to compromising my site’s performance.
I started searching for a solution, but finding nothing that met my needs, I decided to take a “hit-and-miss” approach and build my own. What began as a simple snippet has now evolved into a highly refined, professional-grade tool. With the release of version 1.11 (the “Gold Master”), the script is more robust than ever, while remaining incredibly lean.
The Evolution of the Script
While the primary purpose remains tracking essential metrics like page views (page_view), session starts (session_start), and returning users (first_visit), each iteration has added powerful capabilities:
- Version 1.06 - 1.07: Introduced site search detection (
view_search_results) and search query capturing (search_term). - Version 1.09: Added scroll tracking (
scroll), firing an event when a visitor reaches 90% of the page depth. - Version 1.10: Implemented file download tracking for specified extensions and any links containing the
downloadattribute. - Version 1.11.2 (The “Gold Master Patch”): This latest milestone marks a thorough stability and hardening cycle. It introduces native UTM persistence to resolve attribution gaps, precise Average Engagement Time via the browser’s Visibility API, and zero-overhead Outbound Link Tracking. Following deep peer-review tracking loops, v1.11.2 introduces type-safe DOM guards to fully immunise the script against private browsing crashes, adds case-insensitive search parameters, and relies on strict event capturing to ensure link tracking fires reliably even on sites wrapped in aggressive web frameworks.
- Version 1.12.0: Focuses entirely on frontend performance by introducing zero-jank scroll tracking. It wraps geometric scroll queries inside a
requestAnimationFrame, completely eliminating layout thrashing and “forced reflow” penalties in Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile devices.
By moving to a dedicated GitHub repository, I’ve also implemented a modern Event Delegation model and Storage Safety Checks to ensure the script runs flawlessly even in strict private browsing modes.
On the 16th of March 2022 Google announced its plans for a shutdown of Universal Analytics property and replace it fully with Goole Analytics 4 (v4) that been in the market since late 2020.
Google like to kill off their services. Luckily, this is not about shutting down Google Analytics but only the method, how analytics data are collected from websites. If you have been using Google Analytics for some time, then it’s more likely that you have been using Universal Analytics. You will know that by looking at your tracking code that will carry UA- on front of the numbers.
Analytics in its 4th version (UA is 3rd) has been developed for some time, but it wasn’t adopted as quick as Google could expect (or want), this is why they forcing a change by shutting down one in favour of another.
You may say what you want about Google Analytics, especially about how “they” are, apart from displaying data for you, using data gathered for “their” business purpose (forget about privacy). If you are a website owner and you are looking for a reasonable tracking method for your visitors, this is the solution that you will pick in the first place.
The problem with Google Analytics is that their tracking script weights a lot and that is slowing down your website.