Use Data Or Be Used By Data!

The August 24 issue of Seotistics is here for you!

Yes, Web Analytics changed over time and now it's even more striking.

Despite a good chunk of the industry still promoting the usual stuff, there is now more movement.

We are finally seeing the changes to get more and more widespread across industries.

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📣📣 Important Announcements 📣📣

I've published not one but 2 new articles and more will come soon, even tomorrow (check the resources at the bottom).

My new content system really is amazing 😎

As for conferences/events, I will be present at:

Belgrade SEO (you can guess the city lol)- 18th September 2026 (use code MARCO for a good % off)
SEO On Stage (Athens) - 24th October 2026 (code SEO-On-Stage-Marco30 for 30% off)
MeasureSummit October 2026
One I will announce soon but some already know 👀

As usual, you can get my latest course here:

Become a Top Analyst Now!

Saturation & AI Diffusion

If you joined the market in the last few years, you can see that the bar now is higher.

I mean, this actually applies to any digital or white collar job, for example SEO, Growth, Product and PPC.

Data Science also had major radical shifts in the last 3 years.

Web Analytics is no exception and I'd say is facing radical changes because of Google itself.

Consider the following breakthroughs:

Google AI Overviews & AI Mode diffusion
Server-side is now MUCH more popular
Storage (BigQuery) is needed for automation
The need of automation brought the need of data modeling (DBT/Dataform)
AI started as mid and now it's legit scary good
World problems in general

You can remind yourself about these tools here.

In terms of stack... this is where we sit.

For small businesses, the stack didn't really change much but again...

does a small business even need analytics? No, I've always claimed they need real growth first.

Too lazy to update the graphic but you can now consider DeepSeek as the first model of choice for me lol

This is also why I started posting about this topic, even while I was mostly doing SEO.

There was no resource telling me stuff I was actually interested in and just tutorials or guides I couldn't care about.

Shift Left or Right?

In engineering, "shift left" has been used to refer to the tendency of moving testing, quality checks at the beginning of development.

Joe Reis, a leading voice in Data Engineering, reused this concept in his article.

It meant moving data quality checks right at the start and not at the end, to make it brief.

In our case, let's imagine you have 2 paths lying before you:

Both of them require new knowledge. I sit at the middle of the road.

Marketers are stronger on the left, analysts and engineers excel on the right.

The idea is that professionals shifted their competencies following market changes.

In our case, it's about more tech skills but also business/marketing understanding.

The stereotype of "now with AI generalists will thrive" has no real validation whatsoever, you still need specialists.

As in every industry, those who don't adapt will soon struggle.

I can tell you for sure generalists still have no clue about Web Analytics, even with modern AI models.

Every new wave is an opportunity to get better and rise.

Those who studied GA4 early on had a benefit for sure, as well as the first pioneers in BigQuery.

Now we live in the AI era, a lot more is possible but people don't know about it.

Much like other professions (e.g. SEO), staying stuck in the same bubble for decades will destroy your career.

This is why many choose to pivot into Growth or Product, eventually.

If you ask me, Analysts have a LOT more choices and we also have more fun.

Some Other Voices

I know you love Seotistics folks but let's hear some other relevant and authoritative voices in the industry.

There are other great creators like Juliana Jackson, Steen Rasmussen and Timo Dechau who covered this break.

Juliana talked many times about such topics in the past, for example when covering business models.

She says that you need to understand the business model even when doing tech stuff like BQ + Server-side.

I fully agree with it because modeling is a byproduct of the business.

Whereas Steen covered decision laundering... which is exactly a 101 rulebook on how most organizations operate.

Timo was one of the first to introduce some more obscure concepts and also talked about marketing and attribution recently.

I have been following him for Event Analytics too and his new joint venture, Propel.

After decades of companies investing in unfruitful collaborations with agencies, they realized they need some juice.

P.S. I recommend you follow all of them and sub to their newsletters 👀

Trench Experience

You may have heard me saying many times you need domain knowledge... or experience in the trenches.

Analyzing something requires a bare understanding of what it is.

How can you even be taken seriously without practice? 👀

I will give you some examples based on my recent work.

There is this enterprise content automation I am finalizing and there is also other companies doing that.

This very simple use case is actually hyper complex if you check the FULL process. Some go beyond and write content, which I fully disagree with.

I also looked around to see what other companies do and... I would never adopt some of their automations lol

The right people should work on the right projects.

This is even more important because in order to instruct machines, you need to know stuff.

And no, the skills you see online are often slop and not tailored for your use cases.

AI Is A Mirror

Capacity multipliers, they make you better if you are good. They make you worse otheriwise.

Now you have Digital Marketing professionals dabbling with AI and producing technical apps.

No one knows how the industry will evolve but for sure engineering always helps.

Now I rely less and less on engineers and for smaller projects, I am the engineer.

AI costs are super low if you use models like DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731. No, it's not that different from American models lol

This is an important distinction compared to some years ago... where most (me included) didn't know where to put hands.

If you've been reading my previous issues, you know that now we have access to hyper powerful tools.

The future of Analytics is instructing agents, additionally to simplifying complexity.

Teaching my agent while having fun (and protecting my data from intruders)

LLMs are not a fad or a temporary thing, now they are part of our professional lives.

In practice, I've been working on some cool projects where AI was strictly needed.

Analyzing text is one such case and also one of the most useful.

The Future Of Analytics

Well... if you have been doing GA4 and GTM only it's time to wake up and get modern.

Plenty of talks at MeasureCamps worldwide cover super interesting topics... but still the focus is mostly on tagging 💀

Standardized technical stuff is easy bucks but terrible for your career growth and expansion.

I see server-side and/or related technical solutions sold as the ultimate panacea.

They are not, they don't generate revenue or make your data magically useful.

For sure, it's extremely nice to have it but Analytics can't stop at server-side and GA4 Explorations lol

Next week I will show you some other cool stuff, until then!

👥 Join Our Community

Our Discord community offers a small place where we can talk business and web data.

If you hate all the noise of social media, then this place is for you.

I will start posting more there as we have a forum channel now.

This is the best way to stay updated in real time on Seotistics:

Join our Discord Community!

🔎 Analytics For SEO Ebook - Course / Ebook

You will:

✅ Use GSC and GA4 Data to their fullest potential

✅ Learn Python/SQL for your needs

✅ Get a complete blueprint for auditing websites

✅ Learn how to 10x your productivity

✅ Learn BigQuery to work on large websites

I teach you what's needed to go from 0 to a professional Data Analyst.

Even if you leave SEO, the foundations are the same for other jobs!

Learn Analytics for SEO Now!

Also in ebook:

Unlock Powerful Insights Now!

Think Like A Web Analyst

This course teaches you to:

✅ frame Analytics problems

✅ understand which metrics matter

✅ managing Web Analytics projects successfully

Become a Top Data Analyst Now!

📚 Recommended Reads - Peak Content 🗻

Read these peaks:

More to be published this week, stay tuned.

As usual, my most recent LinkedIn content is here.

❗️ Feedback and Recommendations

If you have ideas/recommendations for the next issues of Seotistics, you can simply reply to this email.

Marco Giordano
Data/Web Analyst

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Bernerstrasse Süd 167, Zurich, Switzerland
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Seotistics - Web Analytics + Business + Strategy

The Evolution Of The Web Analyst