Introducing Google Analytics 4
filed under: News, Website Optimization
If you’re like us, you’ve probably gotten several emails over the past few months from Google introducing Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and encouraging you to set up a GA4 property. Maybe you’ve read the emails, maybe you're saving them for your next bout of insomnia. Either way, if you’re a website owner who is tracking your website’s performance with Google Analytics, Google’s rollout of GA4 is an important one to keep on your radar.
In this post, we've broken down what you need to know about this change. Read on to learn more about GA4 and how it can impact you and your business.
GA4: An Introduction
GA4 is the new version of Analytics that Google is in the process of rolling out. Universal Analytics (UA) has been an industry standard in website analytics for many years. Early in 2022, Google announced that GA4 will replace Universal Analytics completely in July 2023. That means that your Universal Analytics properties will no longer process new data as of that date.
Why is this important?
Google Analytics is an essential tool in many businesses' and marketers’ toolboxes. It provides a wealth of useful data for understanding website traffic and user behavior, tracking the overall performance of your website and understanding the success of your marketing campaigns.
What can you do now?
If you’re reading this before July 2023 and currently use Universal Analytics, we recommend getting a GA4 property set up sooner rather than later. The sooner you can familiarize yourself with the new tool, the better off you’ll be when Universal Analytics goes away. You can’t port your data over from UA to GA4, so this also gives you time to start building data within your GA4 property.
What is changing with GA4?
A LOT.
Preparing for a cookie-less future
Universal Analytics uses browser cookies to populate data. GA4, in contrast, is preparing for a cookie-less future. It uses a few different methods to populate data, including first-party cookies, machine learning and statistical modeling.
Hits vs. Events
In Universal Analytics, website interactions are measured in terms of hits. Hits include page views, e-commerce transactions, events and other items. In GA4, everything in measured in events and GA4 events can have many custom parameters added to them. So with GA4, you can easily gain detailed information about a particular event.
Customized reports
In Universal Analytics, there are a multitude of standard reports available. GA4 has fewer standard reports, but you can easily create customized reports to get the data you need.
What next?
We recommend starting to run a GA4 property in parallel to your UA property as soon as possible.. Assuming you’re reading this in 2022, you still have time to get accustomed to the reporting that GA4 provides and set up any custom reports that you need.
Want help during this transition so you’re prepared for the change? Let us know! Contact us for GA4 set up help and customized training in understanding GA4 reporting.