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Publishers hosting and republishing their articles through the DML platform have the option to add their own Google Analytics ID to the pages to receive data on how and where their articles are viewed.
DML recommends that publishers create a new Google Analytics property and stream ID for this purpose instead of using the same property and stream ID they use for their primary website.
To do this, follow the instructions starting with the “Create a new Google Analytics 4 Property” heading in the Google Analytics documentation.
We recommend this approach because the technology DML uses to display articles in the embedded viewer only allows for the capture of initial pageview events and not other GA4 metrics that rely on user-timing (for example, the GA4 “Average Engagement Time” metric).
If you use the same GA4 property and stream ID for your DML hosted articles, this risks skewing these unsupported metrics in the analytics property for your primary website.
Once you’ve provided to DML the GA4 stream ID you’d like to use and you have at least one article appearing in a published collection, you should start to see data flowing into the new GA4 property you’ve created for your DML hosted articles.
Again, keep in mind that only metrics like Users, New Users, Sessions, and Views, and dimensions like the geographic location of visitors will be reliable, where metrics like Average Engagement Time and Bounce Rate that rely on user timing data will not be usable (or equivalent to what you’re used to seeing in your own website’s GA data) due to what DML is able to track and report to GA from the embedded viewer.
In the future, we are looking into adding additional events to the DML hosted pages for things like scroll depth and engagement with calls to action on pages. Check back for updates as to when those additional events may be available.