How to Enable Age Demographics and Interests in Google Analytics

Last Updated: 5/16/2014

Finally, Google is supplying more information on audience demographics. It has been part of the standard Google Analytics for sometime now but now that Universal Analytics is out of Beta and into prime time all Google Analytics accounts should be able to use this feature.  You’ll be able to find this information in the “Audience” section of your analytics account.

In this post I’ll walk you through:

• Setting up Age Demographics and Interest for Google Analytics
• Setting up Age Demographics and Interest for Universal Analytics

First steps though, log into your Analytics account and first make sure the settings are enabled by going to your admin and Property Settings and turn on the “Enable Demographics and Interest Reports”

Note: if you are not seeing this option in the Property Settings of your GA profile, the update has not been rolled out to your profile and unfortunately you’ll have to be patient until it has.

How to enable the age demographics and interests in Google Analytics

For the standard Google Analytics, you’ll need to update the Tracking Code that lives on the back-end of your website with this line:

ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://’ : ‘http://’) + ‘stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js’;

This replaces the old line of:

ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;

After enabling this, you’ll also be able to grab the full, updated code in your “Admin” section of Google Analytics by going to: Admin > Property > Tracking Info.

Once you’ve added the new code to your site, go to back to the “Age” section and validate your code. You should then receive a congratulatory message! Results will be available 24 after the implementation.

How to enable the age demographics and interests in Universal Analytics

For Universal Analytics you’ll need to add the following line (bolded text below) to your tracking code between ‘create’ and ‘send’:

ga(‘create’, ‘UA-XXXXXX-XX’, ‘example.com’);
ga(‘require’, ‘displayfeatures’);
ga(‘send’, ‘pageview’);

Once you’ve added the new code to your site, go to back to the “Age” section and validate your code. You should then receive a congratulatory message! Results will be available 24 after the implementation.

Final Steps

Make sure and read the new updated privacy policy for specifics on how Google Analytics is gathering data about your traffic.  One big change is you’ll need to update your site’s privacy policy and let visitors be aware their data is being gathered and used for marketing purposes.

You will also want to make sure that the Default View and Industry Category is set under your property settings.  Additionally, if your website brings under a certain number of visitors a month, I am not sure what that number is but I believe around 500, then some of the data will not show even with this turned on.  As Google still has the goal of keeping visitor anonymous.

Go ahead and test it out and let me know how it works for you. If you need to, you can download the How To Enable Age Demographics and Interests in Google Analytics PDF to print and use for later.

Once you have this set up, continue improving you tracking and the information you gather by making sure your site has event tracking set up.