Welcome back to the channel for a special edition of brake 40 I am up in Ayrshire in Scotland we're a championship links it is done donnell links this is a brake 40 quite simply can I play nine holes in 40 shots or less we shall see now before we get this video started I just want a quick rundown on what the clubs are in my bag for today's challenge and this time starting with driver that is the tailor-made stealth 2hd I've then got a five wood from pxg gen 6 a gen six hybrid which is a number four then I've got gen six irons which are six through to pitching wedge I then have a sugar daddy two wedge 54 degrees finally or last but not least maybe my 60 degree tailor-made heito wedge and finally is the mes putter here we go hole one for 10 straight down aiming for a little bit of a cut off that bunker that is hidden by my back and yeah it wasn't a bad start to be honest with you knew that I couldn't reach but it still leaves a fair bit in just over 190 yards and that made it what a 220 drive all carry because there's no roll these fairways have been sanded and it's the 40 hours of rain anyway real good pickup I'm slightly blinded by where the flag is but I've got a feeling that's right on it it just depends whether or not the distance is right but a second swing of the day I've got to be happy with that as you can see it came up short and again pitched and stopped now it's about can you get the pace after like I said a deluge of rain over the past two days and the answer is no I couldn't and this is not what you want to be faced with on the first hole of the day which is probably best part of eight nine four to save par do you know at times it looks as though there's several takes on this because I can't believe how many of them I hole actually on video but trust me that's a real positive swing and a decent start with a four great golf hole left to right shape if you can yeah make that ball work in your favor because this is like I said dog leg left to right only short but position is key two fairway bunkers right in the middle of the fairway I'm going to go over the top of them and you'll see again just a little bit of sanding here just to absorb the moisture I've still got a seven iron in it was a little bit bottom groovy but not a bad strike to be fair the main thing was it was it was on the short stuff but still a long way from the flag did I learn from the first putt that we just needed to give these a little bit more effort in terms of pace yes I did but didn't get the line quite right however we should be able to tap this one in for another par so a decent start after well two decent swings with driver let's see if we can carry that on this is our par five five hundred and ten yards rain has just started to fall again as you can see this is just about going pretty much down the middle it cut a little bit more perhaps than I'd want it to because we can't quite see it from here but alongside the right is a burn there it is and yeah I didn't want to get any close to that it's a difficult one five wood I'm aiming for the green gorse which again I've got a yardage on I know I can't reach and to be honest with you a really good shot because this burn runs right the way across the angle there going it appears again so you've got to be really careful in the way you plot your way through this hole but with the rain coming down I still had a seven iron in and really like this shot controlled it really well a bit of a punch shot again into the wind but this green is so so tough and with that pin where it is yes I am on the wrong level so up the hill it goes and then once it reaches there it releases down and swings at the same time and I've got to say really pleased with that watching back I can't believe sort of how casual I do roll these things in because they're a bit further than you would like them to be in terms of being comfortable anyway it's another par and a decent start that'll look back down that hole which is at a super par five anyway next up par three into the breeze again solid strike it's 175 but I would guess playing more like sort of 190 and what I'm doing at the moment I'm finding greens in reg but I'm not getting near to pins but that's better than not finding greens I suppose so then let's put a bit of a roll good roll at this one and you can see that break off the greens are very very good here at Dundonal Lynx and you've got to be on your game and switched on at all times because the breaks are they're some are subtle some are severe anyway hole five driving the ball really well follow on from the round at Presswick to be honest with you yeah couldn't be in the ball any better now this is a so second shot in this is reaching for that PXG five wood really confident with this at the minute 10 side blue shaft in it 55 stiff and able to give it a good old dig and really it's only about getting into position of which I was in a good one the flag is hidden away I'm just going to pause that for a second and if we can look at the railway line you'll see that the sort of left of the centre railway stanchion there is where the flag is hidden it's in a dip in a bit of a bowl and I tried to get clever and grip down a little bit on a hybrid and try to sort of punch one in really unsure on the yardage and all I did was cut right across it and tried to be too clever to be quite honest with you and I just wish to add a played a six iron anyway it didn't leave a bad position to this flag because this green is severe and the pin is in not a bad place as to where they can have it and this to be honest with you it's the kind of shot I love to try and play it was a really controlled wedge pitch it off the bank and camera in and yeah I was really I spoke to my wife who was on camera and yeah I was pretty tough with that I think even she said it was a good shot so not only in reg but we have got a chance of salvaging a par and we did and I was really happy that was a because I struck the ball well we were at one bad shot there would have cost me but anyway super par three now this just 135 yards burn down the left bunker on the left flag is centre of the green but just over the bunker you've got no real option on here there's no bailout you've got to take it on and in the air this trust me is right on the flag I'm holding a pose and it just pitched and stopped and it needed an extra yard to kick down towards the hole so how good does that place look though bit of sunshine out now it's so so nice but yellow on the gorse but more importantly what happens with the port bend of the knee that ain't going to help you and it's slid by it was a good effort but again we're racking up parts here and at this stage things are going very very well indeed right next hole and hole seven three hundred seventy yards that driver once again hit the shape this is a bit a slight right to left but what I've done is definitely overcooked it there even though it's not a bad area to land in it could be a lot worse obviously from memory I still had sort of 150 in I tried this sort of punch shot that I played the seven iron earlier on in the round and it's just a very controlled again that ball flight is really good into the breeze and just anywhere on the green would have been good I think yeah it landed sort of higher up that bank and made its way back down we're not a lot of green to work with it's a pitching wedge back at a stance and sort of shove it up the green and you know I can't tell you them kind of shots I just love because yeah it's a bit of you've got to make something happen with it and yeah you guessed it yeah I'm almost feel guilty watching these back because I'm rolling a lot of putts I'm saving par that was an up and down don't forget and we are still level par through eight holes I'm not really aware of that at the moment because we are filming some other bits and pieces as we go hence my wife being out so but on this one I love this golf hole and alone I hit the ball a long way I did tweak it a bit to the left the big thing about this time of year is that the the rough isn't up I don't think you'd be playing this kind of shot in a month or two's time but again what's nice to see is just that shot out of there was at me irons were really good today pin high anywhere on the green I would have taken from back there and we've got it's an outside chance of a birdie I suppose but we've got the pace by now rolling the putter quite nice and freely and it's a fairly straightforward par and at this stage I'm level through eight we've got one hole to go I don't think I've ever certainly not broken par I'm not sure even whether I've managed to get par on nine holes on the channel as yet so it's a par four it's 360 yards and what we got with the driver first of all just a real solid drive again it's just it's broke really well they still two HD at the moment really favorable drive it went a long way down trust me into what is that's the new clubhouse on the right you can see which is incredible got more for that in the next few days had a picture imagine and I only had 106 it was a lovely controlled shot there's a burn that runs right in front of the green so you can't be short but you also can't be long because of some big runoffs as you'd expect from all these greens on these well designed Scottish golf courses and yeah it's just about getting the yardage right and being somewhere on it's a relatively big green mind this one's downhill which we've not had too many of them whilst it'd be nice to finish with a birdie there's perhaps a little bit bold in terms of where I'd liked to have been and that one truly fell in the back door and could have ended I don't think I perhaps realized like I said quite what was going on in terms of the finish of the round there I didn't realize at the time that was to finish level par through nine holes which is an absolute blinding result for me on a personal level and because of that I carried on filming on the back nine in what is going to be part two of this video and the big question is is can I continue to play this golf will the short game keep on saving me and can I get somewhere near level par for 18 holes at Dundon links well there's only one way to find out and let's make sure you tune into part two right thank you for watching this one we've got some positive feedback on these videos so far it basically allows me to play nine holes with not too great interference from the camera and I'm not holding groups up and stopping and chatting and whatnot and you get to see me play a little bit of real golf I suppose right as ever thank you for watching leave me some comments and feedback down below and I will see you all tomorrow night for part two


Basically today, what I just wanted to show y'all and share with y'all, based on how much time we have, how many questions you have is gonna be how much detail I go in. But I at least wanted to give you the process, my secret sauce of setting this up. This is what I call like a 360 picture to the holy trinity of analytics. It is being able to see the full picture when you have these three connected together and on your website. Even if you don't really know too much about it and you don't wanna do too much with it, something needs to be done with it, you can work with somebody who can then make sense of it for you. And if you haven't set up right the first time, you know what I'm saying? Mama used to say, if you're gonna do it right the first time, then whoever is gonna take over or help you out or maybe you wanna learn it yourself, you don't have a better chance of using this information to really uplift and boost your whole business, your whole website, your whole marketing campaigns because you see what's happening. You don't gotta guess. You ain't got time for the guest games no more. And there has been a huge change in analytics, the analytics world in general. That's why this is important. Okay, okay. So let's talk about it real quick. Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Microsoft Clarity. All three tools work together to give you a complete view of how people use your website. Like a puzzle, each tool gives you different pieces of information. When you put all the pieces together, you have a complete picture of how people use your site and what you can do to improve it. So that's why I have a picture of these puzzle pieces here. When I was young, I used to watch a show called The Puzzle Place. Don't laugh at me if you know anything about that. But these puzzle pieces represent each piece at a pie. I only got a piece at a pie. And when you have all the pieces at a pie, you are able to see the whole picture. 360, I can see everything. You know, when the kids be behind you, you'll be like, I see you. They'll be like, my dad, how do you see? I see you. Hey, stop jumping on the couch. That's that 360. You got the whole thing seen. You ain't just got tunnel vision. And that's what this is all about. We're just covering these three, but these aren't the only choices when it comes to analytics. So if you are somebody who uses this, who wants more privacy or other type of features, Matomo is a great option. I'll share with you later. There's Beam that has its webmaster tool, like Google. Google is Google Search Console, but it's still its webmaster tool. They just changed the name. But there's other ones out there. So just note, this is what I'm calling the fundamental holy trinity for those who are looking for the most standard, most popular process and tool types. That's all, but it's not the only choice. Google Analytics is like a map that shows you where people go when they visit your website. It helps you see things like how many people visit your site and how long they stay and what pages they actually look at. And so much more. So let's start with Google Analytics, which used to be called universal analytics versus Google Analytics 4. Most people don't know and they're confused of what these two platforms are when you put them side by side. I think most people, matter of fact, I'm curious in the chat, who here knows the actual difference? And you could just say, but yes, if you know the difference or understand the difference between Google Analytics 3, okay, universal analytics or Google Analytics 4. Because this is right here is probably one of the most important parts of this whole conversation, of this whole presentation. Okay, Brenda. Okay. Okay. That would, okay. Okay. I don't really think so. Maybe Carolyn. Yes. Okay. We have a all across the board type of answers here when it comes to the difference. And I know there's others that are here that are probably doing other things or just don't want to add anything in general. But still you're going to learn the key concepts of the differences. And let's start off with the data model. So before we go into that, I just want you to understand that Google Analytics 4 GA4 is a whole new platform. It was built from the bottom up or the top down. I don't know how they say that saying, but it was built in a way that it's not an upgrade from or update from Google Analytics 3. So don't think of it as update. You literally can't use your old analytics platform. And that's why a lot of people, especially major companies are going boo-hoo because they got to let it go. And we know we all hate to let it go. But the data model, let's start with the data model. Universal Analytics uses a session-based data model. How it captures data, collects data. While Google Analytics 4 uses an event-based data model. UA was organized by sessions. Universal Analytics was organized by sessions, which was a group of interactions that somebody would do on a website or an app. Google Analytics 4 data is organized by individual events. And these events are basically user actions, clicks and page views. So when somebody goes on your website, they are on the site for a certain amount of time. They click something. They look at a certain page. These are all what they call events. Like basically activities happening on your website. Where UA was more about a certain amount of time. And within that time, it would create, these are the events. But UA was like, we're first gonna measure this session by, let's say 30 minutes or 15 minutes or 10 minutes or 30 seconds. And within that amount of time, how many things they do is how we're measuring our data. It ain't like that no more. It's like, it's immediately when a person goes to a website, like the page view is an event. What they do is when they scroll is an event. Everything is an event. And that's how they're measuring things by events, activities. So hopefully that makes sense. That's the biggest difference right there from how they're collecting data. Another big key is just their tracking code. So for the nerds out there like me, okay, this is something that I'm interested in.  No for real, this ain't really that interesting, but lack of a better terms, they've changed the coding the way that you would connect the website, connect their tool to your website. GA4 now has this GTAG.js tag where Universal had a tracking code, which was like a snippet. I'll show you that as well too. But that's the difference tracking code-wise. They just switched it up a little bit. But what you can do with this tracking code is much more than what you can do with the JavaScript right here. The interface, I'm gonna show you that. Yo, UA was cool, but it was clunky. GA4, the interface is so much smoother and it's in cards. Like it's looking at card reports. I call them report cards. I just, I ain't make that up, y'all. A shout out for that, right? They should call it that. But they're cards of reports, report cards, whatever. Y'all used to go to school like me. It is what it is. But the interface is just so much more smoother because people were having so much trouble looking at their reports. Machine learning, that's another big difference. UA had, eh, when it came to some machine learning, GA4 has, whoa, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. Like it's learning everything and it's able to give you insights on the fly. They started that with Universal but they took it to the next level when it came to GA4. So yeah, it does, it includes more advanced machine learning capabilities and it can automatically identify important events and provide insights into user behavior. So you can say, how many users did I have on XYZ date or what was my profit, not profit, but what was my revenue during the time of this, by this device from this campaign and it'll give you that information. And that is huge right there when you just want to get in and get out. And then cross-device tracking, that was another key factor between UA and GA4 is that Google Analytics 4 provides better cross-tracking. It uses what they call new user ID feature that allows you to track users across multiple devices even when they're not logged in. And so that's one of the greatest parts that they've really done with GA4 is whether a person's logged in, whether they're on a certain device, they're on their computer, they're on their phone. There's so many other ways outside of their app whether they're on the app, they are able to track that user and pinpoint them. And they have these three ways, they have a, okay, we're gonna start this way and if we can't get the information here, we're gonna start this next way, if we can't get the information here, we're gonna go to the third way. They have opportunities like that where you're gonna get that information. And then they take all of that and they create a picture of all that information to create one thing, but they're using different angles to create that one thing. So basically just make some more accurate on when they're tracking people. That's the best way to say it, just makes it more accurate. All right, so now that we've gotten the understanding between UA, Universal Analytics, which was Google Analytics 3 and GA4, where we're at now, and for those who don't know, Google Analytics 4 is going to be the only option starting in July. So if you're using Universal Analytics, you will no longer have access to that. So you have two choices. And this is a nugget I'm giving you because I'm working on a major client right now and they're ironically analysts. And they have UA, they have so much UA data and they're so scared about migrating but they're being forced to. So we have to do these things. You have two ways of migrating. You can either download your reports at Universal Analytics individually or you can do an automatic migration to a big data storage like BigQuery or Amazon or something like that. The best way you can say it is that's going to give you all your data. If you do it to a data storage, they give you all your data, but it's going to be harder. You've got to figure all that stuff out. If you just download your reports though, that's going to take longer. You're not going to get all of your data but you just get what you need and it's going to be easier to do. It's not going to be as hard even though it is manual. And so this, let's say for lack of a better terms, this company that I'm working with, they chose the reports way versus the automatic way through the migration through a big data party. Let me look at the chats here real quick. Hopefully y'all got some nuggets so far. Change to GA4 and necessarily because the growing privacy logic, GPR. Yes, that is true. And for those who are even more concerned, I wish Sally was in here because she is a Motomo fan. I'm not sure if she isn't here or not, but she got me put on this company right here, Motomo, who is a Google Analytics competitor and they are basically real big on the whole GDPR and privacy laws and you owning and controlling your data. And she got me hip to them. So I started looking more into them. And so Brenda, you make a good point and this is an alternative that addresses your point even more extremely. Okay, let me keep reading chat. You mentioned GA4, who is the author of that plugin? If you're saying, technically Google Analytics 4 is the analytics platform, but there is a plugin in WordPress for GA4 that Google is the actual author of the plugin. If that's what you're referring to. And then what is happening in March, do I lose GA? So nothing is happening in March except for St. Patrick's Day here in the States as far as I know, or somebody's birthday. But as far as GA is concerned, that's happening in July. So yeah, that's happening in July where they're sunsetting Google Analytics 3, University Analytics. Basically, if you haven't upgraded to the newest Google Analytics, you will no longer have access to all of your data in July. Just being honest, they've been telling people this for about a year and a half now, two years. So it's been a while, but that's what's happening. And basically what they're trying to do is if you haven't already set up your GA4, they're saying, hey, we can do this for you. We can migrate your data over automatically. Now, I don't wanna get too deep into it, but I would advise not to do that. But at the same time, it's like one of those lawyer things, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your analytics expert for your company. Hey, do what you feel best, but there are pros and cons to doing this migration through Google Analytics from UA to GA4. Cause trust me, they're doing it for everybody cause they just trying to move people forward. Cause they know people ain't gonna move unless they make a move. But I'm gonna give you some more insight on how you can connect this to your website. So here is Google Analytics. If you go to Google Analytics, just Google it or analytics.google.com, it'll prompt you to sign in through your Google account. Once you do, it'll prompt you to make an account. I'm just gonna try to go over this quickly for those of you all who have never done this. Matter of fact, for those of you all who've never done this, can you type never in the chat? So I have an idea, cause I'm not gonna go through every nuance and piece if everybody has already done this. So just type in never or NVR. So that way I at least know, okay, there's some people who never started a Google Analytics account at all. And I'm gonna create a separate dedicated video, not video, excuse me, but a meetup just for going even deeper into Google Analytics. I just wanna make sure I get into search console clarity as well during our session. Okay, okay, cool. Okay, basically what you do here, and the reason I'm saying that too is because I'm gonna just let y'all, I'm gonna just keep it real, like all the way funky with y'all. It's only so many people who do presentations and they actually go into the tools and the things themselves. Most people just be reading off the slides. You know what I'm saying? I'll just be real with you. Most people, I've been to thousands of sessions. Everybody doesn't go into the tool and walk you through it and stuff because they don't wanna show their data, their information, which is something really to address and things like that, but at the same time, they wanna get through it. So I wanna make sure I'm giving y'all some value by showing y'all this is what it looks like inside the tool. I'm not just showing y'all screenshots, but basically what you do is you go inside and you create an account right here. It's very easy. So the things that I go through fast, they're either self-explanatory or they're really easy. So don't be like, my show, you said you was gonna show us all the goods and now you holding back the goods and stuff and you just rushing through you want some Russell Brunton type stuff. No, I'm just letting you know some of this is self-explanatory and if you're here today right now and you've logged in and you've gotten into this conversation, this presentation, you are smart enough to get through some of this stuff. We are all intelligent here. I know we are because this is not, WordPress ain't no easy feat. I'm just keep it all the way real. But create an account.  A property is basically where your website or your app is going to live. Your account is where you give people access and then you can have multiple different properties, right? You have different businesses. So one account for one main umbrella and then whole bunch of properties and not whole bunch, but multiple properties for your website app. I mean, for your website or your app, okay? That's why there's only so many settings right here because that's they don't, you don't do too much on this level. And this is what, like I said, you get your permissions. This is the most important section right here. This is where you want to set things up. So all your data is being collected correctly. As I mentioned before, if you collect it correctly, setting things up, whoever takes it over, is gonna be able to help you in some of the more ways because everything is set up right. And because this is so new, you're on the brink. Like you're really at the beginning of something special because this is only gonna get bigger. Google Analytics 4 is not gonna change up anytime soon. They don't change up every time the stars align. No, they don't do all that. They change things up for major reasons. And this is a major overhaul. So this why this right here is gonna be great for you all. But for the most part, when you set things up, I'm gonna show you what all this stuff means here quickly.  You don't have to pick a category, pick your money, whatever your currency is, right? And then you want to set up your data stream. And this is where your actual website is gonna be. Like this is what's connected to your website or your app. So if I had an app, it would be under iOS. If I didn't have an app, it would be under just my web. So iOS or Android is where you would add your app. And that's one of the great parts about this, you couldn't do it with UA. So that's one big factor right there. Data stream is where you create your property, what you're gonna connect to your website, okay? The part I wanted to share with you all is this events aspects right here. So events is what's gonna be collected. And right now there are no events here. So it's one of those things where if I go to Google's demo account, the cool part about Google is they allow you to go to their demo account, but I gotta see if they're gonna let me go to their demo account and go to say, okay, they do. Perfect. So as I mentioned before, events are the things that are happening on your website. And let me go to Google. Yeah, I'll do it, let it. The things, the activities that are happening on your website. This is how Google now measures your website through these different events. Let me move some of this stuff out the way because I got all this stuff out the way that I can't even see my own screen right now. Okay, one second. Okay, and these events right here are just basically the activities happening on the website. Some of these events happen automatically through Google and some events you have to custom put in there. And that's what's huge part about the old version versus this new version is you had to do so much work to add what they're adding right here out the box where you get to see what's happening on your website out the box. So this is the most important thing right here is how Google captures, collects data. It collects it through events, okay? So I just want you to understand that. All this is an extreme amount that most of us will never have of events. This is not realistic. I'll show you something that's a little bit more realistic so that way you can see something that's probably gonna be more geared towards you. So these are, this is events from one of my brands. So as you can see, we have things like somebody playing a video, adding to cart, clicking on things, forms, filling out a form, submitting a form, an internal click, outbound link, paid scroll, pause. Like I said, this is more typically what you're going to see in your Google Analytics account. So this, and this is good information because if you have this information, you're able to see what's actually happening on your website without having to set up a whole bunch of code from scratch. I'm gonna help those of y'all avoid that in this session right here. So conversions are the most important events. And what I like about Google Analytics 4 is it allows you to just toggle on something to turn it into a conversion. Conversions is the equivalent to what used to be called goals and universal analytics. So for those of y'all who heard of the term goals in UA, that's what conversions is now. And conversions, as I mentioned, are the most important events, the most important activities happening on your website, something you deem either profitable or that's going to lead to an opportunity. That if this happens, I'm doing good. You know what I'm saying? I'm doing well, we good to go. I mean, other things is cool, but if this thing happens, I know we good to go. That's what a conversion is.  But you're able to just toggle on what is a conversion and what is not.  They used to have, you used to have to do a whole bunch. I'm telling you, when it came to UA, but they made it that simple here. So I just wanted to share that with you. If you don't understand anything about this whole property and how Google reads and captures and how you're able to see like what's most important to your website, events and conversions. What else did I wanna go into? Just to go into something that's not gonna get too deep into the weeds of things. Okay, so I'm gonna show you a demonstration. I know, I just saw the channel. But yeah, Abby, yeah, I know. They could have left goals, being named goals. I'm gonna share with you all. Okay, I'm gonna share with you all some insight on. No, I'm gonna share with you all. Okay, bam. So I'm gonna show you what an event looks like when you dig a little deeper. Probably wondering, what does he mean by that? Like, how deep does the rabbit hole really go, Alice? I'm about to take you to Wonderland. Okay, so, okay. So I'm using a tool to debug my website. It's called Google, is it called Google Tag Assistant. You can all get it for free. I would suggest you get it from Google Extensions, Tag Assistant. And basically it's able to read your Google tags. You're able to read your tags. And when you are able to read your tags, you're able to see the things that are happening on your website. Well, first of all, you can see what tags are associated with your website, right? So what other tools are connected to your website, but you're also able to, in a live way, see what's happening on your website and test things out. That's what this debugging feature is. I'll show you how you can turn that on using the plugin. But like I said, this part right here is easy peasy. It's free. I just go to my Google Tag Assistant extension. I click it. It asks me to put in domain. I put in the domain of my website. And now I am here. I'm skipping this first one because GTM stands for Google Tag Manager and I don't use Google Tag Manager anymore. I'm gonna give you all an alternative of Google Tag Manager. This right here is my Google GA4 tag right here. And I'll show you how I connected it to the website. But this is my GA4 tag. This is UA right here, Universal Analytics. I don't care about that no more because they're getting rid of it. They're sunsetting it. So we're just looking at this one right here. This is right here what you're able to do. So anything you're doing your website, as long as you see this thing called Tag Assistant here, that means it's connected to your website. So for example, if I go to any page or anything like that, you're gonna see more events pop up. Like I said, this is the best way to show you all how Google's reading your website in real time with events associated in GA4. This is the best way I can show you. So you just saw that I click the page view. I click the link. I click two links, internal link. I just showed you and the events that it's capturing internal link right here. So I'm capturing this internal link. And that's the reason why you see this as an internal link. It's capturing this page view right here. So if I go back here, page view, boom, page view. So you see, hopefully that makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, just put the chat. My show this don't make no sense. If it does make some sense, show me some love and let me know if this is making a little bit of sense here. Another example would be, let's say I went to a video and I clicked on a video. So here's a video. If I click to play, you're going to see, I just played the video, player loaded. See how it's giving me all of these different 75. So it's even giving me the time. Why is this important? If you can filter and look at data directly based on certain things, say 50% you've had a video and you knew this video was a big part of you selling a product or a service or a program or something and only 25% of people watched. What you want to know that, what you want to know, which video on which page people only got through 25% with so that you knew, okay, we gotta do something about this video. Is it the video, is it the page? What is it? Why are they only getting through 25% if they got through 100% is people get through 100% actually connecting with me reaching another conversion like making some amount of money, getting some type of leads, et cetera, et cetera, right? Blog views, if I get 100% of this, there's this connect with that. That's how you have to think about your business and analytics, how the dots connect, right? And being able to filter down. Now the cool part about this is when you click on one of these little card or buttons here, for example, it's going to show you information about the event. Now let's see how we're getting deeper into the rabbit hole. We first had the event, now we're seeing information about the event and what they call parameters. That's how Google is able to really create more nuances, a metadata of the event through these different parameters. So we're able to see the video's current time, the provider, the duration of the video, the URL and the title. And this is where when you create your reports, you can filter for these specific things. Right here is looking at not just the event, oh, a video was played, but now I got more information on that video that was played or that event. This is what you're able to see. I'm just showing you this in real time using Tag Manager, but this is what you're able to see in Google Analytics. So I'm hoping that makes sense. Carolyn says, awesome, great. I'm glad it is, I'm here for that. But this is just me showing you the backend of how Google is really able to look at your site, capture data from your site, and then you're able to really make better decisions from there. Now when it comes to the data stream, you can click on it right here, and this gives you a whole bunch more information. So this is where you would use your ID. I don't think the demo site actually lets me get to the data stream or I'll just be on the demo site, but it's gonna not allow me to show you more stuff. So basically, this is what you're going to use. This is your ID right here that you use. This is the ID that you use when you connect it to certain apps and you connect to your website or other things right here. This is the difference, the code when we saw what is the difference between that and the old version of analytics. And this other part too called enhanced measurement. Like I said before, you would have to do a whole bunch of coding to set up ways to capture data in the old version. This is doing it for you out the box. Scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, form interactions. I would suggest you keep this off and use another way to do it. Video engagement and then file downloads. For analytics nerds out there, for you people who want to be able to optimize your website, that's gold information because UA did not have that out the box. You have to set up Google Tag Manager or other tools in order to have Google capture that type of data. But custom definitions, this is something that's pretty cool when it comes to custom definitions that if you want to, I'm surprised it's not showing it right now. I thought it would show it. But if you want to capture more data, more information, then do it here. Nope, nope, okay. Whatever, you would have to set parameters. And I wish I could show you my clients, but I can't because I want to make the privacy. But you would be able to see more information when you click on something like this. It's the same video, but now it knows I paused the video because it says pause right here, event name pause. But you would be able to create more parameters by putting in custom dimensions that Google doesn't have out the box. That's the best way I can say it. It doesn't have certain parameters out the box. You can put in more in order to get this information and you have it right there. And that's what this custom dimensions is underneath custom definition. And then when it comes to Search Console, I'll show you what that looks like here. So that is, let's go back to the presentation. That is Google Analytics 4 in a nutshell as far as setting it up, as far as looking at the settings. And then I'll show you how you can set it up here in a second. But first I want to get to Google Search Console. Google Search Console is a tool, and I guess since I wrote the definition down, I might as well just use it, is a tool that helps you understand how people find your website. It shows you what keywords people use to find your site and if any issues might make it harder for people to find your site in search engines. So let's talk about Google Search Console versus Google Analytics since this is something that often gets confused when people talk about analytics because they're not the same thing. So the purpose of GA4 is to track user behavior on your website or app where Google Search Console is to help you monitor and improve your website's performance and search results specifically with Google Search, Google Analytics, it can capture data from all types of tools and channels. Google Search is capturing data from the search engine of Google. GA4 tracks user behavior on your website using event-based data model, which I just showed you all those events, right? We just seen all those events. That's how Google Analytics 4 captures your data or does data collection. While Search Console provides data on how Google crawls and it indexes your website via the search engine. The user interface aspect of things. GA4 has a user interface optimized for analyzing user behavior while Google Search Console has an interface optimized for managing your website's presence, again, in the search results. So we're just being repetitive here, but we're just doubling down. It's all about the search results when it comes to Google Search. It's a tool for Google Search and Google Analytics is a tool for multitude of channels when it comes to your marketing. The reports and GA4 provide a wide range of user behavior, including user demographics, acquisition channels, and page performance. I'll show you what that looks like real quick. And then Search Console reports search performance, including search queries, pages, and backlinks. GA4 provides metrics such as page views, bounce rates, and time on site while Search Console provides metrics such as click-through rate impressions, and average position in the search results. So for example, Google Analytics is going to show you, and I can go back to the demo account, Google Analytics is going to show you information like this. Users and new users, revenue, this stuff is new right here. This is getting, Google Expanding, because this is for people who have e-commerce by your heartbeat. Now, this is pretty interesting and nerdy, but let me go to, let's see, I don't want to go to real time. And they're measuring an app and the website. That's the reason why you're seeing this. So sessions right here, remember, it used to do it by sessions, but now it just includes sessions and it does it by events. Lifetime value, you'll be able to see that of your customer through Google Analytics. That's not what Google Search Console shows you. It does not show you lifetime value. Engagement-wise, how long people have been on the site? They get engaged with the site. I said, how many events have happened? What are the pages that they're looking at on the website? This is what Google Analytics is showing you. So that's why I'm sharing with you. That is the difference. Google Search Console doesn't show you that kind of information and I don't want to give it to all my clients, Google Search stuff right here. So that's why I use the dummy account. So I wish I can show you more, but if there were clicks on this website, you would see how many clicks came from Google Search. How many impressions? So how many impressions? How many times did the search query lead to somebody possibly viewing the page? That's impression. Then you have click-through rate, which is the ratio between how many people viewed the page versus clicked on the link to actually go to your website. Then you have your average position. So when it comes to your pages on your website, what is the average ranking position in Google that you're in? Are you in two or 30 or 50? That's what Google Search Console is gonna show you here. With this information, which is way different than what Google Analytics is showing you. But to create a Google Search Console, you could just Google Search Console. It'll prompt you to log into your Google account, just like Google Analytics. And then what it will do is it'll have you create a property. I would advise you to create a domain property unless you have a certain subdomain or certain reason why you need to create a URL prefix. The domain property is going to connect all of your properties, all your subdomains. So your blog.xyz.com plus is there services.xyz.com schoolacademy.com. If you put your main domain, it's going to be connected to all of those. We're all gonna connect together. And this is new for Google Search Console. For those of y'all who don't know, this is new. But you can do it the old school way and do the HTTPS or the HTTP or the HTTPS WWW because there's all different things or the HTTP WWW. You can add that here. And once you do, it's going to have you set up, connect your website with Google Search Console. The best way I can say is Google loves Google. So if you bought your domain from Google, it's gonna be like that. If you haven't bought your domain from Google, it's going to prompt you to log into your domain name service provider and then you connect it that way. Or if you do it through the URL, it's gonna have you add a code like a script or something like that. But it's very easy. Once you do that, you're connected to Google Search Console. And then once you're connected to Google Search Console, you can either do it from Google Search Console or you can do it from here. It's gonna have me go to the admin where you're able to connect to your Google Search Console link. You can link your properties, what they call it. So you can do it from there or you can do it from the settings and click associations and then click associate. So it's your choice. You can do it from Google Analytics or here. And once you actually do this, now here's the nugget that I just learned and I had, I just set this up for a client. I was just like, wow, I didn't even set my own properties. It's all, it's new. This whole Google Analytics 4 thing is so new that only so many people know about it. So I'm trying to learn from the best of the best whether I'm taking courses or I'm watching videos because it's all new. But Search Console, oh, and they're not showing it here. TIS Google, I gotta show y'all on. I guess I'm not thinking, huh? Okay, all right. So once you're in here, why is it not showing it? There's a button that's supposed to say, okay, I gotta go home. Maybe that was it. Oh, no. So there's a button that's supposed to say libraries right here. And it's not saying it for some reason. Let me see if I go to a different property. See, now it's showing up. That's interesting. If y'all see this migrating from Universal Analytics, this is what I was telling you right now. See how it's saying it will stop processing data July 1st, 2023. Again, I would, it's up to you. If you just wanna get it over with, go with it. If not, just say no. That's what they tell the kids, just say no. But library, once you connect your Google Search Console to your Google Analytics account, go to this library. Again, this is something that I just learned less than a week ago. You gotta go to this library and then you gotta go to collection. And then once you go to collection, you will click this Google Search Console card right here. The reason why is because the way that Google has its reports, way it doesn't reports now is it's in these different, the hierarchy of what they call collections. And in the collections, you have reports. So you have a collection here. See life cycle, life cycle, user. You see the pattern? This is what they call a collection.  Like these are the reports that you would add in that collection. So if I edit this collection, I can actually add more reports to this collection. If this changes, it changes. If I'm not saying this right, y'all, forgive me. Cause like I said, this is new. I just learned this myself, but I had no idea I can actually change things out and customize my Google Analytics user interface to my liking. You couldn't do it the same way with the old version. So that's why I was like, okay, this is cool, even if this is something new for me. The reason why I'm sharing with you, because I kept wondering, and I didn't know for a while like why I or anybody else that I would set up, like why they weren't getting the search console data.  It doesn't come off. You have to actually go here and click publish. It's here, but you have to publish it. And once you publish it, see how it's not there right now? Boom. Once you publish it, it shows up. See? Now you can see your search console data in Google Analytics and look at your queries, look at how people are searching for you in Google search and see those kinds of keywords from there. So that's something that is super new for me. Hopefully y'all got that, understand that, and can rock with that and start teaching people like y'all are guru. And I just learned that, but that's something that I feel like is highly needed to be understood. Because once you set this up, your Google search console, most people aren't going to be in here. I'm just going to be honest with you. Now your analytics expert, person, consultant, they should be using this, but you as the business owner, you're not going to be in here for the most part. So you just want to have, make sure it's set up right. It's connected right. And then once you get in here, you're able to add your sitemap right here. Web SEO tool you use, add your sitemap here. So that way you're getting index, you hit submit. Okay, boom. Your sitemap's in there. It's going to start reading your pages. You pretty much are good to go. You have any issues or anything that needs to be dealt with. You can go to the manual action security. It'll let you know this are the issues happening with your website. You can also look at your core web vitals to see what your website looks like speed wise to Google in here as well. Just keep in mind, this tool is for Google. It ain't for nothing else. If you don't learn nothing else between difference of GA4 and this is for Google, GA4 is for multitude of channels. But Google search console is a tool for Google on how you're being seen in search, how your website is affecting the search experience. And let's move on to the last one and then I answer some questions and I'll get y'all out of here. Y'all awake out there? I know some people have a go. We had some drop offs and stuff. I just want to make sure everybody's still good. And if you're still good, give me a thumbs up or a hands up in the chat, please. Give me an emoji. Show me some emoji love. Man, everybody's sleep, huh? I ain't got no emoji love. Thank you, Julie. I appreciate that. I'm more than, I'm grateful for that. Okay, what you gonna give me that LOL? You had enough time to type in the law but not put an emoji, huh? See how they do you? Volunteer time. This is what you get. All right, let's get into Microsoft Clarity. If you have any questions on Google search console, again, feel free to ask me and I'll do my best to answer. Last but not least is Microsoft Clarity. And so Microsoft Clarity is like a movie camera that records what people do on your website. It helps you see things like where people click and how they use the site in a visual keyword is a visual way. That's Microsoft Clarity. Thank you, Caroline and Audrey as well too. They're very grateful for that. Okay, so let's talk about the differences between Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics. And if you use Clarity, if you heard of Clarity, let me know in the chat. If you've heard of Clarity, you use Clarity because this is the one that I think most people have no clue what it does, what it's for. I think this is probably one of the biggest golden nuggets of this whole topic as far as giving you a tool that you didn't even know either existed or is easy. Okay, okay. And thank you too, Abby, I appreciate you. I definitely will be having a recording of this and I'll throw it on WordPress.tv. I'm one behind, I still gotta add another video on there but I'm gonna make sure I just throw these pretty much on together back to back. Okay, so I'm just gonna briefly go through the differences but if you do wanna read verbatim the definition, that's okay, I just wanna give you all the summary of it. Basically, for the data collection, it uses a script, basically the old way that Google Analytics used to use which was the UA and GA4 uses, I showed you that tracking tag, it says G dash and then it has those numbers. That's one way how they collect data. The user interface for Microsoft Clarity, I would say, is a little more user friendly than Google Analytics 4, even though Google Analytics 4 is a lot more friendly than UA and then Microsoft Clarity also shows you in a very visual way and I'm gonna show you what that looks like. From a data standpoint, Microsoft Clarity provides data on user behavior, which is heat maps, session recordings and click maps where GA4, Google provides data on demographics, it's still user behavior but it's based on demographics, acquisition channels and advanced features such as predictive analytics. Google Analytics 4 has machine learning while Microsoft Clarity does not have this feature, not yet anyway. Google Analytics can be integrated with a lot of tools and big tools such as Google ads and BigQuery where Microsoft Clarity is integrated with tools such as Power BI and Azure, which are Microsoft. And cost wise, both tools are free but Microsoft Clarity has no limit to the amount of data you can collect where GA4 has limit of 10 million events per month for free accounts and that's more than enough, right? So they're both free, technically. So let's get into Microsoft Clarity real quick. This is what Microsoft Clarity looks like and this has become one of my favorite analytics tool. Like I had no idea how much because I used to use a tool called Hot Jar. Anybody's heard of Hot Jar? Let me know. But I used to use a tool called Hot Jar and then Clarity came out and they were like, we can't compete with Google. So we're gonna do something that works with Google. And they made a great decision. They made a really fabulous decision. So what they basically did was say, hey, we're gonna create a tool that does recordings and heat maps. Right now, Google doesn't do recordings and heat maps. They have a dashboard that's similar to Google in a ways where it has these cards and these sections. And if I go back to Google real quick and I go to real time as an example, you'll see this is the new popular way of showing data. It makes things a lot easier. Let me go to the demo account here, let it. So you have these cards here. That's looking at everything in real time and it just gives you the cap, these different dimensions and metrics. If I go to app developer here, it's gonna do the same thing. That's how they are showing you data. So just kind of get used to that when you go from tool to tool that you're gonna see information like this for the most part. And when you click on it, it goes to that section. So they give you a little snapshot of the top of it. And then once you click on it, okay, bam, we'll go deeper and we'll go to that section for you. See how it just popped to the section? Microsoft Clarity is similar. Because if you click on this recordings button, it's gonna pop you over here to the recording section. So I just wanted to share with you all that's something you'll see across the board between these two tools. And as I mentioned, they both capture user behavior except Microsoft Clarity focuses on more of the visual aspects of things. So a couple of my favorite metrics to look at are numbers to look at are dead clicks.  This can indicate that maybe you need to move something or maybe you need to, let me hover back over so you can see, maybe you need to turn that section into a linkable section, right? Or maybe you need to make it very clear that section ain't a linkable section. You need to change your design up. Google Analytics doesn't show you that. This is when it comes to helping user experience improve the user experience. Again, Google Analytics and Google Search Console just not show you dead clicks. I'm clicking on this thing. I'm thinking, okay, I'm clicking this thing and it's nothing happens. This is the percentage of people clicking on something and nothing happened on your website. Rage clicks is when somebody is clicking on something multiple times and nothing's happening. So what is the difference between dead clicks and rage clicks? And how can that help you improve your website? Again, dead clicks can be an indication about saying this is exactly what it is, but an indication of maybe you should make this section or this thing clickable or you should make it clear this is not supposed to be a clickable scenario. Maybe you got too much shadow. You're making it pop out too much. Person thinks that it's clickable, right? Uh-uh. Rage click is when you see people clicking in multiple times and it's letting you know what's the business owner. Maybe I need to make this clickable. Like it could be a broken link. Maybe it's supposed to be, it isn't a link, but the link is broken. So they're clicking on a person. I know this is supposed to be clickable. This is a button. Why does the button ain't going nowhere? They could click it and click it and this button ain't going nowhere. Oh, you as the business owner, oh, I forgot to change the link out. I forgot to add the thing. I could see that now with Microsoft Clarity. I wasn't able to see that with Google Analytics. Y'all get what I'm saying right now? So that is something that creates a big distinction between the two tools is that it's giving you more aspects of what a user is doing for this right here in terms of clicks. Then we have metrics like Quickbacks. So this is when a user has navigated to a page and they quickly return to the previous one, right? So they went somewhere, they went to the next page and then they came back. Why they do that? That's a good question. Maybe the page wasn't relevant. Maybe it was confusing. Maybe this wasn't a good page to be sent into the next page. You now see that with Quickbacks. You don't see that in Google Analytics. I'm just looking at the things that are shown here in Google Analytics, excessive scrolling. A person is scrolling too much on the page, right? They can't find what they're looking for. Again, Google Analytics doesn't show you that. Microsoft Clarity shows you that right here in this nice dashboard section. So if I go to recordings, and this is nice too, meaning to see scroll depth, how a far person scrolls, what my favorite parts about Microsoft Clarity is that you can literally click on one of these cards, these are recordings, and you can see what a person is doing.  You can see the time, how many times they make a click. So these clicks are going to that dashboard where it's showing you the information but it's showing you individual user sessions. And then you can also filter and say, hey, I only wanna see certain information. I wanna see the last 30 days. I wanna see only rage clicks, sessions with rage clicks. I wanna see certain pages. You can get pretty deep with this. So I ain't gonna go too deep but you can get pretty deep with this. But this is why I say it's something that's invaluable because Google and Elixir didn't show you exactly what a person is doing on your website. You're visually seeing their experience. This is how you improve user experience. You can hear the clicks. I don't know if y'all can hear the clicks but I can hear the clicks. So that's one thing that I, again, recordings nice. Heat maps, you can see heat maps of your pages. So these are the different pages on Microsoft Clarity website. And you click on this page and you're able to see a heat map. You're able to see literally where a person is clicking and how far they scrolled. Red hot means better. Blue means lesser. It's colder. And you can see what people are clicking at. You can imagine that these clicks, these spots you see, these will be considered. Does anybody know what these would be considered? These spots right here. Most likely I just showed you what they are in the dashboard. What would they be called? What type of click? You put it in the chat. I'll give you an air horn. Everybody don't speak it once. Okay. So nobody can guess. It'll be considered a dead click. Most likely, most likely this spot is one click. If it were a bigger spot, probably darker, I would consider it, it could be a rage click if it's not going anywhere. These are the dead clicks right here. Why are people clicking on these different spots? Now sometimes you're just gonna get it, it's just gonna happen. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen but this is how you look at the information on your website and see how you can make changes, change up your layout, the design, maybe you should change the color, maybe you should change the section order. You wouldn't know this information from Google Analytics. You get this information from Microsoft Clarity. You get to see how far, you get to see how far a person actually scrolls down. Again, this is very important because if you have important information at the bottom of the page, maybe you need to move that information at the top. Maybe you need to make the page shorter. You won't know how to answer these questions if you don't even know what questions to ask. You don't even know what information to look at. This is why Microsoft Clarity is very important. And then you can also order to set it up. You can add a tracking code. This is like the tracking code JavaScript right there that they give you. And then you can connect it to Google Analytics as well too. Microsoft Clarity to Google Analytics. And then connecting Google Analytics to your website is so simple. This is gonna be a golden nugget right here for those of you all who are here who don't know about this. I don't use Google Tag Manager anymore. I used to use Google Tag Manager. Basically it was a tool that people use, webmasters and analytics experts use to connect different tags and scripts to your website from marketing platforms, right? Such as Google. Since I use WordPress, I don't have to use Google Tag Manager. I prefer to use a plugin to connect my Google property and other properties and tags to my website. My favorite one is called Pixel Your Site. Right here. This is my favorite one right here. You see it has four and a half stars so you know it's gotta be at least decent. I was gonna say good, but then some people might say, and it still may not be good. What we know is it's at least a little decent, okay? Pixel Your Site is what you want to add to plugin. It's free. But the things I advise you are paid for the professional. That's just my opinion. The professional's gonna give you more capabilities. You don't gotta go to the bundle, at least the professional. But this is what Pixel Your Site does. It allows you to connect your Google Analytics property to your website. You would copy that tracking ID that I showed you in the data stream, that G dash, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not gonna be that long. Add that here and then check this debug mode because that's how you're gonna be able to get this debug aspect that I just showed you right there, right? Okay. Do that, go down here and save. That's the first thing. After you save, go back and then click on this toggle called Track Key Actions with Automatic Events. Toggle that on.  The free feature does not give you these right here, but the free version gives you this right here. And so one thing I want you to notice when you are looking at these, it says, hey, we will do this for Facebook and for Google Analytics. And then here are the parameters that we're collecting. Maybe I'll show you the parameters and right here. So each event has certain type of parameters. This tool will say, we'll automatically collect these parameters on, we've already set it up. We've already done the set up, the code and you ain't got to do none of that. We gon' do it for you. You just put the plug in, hook it up, add your thing and you're good to go. It's only because of this plug in that I'm getting so much information in my events without having to have set up everything from scratch or custom. So this is what I do. I turn this on and then I decide whether or not I want Google. The cool thing about this plug in is they tell you, hey, Google also collects this. Let me show you real quick. It will say Google Analytics 4 automatically tracks this. So if you wanna turn this off for Google Analytics, you can. Okay, bam, turn it off. So that way you don't have two different types of download events and your data because it's saying Google Analytics already does this but we'll do it for Facebook for you. So you don't gotta turn off Facebook but you might wanna turn off Google Analytics. Okay. This right here is a golden gem. I'm trying to tell you, I've been saving people's lives. Like I've helped people spend more time with their kids. I've helped people take that vacation. I've helped people get off of Aspirin and Advil. All types of, when I say people that are, yeah, that are tired of dealing with Google Tag Manager and all that, but they gotta read the analytics. They gotta know the analytics. They gotta have everything set up because that's what the money is about, right? But they're like, I can get rid of Google Tag Manager. I didn't know this thing existed. Specifically people were WordPress and it just blows their mind. Like it's especially older folks, you know what I'm saying? They don't know, I didn't know but I'm just letting y'all know this is a gem. So again, go on here, toggle that on and decide whether or not you want Google to collect the data or you want this tool to collect the data. I'm gonna close this out right here. Make sure you also toggle on this debug mode right here. This is again, how I'm able to see information. So toggle that on and save it. You don't gotta touch nothing else for right now. All this other stuff is getting more advanced but just toggle that on. As far as Microsoft Clarity is concerned, see this header and footer link. You would click this and then you would go to Microsoft Clarity. You would grab that tracking code and you would plop that bad boy right there and save. Now you have Google that looks for and Microsoft Clarity connected together connected using the same tool. That just saves you a plugin or two, right? You can always put this tracking code in your theme. You can put it in a code plugin, code snippet plugin. I advise those two for other things because those usually have templates but hey, if you just want to consolidate, I would advise you to just put that bad boy right here. Now you got Microsoft Clarity collecting data and you've got Google Analytics collecting data right here. You put your tracking code right here. If you're feeling froggy, put your Facebook in here, put that join in here, collect some data and you're good. Okay? So that's why I wanted to share that with you.  We didn't use WordPress. I might have to do something different but look, we can all use a plugin if we want to. Now when it comes to looking at your analytics from the backend here, if I were you, I would just use SiteKit by Google. Install this and there's two things that I want you to know about this plugin when it comes to what it can do. First of all, it can connect your website to Google Analytics. That's one thing. Second of all, it can show your Google Analytics data directly here in WordPress. Those are two different things. I just wanted you to know that. Don't get confused. They're two different things because you don't want to connect your site to Google Analytics twice. Don't want to do it twice. You don't want to do it to pixel your site and do it to Google SiteKit. If you do it just to Google SiteKit and pixel your site, you're gonna have some issues because you're collecting twice the data. If you only do it through Google SiteKit and you don't do it through Google your site, which you can do that now, but if you do it that way, you won't have all those special tracking features that pixel your site gives you that. I just showed you the automatically tracks. You don't have those special joints at all. That's why I advise you to connect it to pixel your site, but review your data through Google SiteKit. And it basically is just gonna show you a summary of what this shows you in a very short way. You can also connect Google Search Console that way too as well. And that's pretty much it as far as what you want to look at, what insights you wanna look at, how you connect your properties. And then that way you have a 360 view of your whole analytics.


I'm going to set the stopwatch to two minutes. So go ahead and take two minutes and try to solve the problem, please.


Aloha and welcome, welcome to Global Connections here. I think that Hawaii, I'm your host, Carlos Juarez, and today we've got a great topic. I've brought together a couple of young leaders who are gonna join us to reflect on looking at Mexico through foreign eyes. Mexico, of course, is an important neighbor to the south of the US, part of the Asia Pacific region. We gotta sometimes remind the Asia components that there are some partners over here. But today I'm joined by two young students that are currently studying abroad in Mexico, Davin Faxter and Oliver Owen. And so let me just briefly welcome both of you. Thank you for joining me today here on Global Connections, a chance to carry out an interesting conversation. Let me ask each of you just to give us a brief introduction, tell us where you're from and you're both students in Mexico. What is it you're studying, either in Mexico or at a home institution?  Hi, I'm Oliver, thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm from Manchester, England, but I originally studied at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and I'm here in Puebla and Woodlap, studying international relations and modern history. Excellent, thank you. And Davin, go ahead. Hey, what's going on? Yeah, once again to follow up on Oliver, thank you so much for having us, it's a huge honor. So yeah, my name is Davin. I was originally born in Guam, USA, and I've been living in different places pretty much ever since, at the moment, living in Puebla, Mexico, and studying international relations all the time. Excellent, well thank you both. And I'm glad you reminded me about Guam, because as you know, the show we're doing today here, everybody think tech Hawaii, and it helps to bridge both all of the Asia Pacific region, and I have opportunities to join you here. Often I'm in Mexico, at the moment, I'm actually in central Texas in Austin, moving, and so little out of my own comfort zone, but it also, it's always valuable, because as you all know, I've been living in Mexico several years teaching there, and both of you have, I think, give us an example, or what are some of the opportunities or challenges for international education? And what I mean by that is you have opportunities to study in other countries, to even do degrees in other places. Davin, you've got now a connection into Mexico for some time as you're pursuing this, and with you Oliver, perhaps a short term engagement, and it is obviously coming also at a very interesting time during this massive global pandemic, presenting different challenges, but let me begin just in terms of understanding, global learning, global education is obviously a wide range of things, but it includes the opportunities that today, young students like you have for mobility. Let me put it clearly, when I was a college student 40 years ago, I mean, yes, you could do a study abroad, it was rare, it wasn't easy, there was simply, it wasn't as easy as it is today, but let me ask each of you maybe, offer some initial reflections, you've now been in Mexico some time studying, obviously like students all over the world, it's increasingly online at the moment, and gradually will ease back, and yet you're still experiencing living, and basically studying in a foreign country.  And then just briefly, how was the arrival? I mean, what were some initial thoughts on how it went for you coming over? I think what initially sparked the interest was, just in general interest in Mexico, interest in Mexican culture, and I guess one of my major interests academically also is the history and politics of the Latin America region, which is not really something we really get the chance to talk about or to study academically in the UK. So that was a major motivation for me to do a study abroad, but also I wanted to, I really wanted to learn the Spanish language, which was a huge, huge motivator for me.  So when I've, talking to a friend, or the Spanish speaking friends that I've met in university back home, they speak to me like, what is your accent? What are these words you're saying to me? But it's been, but yeah, it's been a great experience.  Everything was shut down when I arrived in Mexico City. So the first, I would say, one or two months were a little bit precarious, a little bit of a weird situation. Eventually I did, I found a nice student housing company. I moved into a house with a mix of, you know, international students and other Mexicans. And I really enjoyed it. But yeah, arriving here was an interesting experience to say the least. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I can assure you, even though it may not be obvious you're developing the kind of life skills, adaptability, resiliency, dealing with uncertainty, frustrations and solving the basic needs. Because yeah, I mean, it's hard enough studying abroad under normal circumstances, culture shock and a new system. Add to that just the crisis of a pandemic. And, you know, we'll get more to talk a little moment about how Mexico has been dealing with that because like every place, it kind of, it depends, it depends on where you are, certain communities, maybe even Mexico or the federal system, the states are kind of taking a leading role in coordinating their responses. But let's continue Devin, you yourself, I mean, you mentioned earlier, you've had sort of a movement around, but what is it that prompted you to find a way to Mexico and how has yours been? I mean, you've been in Mexico a bit longer perhaps, so you've seen it from where it was pre-pandemic and now through the pandemic. So give us an update. Completely different worlds. Yeah. So I originally came to Mexico because of my mom. Actually, we were living in Ankara, Turkey prior to this and she's a diplomat. So she works in the foreign service and she got a job at the US Embassy in Mexico City. And I had just completed high school in Ankara, took a gap year, was working two jobs there and the time had come to where she needed to start her new assignment. And she basically extended the offer on to me. It was pretty much between coming to Mexico or going back to the States and starting my university career. And after giving just a general look at all the different schools that I could have went to in the States and one particular school that we had found in Mexico City, we determined that the quality of education was gonna be more or less the same, but it was significantly cheaper to study in Mexico. So plus, I mean, of course, just like the whole cultural, new cultural experience, picking up a new language. I feel like coming to Mexico is definitely the, I don't know, the more option for me, I mean, yeah, to get the most benefit out of traveling and getting to know more out of the world. And yeah, so. Right. And you've effectively, as you said earlier, you've been able to experience Mexico coming and initially studying in the pre-pandemic time and witnessing this transformation. And of course that I imagine has been dramatic. So perhaps on that, let me ask you, and you can follow up right now to continue with that, Devin. I mean, what are some takeaways? I mean, I don't know whether it's just impressions, but in terms of how it came down now more than a year ago, and like every place else, it's going through its phases, transitions, and we're hopeful that in the coming months, things are gonna look better. It's not as bad as it was at one time, but it still remains a work of progress. But share with us any of your own experiences, either. Oh, I still remember what Noam was taking it seriously, like what was it February and March after China was already looking pretty bad and there were some cases sparking up around like the Asia region. And I think like Europe had just started seeing a few cases. People in Mexico still weren't taking it very seriously. Everybody was pretty much like, oh yeah, well, you know, it's just gonna be like a common flu. People are gonna look better after about two weeks. And I remember when the media censorship and we had to go through different mediums to find like these different videos that people were taking within that state of how serious the situation was. And lots of places, entire cities looked like complete ghost towns. So when that finally came and hit Mexico, lots of people got really scared. Lots of people had to go back to their home states. And I don't want to say it changed overnight, but it was a gradual process, but you could definitely see the procedural effects of that. And yeah, I guess it wasn't until summer when you really could recognize that, yeah, it's getting pretty bad. And Mexico city got hit hard, blood blood got hit hard, different parts.  And one of the challenges, I mean, this is true in many places, but especially let's say a country like Mexico where you've got, how should I say? I mean, a media that is in transition and it's hard, well, bottom line is that it's hard to get good information to know accurate information sometimes. And I say that because often, let's say in the more developed world, I mean, you've got some major sources you will turn to knowing kind of where they fit in and some of them are more credible, reliable. And I'm again, speaking as an outsider here that Mexico often there's a lot of very much sensationalized and there's a tendency of course, a lot of conspiracy theories and rumors, a lot of distrust of government for good reason as it has a long history often of mismanagement, corruption and the like. So just that.  And yet by contrast, in your case, all of you came and literally arrived into a pandemic scenario, maybe from your vantage point because again, you're also different coming from the UK. Let's say a different mindset, political culture, even the way public health and healthcare in general works is a lot more, in the US, we might say socialized or at least more uniform. And I can tell you like from the United States and my own vantage point, both family in Texas and Hawaii and in California, every place is different how they handle it and what they've done. And we've seen that variation. I'm just curious if you might just say offer some thoughts, Olyon. What did you see in terms of the things that were working or that weren't working puzzles, confusion or things that you said, gosh, why don't they do it this way? Or maybe, wow, that's a different way of doing it. That seems interesting. And any thing like that you can share? It seems to me, I mean, I mean, I'm not really with the belief that England has really dealt with it very well. But there are certain things that I've found quite contradictory about Mexico's response to the pandemic. So for example, something that, I mean, when I talked to Mexicans before I arrived here, they kind of described it to me almost as if it was like the Wild West, nobody cares, some things and stuff like that. Whereas when I arrived, the thing that surprised me was that people, at least you see people in the street and the people in stores and stuff like that. People are abiding by the rules. They have the, they have the system of masks, they have the, everyone's getting the temperatures taken, everything is getting, everyone's getting hand sanitized and stuff like that. Which surprised me that people were taking it so seriously in that sense. But it was way better compared to how it was in England. In England, because I think, I don't know, people say it's this sort of, I guess Anglo-Saxon mentality of the government can't tell me what to do, stuff like that. So you go into the stores and you see parts of people not wearing masks and stuff like that. Not everywhere, obviously. There are a lot of people that are abiding by the rules. But the thing that I found contradictory is that you have this kind of thing in Mexico and yet at the same time, stuff like, for example, large social gatherings in private settings, it doesn't seem to me like there's been any sort of regulation on that.  And it just seems, it does seem, it just seemed a bit very contradictory, the sense that in the, I guess, the public sphere, everyone very much abides by the rules and then the strict regulations, strict codes in line, but in more private settings, which arguably could be more dangerous, large social gatherings, it doesn't even seem to be much of a taboo on it about hosting large social gatherings privately. And I just thought was the main difference that I've noticed between England and Mexico. Yeah. Interesting. And you reflect that it speaks in some ways to Mexican culture and society. Often is described as, you know, people will put on a mask or they'll have a very different identity and maybe reality within their family and close circle and to the outside world. And so what you're describing is, you know, everybody's doing their, you know, sort of, I guess their citizenship responsibility. On the other hand, it's difficult for them because they're very social and there's a lot of, you know, gatherings, you know, the social gatherings and even, you know, a public displays of affection, a lot of kissing and hugging, it's difficult to take that away. Whereas, again, maybe Latin Americans would look at the British and say, well, there's stuffy anyway. It's easy for them to just, you know, somehow stay isolated and remote. Again, that's the terrible thing to say, but the point being that, yeah, in the Latin American culture in Mexico, I mean, just the idea that people are not as independent and autonomous and family is such an important part that it means literally, you know, multi-generational and your cousins, your aunts, the whole clan and then, and so on. Let's, I mean, maybe anything that you could add to the Daven though, just in terms of things that have been, like we heard from other paradoxes, puzzles, things that either surprise you. I mean, I can't say that it surprised me because I feel like a lot of different countries were doing this, but how Mexico just kind of got caught with severely undercounting the coronavirus-related deaths. And I think the estimates were somewhere around seven times higher than what the number, what the official numbers were reporting. So, I mean, I feel like countries do this for a number of different reasons. You know, they exaggerate the numbers or they underestimate them, either to receive more aid or perhaps to prevent, to do what they can to prevent the potential collapse of certain economic industries. But to me, when I saw those numbers and I see the reality of the situation is just kind of sad. And it is. I think in Mexico, it came out a few months ago that suddenly overnight, they suddenly announced it. Oh my gosh, we've been undercounting, you know, by four or five times or so. Surprise, surprise. And many people have been saying, well, wait a minute, there are other methods, you know, just counting the, and I think that's what came out, the methodologies, counting the morgues and counting, and then that many people are dying at home, never reporting it. And so it's just, you know, there took a lot of criticism and the challenge there is they can erode a lot of legitimacy or trust in the government. If suddenly they don't handle it well. And it further erodes, again, you know, a lot of the skepticism people may have, but that is the challenge. And Mexico, again, even today remains, you know, together with Brazil and India, the US, these are the major, major players of infections and death. And, well, that continues. Now, let me move us in and maybe continue the dialogue because as students of, you know, sort of international affairs and national relations, you know, global politics and the like, you're also observers of what's happening in Mexico. And at times we've had on the show opportunities to talk about complex interdependence between the US and Mexico, of course, of major trade relations, you know, human mobility, migration and the like. And there's also this important, you know, a moment where Mexico has this leader at the moment, Manuel López Obrador, who, you know, many, even in the international arena, I've often been critical of him, a populist leader among those who was sort of strongly downplaying the COVID itself and in the early phases.  I don't know, just what are your impressions again, again, about maybe what's happening in Mexico, the political change but about dynamics and you've seen the end of the Trump era, which was a tense moment. We now have the new Biden administration and yet it's not as if it's the friendliest. The relations remain still pretty tense and in Mexico, again, it's a tough time. The economy has taken a suffering. The political dynamics are also in flux. There's an upcoming sort of midterm election next month and the president continues to have a majority in the Congress in both the chambers and is expected to win but that doesn't change, you know, that there are still a lot of dynamics going on. So any reflections on, again, current Mexican politics and your observations, Ali? Well, it was just interesting to come to Mexico and I guess because, yeah, I guess back home, we do have some idea of who Amlo is but it's very much packaged into the whole idea of he's, oh, it's Mexican Trump, you know? Because it's very easy to do that or, you know, Mexican Bolsonaro or something like that. Whereas, you know, obviously he's somewhat, at least for observers back home, he's somewhat contradictory in that he's this sort of populist figure but he's also a self-described, he's also a self-described left winger. I'm fairly sure he has a background in something to do with indigenous Mexican languages or something like that if I remember reading that correctly. So it's not necessarily, I guess, people back home, the image of the popular, the big, you know, macho populist leader that some people expect but it's just been, it's been interesting to me to listen to the views of different Mexicans on Amlo because from one hand you get the more, the view of Amlo is more kind of popular in international media that, you know, he's a bit of a, you know, he's a showman, he's a bit silly. You know, he had the whole thing of him shaking, you know, shaking hands and stuff like that during the height of the pandemic. And I guess it's sort of a very critical view. And then hearing all the views of an ordinary Mexican saying, yes, he has his problems, he's not, you know, he's not perfect but, you know, he's better than what we've had or so that he's, I've heard that some people could sort of perceive him to be less corrupt than sort of other more establishment proper politicians that might be linked to like Preet or something like that. So that's the thing that's been very interesting for me, just interesting for me just to see the complete contrast in views between Mexicans because there doesn't seem to be any Mexicans to me that are in the middle on Amlo. It's either you like him or you don't. It's a bit like Marmite, you know. It is and he is a polarizing figure in that respect. So, and, you know, he's appealed because he's also addressing concerns and issues that have never been on the agenda, marginalized community or at least not at the top. So, you know, he's populist in that regard. He's trying to shift everything, but others that really see him as, you know, and yet the interesting thing is the opposition, if we can call that is completely disorganized, not coherent, doesn't have a plan. It's more like they just don't like him and they bring together parties from the right, from the left, from the center, evangelicals, just this garbled-up opposition. Meanwhile, you know, he does have, again, a continued majority. But Devin, again, you've been able to see it maybe in a more slightly longer venue, both as maybe not sure how long, years in Mexico, but you've seen Amlo kind of progressing and now dealing with the pandemic. Oh, and he talks about, you know, what you see in his role, his leadership and the perception people have of him. Yeah, he gets a lot of criticism. But as far as the pandemic goes, I don't really have much to say. I mean, I can't really name a country that's been doing an amazing job at this.  I mean, globalization has affected us to a certain extent. Maybe the last time we had to deal with something like this was the Black Plague and with everything that's going on, I find it difficult to criticize a leader for the way he conducts himself when tackling such an insane issue as a global pandemic. Of course, we can always say something, but at the end of the day, I tried to just lean more towards other cases that are going on. I mean, for example, this San Fuegos controversy, how that's affecting the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico at the moment. For anybody who's over here. Just to be clear, you're speaking of a former general, a former Mexican general, who was in the previous government, the Minister of Defense, the highest ranking official. And a couple of months back, I don't remember exactly, he was arrested in the U.S., basically detained at the LAX airport, alleged to be involved in drug smuggling, drug trafficking, corruption. Yeah, money laundering, corruption. Money laundering. And then the U.S. government under Trump at the time, before this, this would have been the end of the year, before the transition, basically handed him over to Mexico, instead of putting him on trial in the U.S., handed him over with the expectation that Mexico would pry him or, and they provided the evidence, so to speak. Well, Mexico quickly, actually the evidence that they provided was sort of put onto the internet rather quickly. A lot of text messages and things that there were said to be the evidence. And eventually the Mexican government under López O'Aloch essentially exonerated him, saying that the evidence was not sufficient. So it created a very tense moment, because again, the relationship was very complex and it comes on the heels of a whole nother context where the Mexican Congress begun to limit some of the movement of drug enforcement agents in Mexico that have been doing this for decades now, but it is a very sensitive issue. And of course, López O'Aloch is starting maybe Mexican nationalism, Mexican sort of sovereignty issues is taking that hard line. It's interesting to see how the relationships evolve because the leaders themselves reflect part of it, but then you also have a lot of relations defined more by people-to-people and let's say other parts of government. And what I mean by that is you have the leaders. Today it's López O'Aloch, today it's Joe Biden and whether they have a clique, whether they have a sort of a personal relationship can often do much to break the ice. And again, Mexico and the U.S. is a very important relationship complex on so many levels. Interesting that we've seen just in these past years with all the attention to the migration crisis, Central Americans moving through Mexico about almost two years ago, we saw under the President Trump then a lot of pressure put on Mexico to sort of try to help stop that flow and threatening the use of trade war tariffs, increase in tariffs if they didn't cooperate. So Mexico has done that effectively and sort of become in the eyes of some people maybe doing the ugly work for the U.S. stealing that border. But interesting to see, and I wonder from your vantage point, I know all of you've been there a little bit less, but I know Gavin has been there longer, but today in Mexico, the Central American migration issue continues to be a very serious one because the flows have come, the border was stopped for a while and so many Central Americans have ended up in Mexico. Some of them have chosen it. There actually are migration policies that facilitate work visas for Guatemalans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans from Honduras in particular areas. And I'm just wondering, because now that you've been sometime in Puebla, I mean, have you seen any, I don't know, aspects of the Central American migration? And you may not see it yourself, but Gavin certainly in the last year or two when we had big waves, they were passing through the region and just greater awareness of it. Also, there's an interesting aspect because among Mexicans, and you all have opportunities to interact with, fellow students and other Mexicans, there's often a lot of discrimination towards Central Americans. There is an element of that too that puts a different angle on this. So just maybe talking about questions, like the migration crisis, the migration issue, or as you mentioned, Gavin, even sort of security policy issues between the two countries. I mean, where do you see the forces coming from? I mean, that things are pretty tense. Are they likely to stay that way? How do you see the next coming months ahead? Yeah, naturally, I think this like always going to be an insanely complicated issue and it's gonna depend on specific administrations and what they want to do about it, what's important to their policy, what's important to the values of their administrations, et cetera, and what they ultimately, what they want to do about this. In my personal experience, I saw more migrants in Mexico City than I did here in Puebla. I didn't, I don't think I saw any like of the caravans or anything like that. In Mexico City, I did see that once, but in terms of how people are treated, as they're coming through, there is definitely an inherent hypocrisy, I think. But it's not, it's not so blatant either. It's mostly whenever you'll hear comments from time to time, but I've rarely seen South Americans or Central Americans be treated a specific way in my face or around like other Mexicans that I might be with. It's more so I'm in a private setting with some other Mexicans and I might hear some comments every now and again. But it also just depends on the person, I think, and how aware they are of the issues. I can't sit here and say that all Mexicans treat Central Americans and South Americans this way or any kind of like derogatory sense, because they don't, but there are definitely some cases where kind of like, yeah, well, why do you think so negatively about certain groups of people, especially when they're just trying to seek a better life, provide for their families or escape a very dangerous situation back home? Yep. Well, no, thank you for sharing that. And listen, we're winding down now in the last minute. I mean, other just as a final takeaway, I mean, now that you're sort of settled in and become Mexicanized in the last maybe 30 seconds, any final thoughts to share about your experience, looking at Mexico through your eyes? So, I mean, I don't really have the sort of well-served experience of Mexico that Davin has and I haven't really, I haven't met migrants myself. But it's something that just seems interesting is because it's not very publicized the role of Mexico in this sort of, in this whole conundrum, in the sense of Mexico acting as the sort of enforcer of American foreign policy and America's border policy. And something that's, that even though I've not really heard much from Mexicans themselves about views towards Central Americans, that doesn't really seem to be any sort of, I guess, backlash to war, almost not backlash, but sort of backlash towards Central American migration that might exist in America. And there doesn't seem to be this sort of want to play this role enforcer that America's sort of, I guess, pushing on Mexico. But it seems to me that Mexicans feel like this is something that is being forced on their government by through stuff like sanctions and tariffs and stuff like that. Well, thank you all, I mean, for sharing this. And again, we've just scratched the surface of some of these but mainly some impressions, some takeaways from your experience work. I'm sorry, studying living in Mexico now. I want to thank both of you for joining me here today on global connections. And really that's what it's about. Just connecting the dots, each of you coming from different parts of the planet and joining me there in Puebla, Mexico. Thank you again for these reflections and wish you both well as you continue. And for the rest of us, stay tuned as we continue with more on the shows to come ahead. Aloha, thank you.