Google Analytics Platform Overview

Google Analytics Platform lets you measure user interactions with your business across various devices and environments.

The platform provides all the computing resources to collect, store, process, and report on these user-interactions.

Platform Components

Developers interact and influence processing through a rich user interface, client libraries, and APIs that are organized into 4 main components: collection configuration, processing, and reporting. The following diagram describes the relationships between the components and APIs:

• Collection – collects user-interaction data.
• Configuration – allows you to manage how the data is processed.
• Processing – processes the user-interaction data, with the configuration data.
• Reporting – provides access to all the processed data.

Which SDKs and APIs to use

The following list describes which APIs you should use.

Collection

1. Web Tracking (analytics.js)

   Measure user interaction with websites or web applications.

2. Android

   Measure user interaction with Android applications.

3. iOS

   Measure user interaction with iOS applications.

4. Measurement Protocol

   Measure user interaction in any environment with this low-level protocol.

Configuration

1. Management API

   Access configuration data to manage accounts, properties, views, goals, filters, uploads, permissions, etc.

2. Provisioning API

   Create new Google Analytics accounts and enable Google Analytics for your customers at scale.

Reporting

1. Core Reporting API

   Query for dimensions and metrics to produce customized reports.

2. Embed API

   Easily create and embed dashboards on a 3rd party website in minutes.

3. Multi-Channel Funnels Reporting API

   Query the traffic source paths that lead to a user’s goal conversion.

4. Real Time Reporting API

   Report on activity occurring on your property right now.

5. Metadata API

   Access the list of API dimensions and metrics and their attributes.