How to Keep Personally Identifiable Info Out of Google Analytics

Recently, we discovered something alarming while auditing one of our clients’ websites. Email addresses and phone numbers were showing up in their Google Analytics reports, exposing sensitive visitor information that they never intended to collect.

Collecting personally identifiable information from users can be a major issue. Not only does it violate privacy regulations like GDPR, but it also puts your business at risk of hefty fines and losing the trust of your customers.

But here’s the good news: preventing personally identifiable information (PII) from ending up in your analytics is actually quite straightforward once you know how.

We’ve spent years working with Google Analytics across hundreds of websites, and we’ve developed a foolproof system to keep sensitive data out of your reports. In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to protect your visitors’ privacy while still getting all the valuable insights you need from your analytics data.

What Is Personally Identifiable Information, and Why Should You Protect It?

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is any data that, when combined, can reveal a person’s identity.

Some common examples of PII include:

• Full name (first and last)
• Email address
• Phone number
• Home address
• Credit card information
• Login credentials (usernames and passwords)
• IP addresses (when linked to individuals)

The problem is that PII often sneaks into Google Analytics through URLs.

Let’s say that users submit personal details on contact forms or login pages on your WordPress site. This data can be embedded in the URL of the next page they visit.

The URL might look like this:

www.example.com/contact-us/thanks?email=personal@information.com.

In that example, we can see that the URL shows the user’s email address.

Why Should You Keep Personal Info Out of Analytics?

Privacy laws like GDPR are serious about protecting personal data. That’s one reason why Google doesn’t allow businesses to collect or store PII.

If your Google Analytics account is capturing PII, you could end up in trouble, facing hefty fines or having your account suspended.

And it’s not just a technical issue – it can have real consequences for your business. Users expect businesses to respect their privacy. But if they feel their data isn’t safe, they might take their business elsewhere.

That’s why it’s so important to keep PII out of your Google Analytics data.

With that in mind, we’ll show you how to keep personally identifiable information (PII) out of Google Analytics. Here’s a quick overview of the 2 methods we’ll share with you:

• Method 1. Using a WordPress Plugin to Keep PII Out of Google Analytics (Easy)
• Method 2. Keeping PII Out of Google Analytics (Manual Approach)
• Bonus Tips for Privacy Compliance on Your Website
• FAQs About Keeping Personally Identifiable Info Out of Google Analytics
• Further Reading: More Analytics and Tracking Guides

Ready? Let’s get started.

Method 1. Using a Plugin to Keep Personally Identifiable Info Out of Google Analytics

Google Analytics can be overwhelming to navigate, especially when trying to ensure compliance with privacy regulations.

Managing cookie consent, anonymizing IP addresses, and adjusting privacy settings can quickly become overwhelming. For many people, sorting through these settings and ensuring compliance is no easy task.

If you’re a WordPress user, then we have good news for you.

MonsterInsights is the best WordPress analytics plugin, and it integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). With its Privacy Guard feature, it offers privacy-friendly tracking that you can manage directly from your WordPress dashboard.

ℹ️ Quick note: MonsterInsights powers our conversion tracking at WPBeginner, helping us monitor traffic, forms, buttons, referral links, and more with ease. See why we love it in our detailed MonsterInsights review!

Step 1. Install and Activate the MonsterInsights Plugin

First, let’s get started by creating a MonsterInsights account. Just head over to the website and click the ‘Get MonsterInsights Now’ button.

You can then go ahead and choose a plan. For this tutorial, we recommend the Plus plan or higher, as it includes the Privacy Guard feature to help with compliance.

After signing up, you can install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin on your WordPress site. For step-by-step instructions, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Step 2. Connect MonsterInsights to Your Google Analytics Account

Upon activation, you’ll need to connect the MonsterInsights plugin to your Google Analytics account.

In your WordPress dashboard, you need to go to Insights » Launch the Wizard to start the setup.

After that, you’ll select the category that best describes your website.

MonsterInsights gives 3 options – business site, publisher (blog), or eCommerce (online store).

After selecting a category, simply click ‘Save and Continue’ to proceed.

On the next screen, you can click ‘Connect MonsterInsights’ to start the connection process.

Then, you can follow the prompt to sign in to your Google Analytics account.

Upon signing in, you can select the website you want to track from the dropdown menu.

From here, go ahead and click the ‘Complete Connection’ button. MonsterInsights will then automatically install Google Analytics on your WordPress website.

For details, feel free to refer to our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Step 3. Enable the Privacy Guard Feature

Keeping Personally Identifiable Information (PII) out of your tracking doesn’t have to be complicated.

With MonsterInsights’ Privacy Guard, you can do it in just a few clicks!

This feature automatically scans your website for sensitive information. It checks for any private details and prevents them from being stored in your analytics reports.

These details can be:

• Form submission data, such as personal information entered in contact or registration forms.
• URL data, which is the full web address of the page, including the domain name, path, and any additional information.
• Query parameters, which are the bits of data in URLs, like “?id=1234.” They often track specific user actions or provide extra information to the website.

To do this, let’s navigate to the Insights » Settings » Engagement tab.

From here, you can go ahead and turn on the ‘Privacy Guard’ switch – that’s it!

MonsterInsights will now help protect personally identifiable information and keep you compliant with privacy laws.

⚠️ Important Disclaimer: No plugin can guarantee 100% legal compliance because every website is different. We strongly recommend consulting an Internet law attorney to ensure your site meets all legal requirements for your location and specific use case.

This is not legal advice – just a friendly heads-up to help you stay informed!

Method 2. Keeping Personally Identifiable Info Out of Google Analytics

In this method, we’ll guide you through configuring the settings that you need to keep PII out of Google Analytics directly from its dashboard.

This option is best for advanced users, as it gives you full control over the setup.

Additionally, since this method isn’t limited to WordPress, you can follow along even if you made your website with a different website builder.

First, you’ll need to sign in to your Google Analytics account.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Sign in to Analytics’ button.

In the dashboard, let’s hover over the sidebar and click the ‘Admin’ menu.

Once inside, you’ll want to locate the ‘Data collection and modification’ section.

After that, let’s click on ‘Data streams.’

This will take you to the table, which lists all your data streams.

Now, you can select your website from the list.

This will open the ‘Web stream details’ slide-in.

From here, let’s scroll down to the ‘Events’ section and click ‘Redact data.’

On the next screen, you will see the ‘Redact data’ menu.

The ‘Choose what to redact’ section of this slide-in has two switches at the top.

Let’s first redact email addresses by flipping the switch. Google Analytics will then automatically exclude email addresses from the data it collects.

Then, you can filter out other PII by entering query parameters.

To do this, you’ll need to enable the switch for ‘URL query parameter.’ Then, you can enter your query parameters in the respective field.

For example, here, we added ‘name,’ first_name,’ ‘last_name,’ and ‘ip_address.’

Once everything looks good, you can save your settings.

Google Analytics will now help protect PII and keep your site privacy-compliant.

⚠️ Important Disclaimer: Configuring settings manually in the GA4 dashboard requires precise knowledge of which data needs to be redacted.

This can be tricky, and even a small mistake may result in sensitive information being collected.

We recommend thoroughly reviewing your data collection settings to ensure all PII is properly excluded. Always take the necessary precautions, as improper configuration could lead to compliance issues.

Bonus Tips for Privacy Compliance on Your Website

Keeping personal info out of analytics reports is just one way to comply with privacy regulations. We also recommend following these tips:

• Show a cookie notice on your WordPress website. This popup message allows users to give their consent for tracking cookies on your website. Plus, it’s super easy to set up with a powerful plugin like WPConsent.
• Create GDPR-compliant forms. With a form plugin like WPForms, you can easily add GDPR agreement fields to your forms, disable user cookies and details, and delete user data when requested.
• Add a GDPR comment privacy checkbox. Comment plugins like Thrive Comments can help your discussion section comply with GDPR with just the click of a button.

For more details, just see our complete guide to GDPR compliance for WordPress users.

FAQs About Keeping Personally Identifiable Info Out of Google Analytics

Keeping PII out of Google Analytics is important for privacy and compliance. If you still have questions, feel free to take a look at some quick answers to common questions:

How does Google handle user data and privacy concerns?

Google takes privacy seriously. It anonymizes data and complies with strict regulations like GDPR.

While Google provides tools to help businesses protect user privacy, it’s ultimately up to the businesses to make sure they don’t collect personally identifiable information (PII).

Does Google Analytics collect personally identifiable information?

Not by default. But if you’re not careful, PII can sneak in through URLs, form submissions, or custom tracking settings. That’s why it’s important to set things up correctly.

Do all sites with analytics need cookie warnings?

Yep! If your site tracks users with cookies (like Google Analytics does), then privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA require you to show a cookie notice and get user consent.

Further Reading: More Analytics and Tracking Guides

Understanding how to keep PII out of Google Analytics is just the beginning! If you want to fine-tune your tracking, improve data accuracy, and stay compliant with privacy laws, then check out these helpful guides:

📊 Google Analytics 4: A Beginner’s Guide – Learn how to set up GA4 on your WordPress site and make the most of its powerful features.

• 📢 WordPress Post Analytics – Find out how to easily access and track your blog stats.
• 🎯 How to Set Up Google Analytics Goals – Measure what really matters on your WordPress website.
• 🔗 How to Install and Setup Google Tag Manager – Simplify tracking by managing all your tags in one place.
• 🔍 How to Track Outbound Links – See which external links your visitors are clicking the most.
• ✋ How to Block WordPress Referrer Spam in Google Analytics – Improve the accuracy of your reports by making sure that spam requests do not pollute your data.
• 💭 In-Depth Comparison of MonsterInsights vs SiteKit – See how these powerful analytics plugins stack up.

That’s all there is to it! We hope this guide has helped you learn how to keep personal info out of Google Analytics. You may also like to see our guide on how to get a custom email alert in Google Analytics or our expert pick of the best WordPress GDPR plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Keep Personally Identifiable Info Out of Google Analytics first appeared on WPBeginner.

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WPBeginner Spotlight 10: WordPress 6.8 Preview, New AI Tools, and Plugin News

March has been a busy month across the WordPress ecosystem. We’re excited that WordPress 6.8’s first release candidate (RC1) is now available for testing, and we’ve also seen innovative new features roll out for popular plugins.

AI continues to be a recurring theme — from smarter form calculations in WPForms to StoreAgent’s automated WooCommerce helpers.

There’s also a wave of quality-of-life improvements worth mentioning. Uncanny Automator now integrates with Discord and RSS, AIOSEO added new crawl controls, and WP Simple Pay has made Stripe compliance easier for users.

Whether you’re a developer, site owner, or just like keeping up with the latest tools, there’s plenty to catch up on this month.

ℹ️ WPBeginner Spotlight brings you a monthly roundup of the most important WordPress news, updates, and community happenings. 📅✨

Got something to share? Whether it’s a new product launch, a significant update, or an exciting event, reach out to us through our contact form, and your news could be featured in the next edition! 💬

WPForms Adds AI-Powered Calculations for Smarter Forms 🪄

Creating complex calculation forms just got a whole lot easier. WPForms now includes a powerful AI Calculations feature that builds custom formulas for you.

You can chat with the WPForms AI Assistant to create dynamic, real-time formulas in seconds. Just describe what you want to calculate in simple terms — no syntax or logic-building needed.

It works great for eCommerce pricing, event quotes, tuition fees, and more. Simply type in your request, and the AI does the rest.

This new feature builds upon WPForms’ existing AI tools. You can generate entire forms with a single prompt, fill in field choices automatically, and even translate forms into other languages in seconds.

WordPress 6.8 Release Candidate Now Available. Final Release Expected April 15, 2025 🎉

The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.8 is now available for testing. This marks a significant step toward the final release, which is scheduled for April 15, 2025.

This update brings a lot of enhancements aimed at improving site performance, security, and user experience.

Key features in WordPress 6.8 include:

• Speculative Loading: This feature predicts and preloads resources that users are likely to access next. This results in faster page load times and a smoother browsing experience.
• Enhanced Password Security with bcrypt: WordPress 6.8 transitions to bcrypt for password hashing. This provides improved security against brute-force attacks and aligns with modern security standards.
• Block Editor Improvements: Users will benefit from better block interactions, more style controls, and an improved editing experience. These features will make content creation more intuitive and flexible within the block editor.

Developers and testers are encouraged to explore the Release Candidate now. This will allow you to get familiar with the new features and ensure compatibility with themes and plugins ahead of the final release.

For a comprehensive overview of what’s coming in WordPress 6.8, including detailed features and screenshots, you can read about What’s Coming in WordPress 6.8: Features and Screenshots.

StoreAgent Launches AI Assistants for WooCommerce Stores 🤖

Josh Kohlbach, a longtime name in the WordPress and WooCommerce space, has launched StoreAgent — a set of AI-powered tools designed to save store owners time and effort.

Instead of just chatting with AI, StoreAgent acts like a smart co-worker that can handle real tasks for your online store.

These AI agents can write product descriptions, create short summaries, suggest tags, and even monitor your store’s content. They can also summarize reviews and help with customer Q&As, all from inside your WooCommerce dashboard.

Josh says the goal was to go beyond ChatGPT-style chatboxes and build something that feels more like an actual assistant.

StoreAgent is the first step in that direction—a collection of AI agents that do the boring work, help you stay creative, and suggest ways to improve your product pages.

StoreAgent works on a pay-as-you-go credit system, and new users get 500 credits for free. A Shopify version and other platform extensions are also in the works.

PushEngage Adds AI Campaigns and WooCommerce Order Notifications 🔔

PushEngage just made it easier to boost customer engagement and save time. They’ve added two big features to their push notification plugin: AI-powered message generation and automated WooCommerce order notifications.

The new AI tool helps you write high-converting push messages in seconds. Just enter your goal, and the system generates optimized text that’s ready to send.

It’s ideal for marketers who want results without spending hours on copywriting. ✍️

The WooCommerce update is even more exciting for store owners. You can now send push alerts for order events like purchases, processing updates, and delivery notifications.

This helps keep customers in the loop, reduces support tickets, and even alerts your team internally.

You can also recover abandoned carts or request reviews automatically with follow-up campaigns. Overall, these new features are designed for store owners who want more repeat traffic and fewer missed sales.

Uncanny Automator Adds RSS and Discord Integrations ⚙️

Uncanny Automator, the most powerful WordPress automation plugin, has added two new integrations. It now allows users to automate actions using RSS feeds and send automated messages straight to Discord channels.

The new RSS integration lets you trigger actions when a feed updates or create a feed from actions on your site. For example, you could automatically post new blog content to Slack, Discord, or a newsletter tool — all without touching a line of code.

On the other hand, the Discord integration is great for online communities. You can set it to send channel messages when users complete a course, submit a form, or place an order.

It’s perfect for membership sites, LMS platforms, or WooCommerce stores that want to keep their audience informed in real time.

Plus, these new features work seamlessly with Automator’s existing integrations. That means you can connect RSS and Discord with tools like LearnDash, WPForms, BuddyBoss, WooCommerce, and more.

AIOSEO Adds Advanced Crawl Controls for Better SEO 🚀

All in One SEO, the popular WordPress SEO toolkit, just got a major update. This new release brings powerful new tools that help you clean up crawl data, block unwanted bots, and improve your site’s performance.

One standout feature is the upgraded Crawl Cleanup. It lets you limit the length of internal search URLs. You can also remove emojis and spam patterns from search terms. Plus, it can redirect pretty search URLs to raw formats.

All of this helps prevent duplicate content and wasted crawl budgets.

You can now also stop search engines from crawling internal search pages entirely. AIOSEO automatically adds disallow rules to your robots.txt file for common search query patterns like ?s= and /search/.

AI Crawlers are on the rise, and all this crawling could affect website performance. AIOSEO’s new bot-blocking feature lets you block known bad bots or AI crawlers that may use your content for training without permission. These settings are built directly into the plugin’s robots.txt editor for easy access.

AIOSEO also updated its Query Arg Monitor to improve how UTM parameters are handled. Now, UTM links automatically redirect using # fragments instead of ?. This setup keeps analytics intact while avoiding duplicate URLs in search results.

WP Simple Pay Adds Stripe Compliance Alerts and Smarter Pricing Options 💳

WP Simple Pay just rolled out new features to help WordPress users manage Stripe payments more confidently.

The latest update includes Stripe alerts within the WordPress dashboard, flexible pricing rules, and payment limits to keep your checkout forms clean and compliant.

The standout feature is the in-plugin Stripe account notifications. Instead of checking your Stripe dashboard every day, you’ll now see important alerts directly inside WordPress. These include payment verification issues, compliance reminders, and other account requirements — all in real time.

They’ve also introduced required price options, letting you add mandatory fees or add-ons to any payment form.

This is perfect for things like support fees, booking add-ons, or one-time setup charges. You can build more transparent and flexible pricing models without writing custom code.

And if you’re worried about fraud or regulatory limits, there’s a new feature for setting custom amount maximums. You can cap donation sizes, limit gift card values, or prevent accidental overpayments — all directly from the visual payment form builder.

MonsterInsights Adds Cart Abandonment Reports to Help You Recover Lost Sales 📈

MonsterInsights, the #1 Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, has introduced new Cart Abandonment reports that give store owners more visibility into what’s being left behind.

Instead of guessing which products are getting dropped at checkout, you can now see exactly what’s being abandoned — and when.

The new reports are split into two key sections. The Products report shows which items are being abandoned, how often, and how much revenue is potentially being lost.

On the other hand, the Daily report helps you spot trends by showing peak abandonment times and revenue impact by day.

It’s a helpful tool for store owners, marketers, and product managers who want to fine-tune their strategy and recover missed sales. The insights can guide inventory planning, promotional timing, and even design changes at checkout.

If you’re using MonsterInsights Pro, just update to the latest version and head to eCommerce » Cart Abandonment in your WordPress dashboard to start exploring your reports.

In Other News 🗞️

• WPConsent, a powerful privacy compliance plugin for WordPress, now supports Google Consent Mode V2. It can now automatically adjust Google tags based on user consent to improve privacy compliance. The update also introduces improved consent log management by allowing easy export of records in CSV format.
• The popular WordPress page builder plugin, SeedProd, has added 15 new industry-specific themes. They have also upgraded their Image Carousel block with support for custom headers, subheadings, and clickable buttons.
• WooCommerce is preparing Product Editor v3 to align with WordPress Data Views and Forms. They also advise developers to pause beta work for now.

• The popular WordPress backup and migration plugin, Duplicator, has introduced new features to streamline backup management. These include automatic backup log cleanups and one-click deletion options.

• UpdraftPlus, a leading WordPress plugin developer, have expanded their portfolio by acquiring Burst Statistics, a privacy-friendly analytics plugin. This acquisition follows UpdraftPlus’s commitment to improving website management tools while prioritizing user privacy.

OptinMonster – Convert Visitors into Subscribers & Customers

OptinMonster helps you grow your email list and boost conversions with high-converting popups and campaigns. Use smart targeting and a drag & drop builder to show the right message to the right person at the right time — no coding needed.

Get OptinMonster

• Hostinger, the popular WordPress hosting company, has launched Horizons. This AI-powered web app builder enables users to create custom web applications without coding knowledge.
• HeroThemes has launched the Heroic KB Chrome Extension, which allows users to access their knowledge base directly from the browser toolbar. This tool is designed to enhance productivity by allowing customer support teams to quickly search and view knowledge base articles without switching tabs.
• The popular WordPress code snippets plugin, WPCode, has introduced a Snippet Shortcode Finder. It allows users to locate where specific shortcodes are used across their WordPress site. Additionally, the update improves the WooCommerce integration by allowing users to run code snippets based on cart contents.

• Formidable Forms has introduced a GDPR Compliance field, which makes it easier to get explicit user consent in WordPress forms. This feature makes sure that data collection aligns with privacy regulations.
• Envira Gallery has added a Search Addon and a Vertical Focus Layout to improve image browsing and presentation. The search feature helps users find photos quickly using tags or descriptions. Meanwhile, the new layout highlights a featured image alongside a scrollable thumbnail strip for a more immersive gallery experience.

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• Wholesale Suite has introduced a new interface for its WooCommerce Invoice System, which allows store owners to manage invoices directly within the Payments tab. This update streamlines the invoicing process by grouping invoice tracking, payment status monitoring, and PDF invoice downloads in a single, user-friendly location.
• Smash Balloon has introduced integrations with WPForms and Formidable Forms, which allow users to collect and display customer reviews directly on their WordPress sites. This feature lets users make custom review submission forms and provides greater control over user-generated content.
• WP Mail SMTP has introduced push notifications that alert users immediately on their devices when emails fail to send. This feature makes sure that critical alerts are not missed.
• WPForms has introduced File Upload Restrictions, which lets users control access to files uploaded via forms. This feature allows for restrictions based on WordPress user roles, individual users, or password protection.

New Plugins

• WPConsent – A lightweight yet powerful WordPress plugin for managing user consent and complying with privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA. It supports multiple consent types and integrates with popular cookie plugins.
• Duplicate Post by AIOSEO 🔥 – Finally, a powerful Duplicate Post plugin for WordPress that allows you to easily duplicate posts and pages with a single click. It also features scheduled revisions for seamless content updates without affecting the live version.
• ClassifAI – A free plugin that uses AI to automate tasks like content tagging, image labeling, and more. It integrates with ElasticPress, WordPress core features, and many popular plugins.
• Remove Empty Shortcodes – A simple plugin that automatically strips out empty shortcodes from post content to keep things clean and error-free without making changes to the database.

That’s a wrap for this month’s WPBeginner Spotlight! We hope you enjoyed catching up on the latest news and updates from the WordPress ecosystem.

Got a product launch, feature update, or cool project you think we should cover? Send us a message, and we might feature it in our next edition.

We’ll see you again next month with another round of WordPress news. Thanks for reading and being part of the WPBeginner family!

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post WPBeginner Spotlight 10: WordPress 6.8 Preview, New AI Tools, and Plugin News first appeared on WPBeginner.

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