Google Analytics V4 — Detailed Guide

By Sameep Hamilton

Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics was founded in 1995 under the name Urchin. It’s been 23 years since that happened. But since then it has gone through many updates. A lot of small ones but some pretty major ones too. Recently in October 2020 Google introduced us to the next generation of Google Analytics named Google Analytics 4 (GA4) which was one such update. In this blog we will try to go through each and every thing there is to know about GA4, so that next time you open Google Analytics you don’t have any confusion.

If you are reading this blog we already assume that you know a great deal about Google Analytics. But c’mon we need to cater to all the other people too. So here’s a short detail on.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics History

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It is a part of the Google suite of services, which includes Google Ads and Google Cloud Platform. Google Analytics can be used to track different types of interactions with your websites, including but not limited to: page views, unique visitors, referrals, time on site, and bounce rate. In addition to tracking website traffic, you can also use Google Analytics to track events, such as button clicks or video plays.

Now that you know this let’s dig deeper.

First lets know the the family members:

2005 — Urchin (GA1)

2008- Classic (GA2)

2012- Universal (GA3)

And finally after 8 years: 2020- Google analytics 4 (GA4)

These are the major updates that happened around throughout the past few years. And now we have the Big Daddy of all the updates i.e Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Now the question comes –

What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and is it any different from the previous version?

Google Analytics 4 has taken over from its predecessor, Universal Analytics (GA3). It was known as App+Web Property when it was first introduced in BETA. Why do companies need to track app and website analytics separately? This is the underlying problem it solves. The new property may track both App and Web visits in a single Google Analytics property, rather than dividing the visits into different GA properties. In the fall of 2020, Google Analytics 4 was rebranded and re-released under the name App+Web Property (GA4).

Is there any difference between this version and the prior one?

In short the answer is A LOT!

GA4 has a very different data structure and data collection logic than GA3. Everything is now built around users and events, rather than sessions, as we were used to. Each user interaction is treated as a separate event in an events-based model.

This is a significant change because we previously relied on a session-based model that grouped user interactions into time frames. Now marketers gain significant advantages by shifting their focus from sessions to events, such as cross-platform analysis and increased pathing analysis capacity.

GA4 has become more flexible and capable of predicting user behavior by switching to an event-based model.

Read further to know the detailed difference!

What is the major Difference between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 (GA3 VS GA4) ?

The most noticeable distinction between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics is that GA4 allows you to track activity on both websites and applications. There are other other distinctions, including:

Every hit becomes an Event: GA4 gives you a unified view of the customer journey across web and mobile. The UA method of many types of hits + custom dimensions and metrics is restructured to mimic the app approach of events + parameters to achieve this. This method is well-known among Firebase users. UA pageviews are now treated as an event in GA4. Every action was divided into dimensions (non-quantifiable) and metrics (quantifiable) in Universal Analytics, for example, PageView, sessions are metrics and page name, time are dimensions. Instead of custom metrics and dimensions, parameters are used to customize events in GA4. This alignment with how things are done on apps will help to develop a comprehensive view of the customer journey as customers transition between device and web.

Streams of data: Data streams are a method of combining data from multiple sources into a single property. There are multiple web and app streams available for each property, which can be thought of as unfiltered/raw data views. GA4 will be devoid of the views themselves. Filters can be applied at the property or subproperty level, with the ability to test them before activating or deactivating them.

Web + App: GA4 aims to consolidate all of your web and app analytics data into a single data collection and reporting interface. By collecting data from your website, Android, and iOS apps under one property, you can track and evaluate the customer journey across devices.

Less Standard reports: In GA4, there will be fewer basic reports and more options for explorations, making it easier to create custom ad hoc reports. Explorations have a similar user interface to Data Studio, and you can quickly create custom reports for specific users or roles. You can also use Google’s default templates to jumpstart your project. Free form, funnel, path exploration, acquisition, conversion, and ecommerce report templates are all available. They’re divided into categories based on methodologies, use cases, and industry. Check out this comprehensive guide to creating a one-of-a-kind ad hoc report. While some of these reports were previously available in standard UA reports, the GA4 templates provide a starting point that you can tailor to your specific requirements.

Goals Turn to Conversions: In UA, conversions are measured as ecommerce transactions or goals. GA4 simplifies this by categorizing all events that contribute to your business goals as conversions.

In a nutshell, GA4 provides a consolidated view of the user journey as well as more reporting options.

5 Main benefits of Google Analytics 4 (GA4):

Integration with BigQuery- Thanks to Google’s robust infrastructure, BigQuery is a data warehouse that enables for the processing of SQL queries at extremely high speeds. You may analyze gigabytes of raw data with the GA4 + BigQuery connection, gain insights from the platform’s machine-learning capabilities, and even stream data directly to BigQuery.

Engagement metrics- GA4 provides positive data on user engagement rather than the bounce rate, or the percentage of users who leave a website without interacting. A session is considered engaged when it lasts at least 10 seconds, has at least one conversion event, or involves at least two page views.

Tracking across several platforms- Before GA4, website and app engagement were always tracked independently. You can see why, although still in beta, Google Analytics 4 was dubbed Google Analytics App+Web. Firebase Analytics data from apps and Google Analytics data from websites are now combined in one property in GA4.

Enhanced tracking intelligence- With governments and regulatory agencies enacting new and stronger privacy laws, tracking users through cookies is getting increasingly challenging. GA4 implements more sophisticated tracking that isn’t dependent on cookies, thanks to AI and machine learning.

Unsampled data- The quantity of data that can be collected using Universal Analytics (UA) is limited to 10 million hits per site each month. In GA4 standard reports, sampling has been removed, and the amount of data that may be captured is now infinite.

Limitations of Google Analytics 4 (GA4)-

• Distinctly named events- 500 per app instance
• Length of the event name- 40 Characters
• Length of event-parameter name — 40 Characters
• Length of event-parameter name- 40 characters
• Length of event-parameter value- 100 characters
• User properties- 25 per property
• Length of user-property names- 24 characters
• Length of user-property values- 36 characters

Configuration limits inside Google Analytics 4 (GA4)-

• Audiences- 100
• Conversions- 30
• Custom Insights- 50
• Funnels- 200
• Registered user properties- 25
• Registered text parameters- 50
• Registered numeric parameters- 50
• Registered custom conversion events- 30
• Data retention — Upto 14 months
• Analyses- 200 created per user and 500 shared
• Analysis of sampling limits- 10M events per query

These restrictions apply solely to this property and are applied on a per-property basis.

Keep in mind that GA4 won’t log events or event parameters that go beyond Google Analytics’ restrictions.

How to setup Google Analytics 4 (GA4):

GA4 is easy to set up with just a few clicks. The analytics property you’re used to will remain unchanged and will continue to collect data. The admin screen will still give you access to your Universal Analytics view.

In case you already have a Universal Analytics account this will show you how to connect a new GA4 data stream to your existing Universal Analytics account:

How to setup Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with Google Tag Manager (GTM)-

Obviously you will need a Google Tag Manager account for this. If you don’t have a GTM account check out this detailed guide!

Where to Find GA4 Measurement ID-

• Open the GA4 Property; it looks like XXXXXXXXX
• Go to Admin.
• Under the Property Column, click on- Data Streams.
• Select your Web-based Data Stream.
• Measurement ID can be seen in the top right corner, it will look like G-A2ABA2ABD.

Will I lose data when moving from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

Short Answer — NO!

Deleting Universal Analytics from your page source or tag management system is not something we encourage. Rather, you should use the best practice of using Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 to tag all of your website’s pages.

You may keep all the benefits of Universal Analytics while also starting to gather data in your Google Analytics 4 properties by dual-tagging your website or app — whether hardcoding GA4 to all pages/screens or deploying GA4 via a tag management system on all pages .

Last but not least, if you want your Universal Analytics audiences to be completely ready for GA4, the sooner you can start populating them with users, the better. There is no method to simply move an audience from UA to GA4; the Google Analytics 4 tracking code must be used. As a result, the sooner the GA4 tracking code is set up, the sooner those audiences can increase and become lucrative for advertising.

Our goal here isn’t to terrify you; Google isn’t going to phase out Universal Analytics until it’s the right moment, and marketers have had plenty of time to collect historical data in Google Analytics 4. So get that dual-tagging set up as soon as possible and start reaping the benefits of both.

How to filter Internal traffic, Developer Traffic, and Bots in my GA4 Property?

You see new page with Create internal traffic rule with four fields to enter data.

You can add rule name as your work space — company name or

If you’re working form home then Home Internet — New Hampshire Home or

Simply add Internet Provider Name to differentiate your rule.

Traffic_type_value are two internal or developer. In our case, internal is good, since we’re filtering traffic coming from company employees who are working in particular space.

IP Address field requires you to add IP address of space in Value field.

If you have multiple IP addresses to add the you can use either of IP address contains IP address begins with

IP address ends with IP address is in range

Configure IP address rules>Click Create

You will see the New Rule is added to

Bots and Spider hits are automatically excluded in GA4 analytics, unlike Universal Analytics property. Google uses its own research and a list maintained by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to excludes the bots and spiders.

Exclude specific domain referrals in Google Analytics 4-

You must add certain domains to an exclusion list in order to ensure that your reports do not contain “fake” referrals. Let’s see how we may prevent unwanted referrals in GA4.

Here, you can make a list of every referral you want your statistics to not include as a source of traffic.

Measure E-commerce in Google Analytics 4

To gather data on your users’ purchase habits, you can build up ecommerce events. You can measure your most well-liked products through the events and see how promotions and product placement affect sales. Each e-commerce event is explained in this article, along with how and when to set it up.

Set-up Ecommerce Once GA4 is set up, you’ll see that e-commerce sites require more than just the GTM container. We must add two more bits of code{:target=”_blank”}, known as a data layer, to Google Analytics in order to pass information about purchases and product views in order for our ecommerce reports to function.

Purchase Data Layer- The purchase data layer will send variables to Google Tag Manager after a customer completes an order.

A purchase data layer is put up in 4 steps: Adding the code to the checkout page. Creating a custom event. Creating a data layer variable. Creating a new tag in GTM.

Product View Data Layer- We must add a second data layer to Google Tag Manager in order to obtain product-level detail. The process involves the same five steps.

Create Product Detail View Trigger- Click “Add New” under Triggers in the left-hand menu of Google Tag Manager after opening it. Select “Custom Event” from the list of trigger options, then give the new trigger the name “ProductDetailView.” Name to custom event same as your data layer event name and click save.

GTM Variables- Select Variables from the GTM’s left-hand menu, then click New under User-Defined Variables. It is crucial that the text exactly matches your data layer when adding your GTM variables and that you maintain consistency in your nomenclature. Select “Data Layer variable” as the variable type. The precise variable from your product data layer code should be copied, pasted, and saved. For each variable in your product view data layer, repeat this process.

Create Product View Event Tag- Make a new tag and call it “GA4 — ProductView,” for example. Select the “Google Analytics GA4 Event” tag type. Your GA4 — Global Tag will serve as the configuration tag. “view item” will be the Event Name. The item_id will be the first parameter. You can either use a double bracket and a dropdown list will appear, or you can click the + button to discover your user-generated variables for the matching variable.

This section must match the data layer variable and GA4 documentation exactly and is case-sensitive. Select the custom ProductDetailView trigger.

Google Analytics’ ecommerce data will provide you with detailed insights into:

Products having a large (or small) sales volume The typical transactional revenue and merchandise count Conversion rates for your online store Transaction and revenue changes and patterns over time

Ecommerce Migrating in Google Analytics 4

GA4 Standard Tracking- You must make a new web property in GA4 in order to start your move. You can use either the Upgrade Assistant or the “add new property” button in the administration area. You can choose every event tracking option that applies to you.

Once you’ve done that, your new GA4 property will begin to receive some main data.

GA4 Event Tracking- Events must be re-scoped in accordance with your measurement approach because they have changed from the original “category, action, label” structure.

“Event Category” is essentially replaced by “Event Name,” but you can now choose any specific details as an event parameter.

Establish which “core” events you must monitor, for instance.

1. Clicks
2. Questions regarding form submissions
3. Internet errors
4. Any prior “destination” goals that were to be measured as a goal must be reported as occurrences.
5. Determine the conditions that must be met for each core event to help distinguish them. Please note: The parameter name must start with a letter and contain only letters, digits, or underscores.

GA4 Ecommerce Tracking- E-commerce tracking in GA4 is comparable to event tracking, except Google Analytics employs particular parameters by default, therefore data will be sent to an e-commerce report:

1. The measurement of the e-commerce tracking code should be encoded by developers.
2. Developers should work on applying the revised dataLayer technique for eCommerce.
3. Continue using the same e-commerce triggers.

Goal Migration in Google Analytics 4

You may rapidly replicate valid objectives from your connected Universal Analytics property as conversion events in your Google Analytics 4 property using the goals migration tool.

Get Dolphy.io’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

Remember me for faster sign in

You must have the Editor role on your account in order to use the goals migration tool.

User Migration in Google Analytics 4:

Before you begin — Install the Google Workspace Marketplace’s GA4 Migrator for Google Analytics add-on. To install an add-on, open the add-on listing and select Install. After the add-on has finished installing. Create a new Google Sheet and activate the add-on sidebar by choosing Extensions > GA4 Migrator for Google Analytics > Migrate users to GA4 from the menu.

Event Migration in Google Analytics 4:

Model for collecting data for Universal Analytics: The fundamental data collection component in Universal Analytics is referred to as a hit. In order to record a user interaction, a hit is just a collection of descriptors delivered to the Analytics servers.

Pageviews and events are the two hit types that are utilized the most commonly in Universal Analytics. A pageview hit is automatically sent by the default tracking snippet. Google Tag Manager offers a default track type of Page View, which in turn offers a default tag type of Google Analytics: Universal Analytics.

Model for collecting data from Google Analytics 4: With its roots in Google Analytics for Firebase, Google Analytics 4 offers a more adaptable and agnostic data collecting paradigm and is based on a different form of event.

Firebase Analytics has always relied on the event and event-parameter paradigm because a pageview is irrelevant in the case of mobile apps.

Audience Migration in Google Analytics 4:

You can identify the same user groups using your Google Analytics 4 data by transferring audiences from your Universal Analytics property to your Google Analytics 4 property, and you can export those audiences to your linked Google Ads accounts to solve the same use cases.

For each Google Analytics 4 property, 100 audiences can be created. Audiences in Google Analytics 4 properties immediately update everywhere, unlike audiences in Universal Analytics. You can upgrade to Google Analytics 360, which has a 400 audience limit, for your Google Analytics 4 property.

Recreate the audiences manually in your Google Analytics 4 property to migrate them. You might need to build the same custom dimensions in your Google Analytics 4 property if your Universal Analytics audiences were built using custom dimensions in your Universal Analytics property.

What is a Dimension in Google Analytics?

In Google Analytics 4, a dimension is a description, characteristic, parameter, or property of your data. It could be a user feature, a website, a product, an event, etc. It helps us better define and comprehend our data, thus considering it as a qualitative variable makes sense. A dimension in Google Analytics can also be defined as ‘a qualitative variable (a variable that isn’t numerical) that represents data that fits into categories’.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports typically present data in the form of a data table, and dimensions can be found in the first column of your reports.

For example The ‘Device Category’ dimension tells us what type of device the visitor used to view our website, and it accepts mobile, desktop, and tablet as values.

How to create a Custom Dimension in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)-

Google Analytics 4 was not created especially for your organization, so it will not provide you with everything you require ‘out of the box.’ Although Google Analytics 4 provides many dimensions, because your organization is unique, you may want to work with a dimension that GA4 does not provide. This is where Custom Dimensions come in.

In Google Analytics 4, you can configure 50 custom dimensions and 50 custom metrics per property source, and if you purchase Google 360, you will be given a larger number.

What is a Metric in Google Analytics?

In Google Analytics 4, a metric is a quantitative measurement of data (time, percentage, numerical values, etc.) that demonstrates how our website is performing in relation to a given dimension.

How to create a Custom Metric in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)-

Despite the fact that Google provides a multitude of measures in its analytical tool, they simply cannot cover every possible circumstance. So, if we wish to measure properties of a dimension that are not available by default, we must construct and apply custom metrics. This is similar to the Dimension case.

How to use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Reports?

Now we come to the main part. How to use GA4?

When you first log in, you’ll notice that the home page summarizes the property’s overall traffic, conversions, and revenue. This is best used as a quick check to ensure that everything is functioning properly.

What does your Homepage tell you?

• What are the sources of new users?
• What are your most successful campaigns?
• What are the most popular pages and screens?

Google Analytics 4 Real Time Reports-

Real-time reporting is a type of business intelligence that involves capturing real-time data and communicating it to users as it happens. The next default report in the left navigation is the Realtime report, which displays events that occurred within the last 30 minutes.

You can use Real-Time reports to:

• Verify that the tracking code is active.
• Take a look at the effects from a YouTube video.
• Watch the launch of a new product in real time.

User Snapshot in Google Analytics 4

To see a literal snapshot for a single user, click View user snapshot in the top right corner of the Realtime report. This includes device information, location, and real-time engagement with the site/app through triggered events.

Life Cycle Reports in Google Analytics

The funnel of acquiring, engaging, monetizing, and retaining users is mirrored in Life Cycle reporting. It’s great for figuring out how users get into the conversion funnel and what they do once they’re there.

Life Cycle Reports will tell you:

• What is the most common way for users to enter the conversion funnel?
• What do users do once they’ve entered the funnel?
• User reports on demographics and technology, as well as events and conversions, are included in GA4.

Explorer Reports in Google Analytics

The new Analysis Hub may be the most powerful change in GA4 (or at least what we believe will be the most valuable to the marketers). While the GA4 Analysis Hub provides access to various additional approaches as well as a template gallery that isn’t available anywhere else, the basic reports let you track critical business KPIs.

How to create a New Analysis? Sign in to your Google Analytics account.. Then select Analysis. Bottom left navigation under Explore, graph with magnifying glass icon. Choose the method you’ll use to examine your data.

How to Read the Reports from the Analysis Hub: Return to the Analysis Hub. Variables Column: In the variables column, you’ll choose which data to utilize in your study. Date range, segments, dimensions, and metrics are all variables to consider.

Tab settings column: This is where you’ll define the analysis technique, add dimensions and metrics, and apply segments

Segments: Different groups of users are referred to as segments. To compare and contrast how different groups of users behave, drag & drop them into your report. If you don’t see the portion you want, click the plus icon to add your own.

Dimensions: The items you want to look at are called dimensions. For example, the number of events, active users, transactions, and so on. In the Tab Settings box, drag and drop dimensions as rows or columns.

Visualization: Create a visual representation of the report. Table, pie chart, line graph, and other exploration choices are available.

Metrics: Metrics are the numbers that your analysis is based on. In Tab Settings, add metrics to the Values section.

Values: In the report, drag the metrics you want to display in columns. A bar chart, plain text, or heat map can be used to display the cell type.

Display: Right-click a data point in the visualization to interact with the data.

Tabs: Your visualizations are displayed in tabs. A single analysis can include up to ten tabs. Click the + icon to add a new tab.

Types Of Different Analysis- Exploration- GA4 Exploration gives you more control over data visualization than Universal Analytics did previously. There are several configuration options inside exploration to assist you in discovering new insights and presenting your data in a way that makes sense to your team or consumer.

Funnel Analysis- How do website visits turn into one-time shoppers, and how do one-time shoppers turn into recurring customers? How do one-time shoppers become repeat consumers and how do one-time shoppers become repeat customers on a website? You’ll discover it in the GA4 funnel analysis report. You may observe how well buyers are achieving or failing at each phase as you see the actions they take to accomplish an event.

Path Analysis- If you liked Universal Analytics’ behavior flow reports, you’ll adore GA4’s analysis hub pathing reports. The event stream is shown in a “tree graph” through path analysis. The series of events that users triggered along their path is referred to as an event stream.

Segment Overlap- Both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 properties support segmentation. In GA4, segments can be used to represent user events or sessions. Marketers can also create segments with multiple conditions and combine them to make a “condition group.”

Cohort Analysis- A cohort is a group of users who have a common trait, such as the date of acquisition, an event, or a conversion. You can use a cohort report to see how long it takes users to convert in relation to a certain marketing strategy.

User Lifetime- For search marketers, the user lifetime report is incredibly useful since it allows you to generate reports that show which sources are producing people with the highest lifetime revenue — not just revenue for a single month.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Audit Checklist

1. What is the architecture of your implementation?

The first and most important step is to figure out how Google Analytics was set up. You should have a clear vision of your implementation architecture because there are numerous implementation alternatives (in the code directly, via GTM, CMS integration, via plugin).

Why is it required? To have clean tracking, you’ll need to stick to one implementation option if you wish to set up conversion tracking or create a consent mode. Everything should be configured directly in the source code if you prefer code implementation. If you’re using Google Tag Manager, you should set up all of your tags through GTM.

2. Have you chosen the correct time zone for reporting?

Go to Admin — Property Settings It’s critical to select the proper time zone because it has a direct impact on your reporting. The day boundary in your reports will be determined by the country you choose here.

This indicates that the day is calculated using the time zone of the selected nation, even if visitors to your page are from other countries.

3. Have you turned on Google Signals?

Check here to see if Google signals are enabled for your GA4 property. You’ll be able to collect cross-device data for signed-in users and set up cross-device retargeting this way.

This will ensure proper tracking and demographic information in your reports. Go to Data Settings — Data Collection, and click Get Started. To activate your Google Signals, click Continue.

4. Have you established a data retention schedule?

Data retention is set to 2 months by default when you establish a GA4 property. What exactly does this imply? After two months, you won’t be able to go into exploration reports, but you’ll still have access to the aggregated results. Make sure you check this.

5. Have you decided on the reporting attribution model that is best suited to your company’s needs?

An attribution model decides how much credit a convert should receive.

Before buying your product or filling out a form on your website, your consumers are clicking many ads. How can we figure out which ad got them to convert? It was always the last-clicked ad by default before today, but other clicked ads were not taken into account. So now you have this fantastic GA4 capability that allows you to select the attribution model that best reflects the users’ conversion route.

6. Do you have enhanced measurement turned on?

GA4 has a fantastic feature that allows you to track interactions without having to add any extra code to your website. All you need to do now is enable it in your GA4 settings. As a result, several occurrences will be automatically monitored, providing you with extra data for your reports.

You may turn it on by moving the Enhanced measurement ON switch.

7. What kind of account management do you have?

If you’re working on a large project, be sure you have GA4 access set up. There are various degrees of user permissions, each of which can be given to a certain role and come with their own set of constraints.

8. Have you set up any filters?

Head over to Data Settings — Data Filters. GA4 currently only has two filter types: internal traffic and developer traffic. They aren’t as flexible as Universal Analytics filters, but they can be beneficial. Internal traffic should be excluded because it might have a significant impact on your reporting, especially if there are a lot of people working on the project.

9. Have you discovered any unwanted referrals?

Aside from filters, it’s critical to set up your undesirable referrals. A third-party payment mechanism for your e-commerce store could be one of the most typical usage cases.

Head over to Data Streams — More Tagging Settings. Select List unwanted referrals from the menu. You can provide all of the necessary conditions for your traffic in this field.

10. Do you have any custom measurements and metrics set up?

It’s crucial to know if you’re utilizing any custom measurements and if they’re set up appropriately while performing a health check. According to official Google literature, each property can have up to 50 event-scoped custom dimensions and 50 custom metrics, as well as 25 uniquely named, user-scoped custom dimensions.

11. Have you decided what your Default Reporting Identity will be?

Another point to consider is how you’d like to identify your users. There are two ways to search: by User ID and device, and by device simply.

This parameter controls how Analytics associates events with your users, and it’s worth double-checking because it affects your reports. Head over to Admin and then under Property select Reporting Identity.

12. Have you checked the accuracy of your conversion tracking? You should have a detailed list of the conversions you’ve made. Do you have both macro- and micro-conversions leading up to the macro-conversions? Are you recording your conversions correctly?

13. Have you put Ecommerce Tracking in place? Implementing eCommerce tracking is essential if you own an online store. It’s critical to double-check that your transactions are properly logged and that the correct values are provided to your Analytics.

14. Are you using BigQuery to export your data?

Setting up the BigQuery interface is advantageous since you can keep your data for longer than the 14-month retention period. This function allows you to save and change data according to your company needs, giving you a lot of freedom. Head over to Admin → Product Links → BigQuery Links

15. Have you set up a link between your GA4 and Google Ads?

If you wish to import data from GA4 to your Ads account, you must first complete this step. To avoid data import errors, double-check that your accounts are linked correctly. Head over to Admin → Product Links → Google Ads Links

16. Do you make use of the Search Console integration? This connection allows you to track organic searches that lead people to your site. You should double-check that your accounts are linked properly. This link allows you to see which queries generate clicks and what motivates your users to convert.

17. Other Links? Other Google sources, such as Ad Manager, Display & Video 360, Merchant Center, and Search Ads 360, can be connected to GA4. Last but not least, once you’ve deployed Google Optimize using Google Tag Manager, you may sync it with GA.

Frequently Asked Questions about Google Analytics 4 (GA4)-

1. Is it possible to use Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4(GA4) at the same time? Yes, you may run both systems in parallel at the moment. But Universal Analytics will stop collecting data in the summer of 2023, so even if you aren’t ready to make the move yet, make sure you have GA4 installed.

2. Is it necessary for me to restart the analytics implementation that we just completed? No. It’s a simple issue of setting up GA4 tags using existing Triggers and Variables that have already been set up for UA for firms that have installed extensive analytics tracking utilizing a tag management solution like Google Tag Manager.

3. This version of GA4 was originally referred to as App+Web. Do I still need to move if our company doesn’t have a mobile app? GA4 is a reinvention of Universal Analytics that can be used by any company, even if they don’t have a native iOS or Android app. We strongly advise enterprises to start planning for GA4 in 2021 while maintaining their Universal Analytics implementation. You can still use GA4’s new streams capability to build a stream for your desktop site if your company doesn’t have a mobile app.

4. What happened to data like bounce rate and time spent on page/site? GA4 replaced the problematic and easily manipulated “bounce rate” with a number of new engagement metrics, including engaged sessions, engagement rate, engaged sessions per user, and average engagement duration. In GA4, these metrics are under “acquisition” rather than “engagement.”

5. Is GA4 available in a paid version or is there only a free version? In 2022, Google will release a 360 version of GA4, dubbed “New GA360” for the time being. This commercial edition of GA4 will include SLAs for business-critical features like the BQ Export and data collecting and processing, as well as greater limitations for audiences, conversions, custom dimensions and metrics, and more.

6. I don’t have GA360. Is it possible to get GA4 data into BigQuery for free? Organizations that have GA4-enabled can export their raw, unsampled data to BigQuery for free. For faster access to same-day data, users can choose to have the data exported once a day or intraday.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Conclusion-

Google Analytics 4 is a strong analytics tool that can give you a lot of information about your target audience. GA4 has several benefits, including cross-platform monitoring, enhanced data governance, and AI-driven insights. This article about Google analytics 4 provides a comprehensive overview of the new features and changes. It also includes instructions on how to get started with the new platform. If you are looking to get the most out of your Google analytics data, this is the article for you. Please share and comment if you found it helpful.