In this video, I'm going to show you how to get
started with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This is the latest version of Google Analytics, and I will
be showing you the new GA4 interface. You will learn about some of the most important differences
between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics (which is the previous version), we will
walk through some key reports, setup options, and I will also cover if you need to upgrade to
GA4 if you're not using it yet. Let's get started! Google Analytics 4 is designed to provide
greater flexibility in the way you track the actions taking place on your website and in your
app. Rather than being built around pageviews, Google Analytics 4 is built around a flexible
event structure, where you can send all different types of information to your reports. On the
right, we can see that when you send information to Universal Analytics, it needs to be classified
into one of the pre-defined hit types. This basically means the way you send information to
Universal Analytics is more limited, and in some cases, we needed to squeeze extra details into
these hit types which made reporting difficult. On the left, we can see that all information
is sent to GA4 as events. And these events can include any additional information you like, so
it's very flexible. Since I want to get you up and running quickly in this video, we won't deep-dive
into GA4 events, but if you would like to learn more, I've included links to my extra resources in
the description below this video. If you've been using Google Analytics for a while, then you might
be using a Universal Analytics property (instead of a GA4 property), so let's take a look at the
biggest differences between the two versions of Google Analytics... Google Analytics 4 gives
you complete flexibility in the way you collect data... There is a range of reporting options,
including ad-hoc reporting to meet your needs... However, there are a limited number of
pre-configured reports in Google Analytics 4... I need to highlight, that GA4 does have an
emphasis on reporting customization. So compared to Universal Analytics, you will only find a
much smaller selection of pre-configured reports. This means if you're getting started with Google
Analytics, I also recommend creating a Universal Analytics property in parallel to GA4. Google
Analytics 4 has automatic tracking built-in. This means you can automatically track pages on
your website, people clicking outbound links, downloading files, and more. And you won't need
to modify your tracking code. There are some filtering options available for Google Analytics
4. This includes filtering out your own traffic so that you don't show up as a user in your reports.
I expect we will see more filtering options added in the future. You can make some limited changes
to the attribution model used for your reports. I also expect to see the options expand in the
future. Cross-domain tracking is available in Google Analytics 4. And in most cases, you
won't even need to modify your tracking code to collect data for people traveling between
your different domains. You can link Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads... Although you can't
link other products, like Google Search Console, I'm hoping to see this option added in the future.
You can store a raw copy of your data using Google BigQuery. And you can pull data into Google Data
Studio and access your reports using Google's app. That's a quick summary of the current
differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics. In most cases, I
recommend setting up Google Analytics 4 in parallel to Universal Analytics. Especially, if
you're just getting started and don't have time to customize the reports in GA4. By having both
types of properties set up in Google Analytics, you will have access to the latest reports and
features in GA4, while also having the benefits of the pre-configured reports in Universal Analytics.
Now let's look at how you can identify what version of Google Analytics you're using. Let's
head to Google Analytics... I've already logged in, and I've selected 'Admin' on the bottom
left corner... We can see there are three columns... There is the account column on the
left, then the property column in the middle, and a view column on the right. Since there
are three columns, this immediately tells us that we're looking at a Universal Analytics
property. Now let's select another property... We can see there are only two columns. There is
an account column on the left, a property column in the middle, and there is no view column on the
right. This means we're now looking at a Google Analytics 4 property. If you follow these steps
and you don't have a Google Analytics 4 property, then the first thing I recommend is that you keep
your existing property. So if you are already tracking your website with Universal Analytics,
you should keep tracking it into the existing property. You can then set up Google Analytics
4 in parallel to Universal Analytics. This is the best option since it means you can continue
to use your existing reports with all of their historical data, and you can begin to use the new
reports in Google Analytics 4. It's important to highlight that if you upgrade to GA4, then this
does not include your historical data. It won't pull in any existing information, so you will be
starting from scratch with your new GA4 property. I will cover the steps to upgrade in a moment,
but first, let's take a look at the reports. Let's open Google's demo account... So we're looking
at the GA4 demo property provided by Google. If you don't have a GA4 property yet, then you can
also access this demo. I've included a link in the description below this video. The demo property is
for the Google Merchandise Store, so an ecommerce website. And we're currently looking at the 'Home'
report which provides a top-level overview for the website. The report is made up of different
cards, which provide quick insights for different areas of our website. On the top left, we can see
the overall number of users, new users, average engagement time, and total revenue. And we can
also see the trend for each of these metrics... You also have the option of adjusting
the number of days used for the card... To the right, you can see the number of users who
have been on the website in the last 30 minutes. Along with a minute-by-minute breakdown, and their
geographic location. Moving down, you will find automated insights based on your data. This uses
Google's machine learning to identify different points of interest for you to review. You will
also find cards that provide summaries about how people are finding your website, where
they're geographically located, and more... The main menu in Google Analytics 4 is split into
four sections. These are 'Reports'... 'Explore'... 'Advertising'... And 'Configure'...
Let's select 'Reports'... The reports section includes all of the
preconfigured reports for the property. The 'Reports Snapshot' is the same
as the 'Home' report we just saw. Next, is the 'Realtime' report... This shows you details for people who have
recently been on your website. This is similar to the card we saw on the 'Home' report, so we can
see the number of users in the last 30 minutes... The minute-by-minute breakdown... And
the different devices they're using to view your website... The map shows us
the geographic location of our users... And at the bottom, we can see cards
showing us users by source, by audience list (if you've created audiences lists in the
property), and the pages people are viewing... And we can see the events, conversions and any
user properties that have been configured... The report also lets us view what
individual users are doing on our website. To view individual user behavior, we select
'View User Snapshot' on the top right corner... We can now see details for a
random user on our website... In the center, we can see the events that
have been collected for the individual... And we can view another random user, by
using the arrows at the top of the report... We can see there are other
reports listed on the left... If you have edit-permission for the property
you can modify these. This includes customizing the menu and the reports included in the menu.
We're looking at the default menu and reports, so we can see there is a section called
'Life Cycle' and another called 'User'... The 'Acquisition' reports provide details
about how people are finding our website... The 'Overview' report provides a summary. There
is a timeline at the top and the real-time card on the right. These aren't particularly useful, but
below them, we can see user and session medium, which tells us how people are finding the
website... We can also see session campaign, which includes any Google Ads campaigns sending traffic
to our website, along with any campaign tagged URLs we're using... I find the 'User Acquisition'
and 'Traffic Acquisition' reports are more useful, so let's take a look at the 'User Acquisition'
report... This report includes additional metrics, so we can see the medium (or how people are
finding our website) on the left... Along with the number of new users... Engaged sessions...
and other metrics. Scrolling to the right, we can see the number of conversions for each medium and
the total revenue. We can also change the report. For example, we can select 'User Medium' on the
left... And change this to another dimension, like 'User Source/Medium' which shows us more granular
details about how people are finding our website. Next are the 'Engagement' reports... These
reports provide details about what people are doing on your website. Let's take a
look at the 'Pages and Screens' report... This report tells you the pages people
are viewing on your website. By default, we can see pages are presented by their page
title in the report, but we can change this. So let's select 'Page Title'... And change this
to 'Page Path'... This is more like the pages report in Universal Analytics. We can see the
total number of views for each of our pages, along with other metrics... If you have an
ecommerce website and you've implemented the ecommerce tracking code, then you will be able to
use the ecommerce reports under 'Monetization'... And you will also find reports for in-app
purchases and publisher ads (this option lets your report on revenue if you're placing ads
in your website or your app for monetization). The 'Retention' report
includes cohort reporting... The 'Demographics' reports include details about
your audience. This includes their geographic location and language preferences, and if you've
enabled Google signals, you will also see age, gender and interests for your users.
Finally, the 'Technology' reports show you details about the different devices
people are using to view your website... This includes operating system, device category
(so desktop, mobile or tablet), and other details. So they're the standard reports you will find
by default in the 'Reports' section of Google Analytics 4. Remember, as I mentioned previously,
that these can be customized, so if you have edit permission, you can customize the reports
and even the reporting menu. Now we're going to look at the 'Explore' section which lets you
create custom reports and visualizations in GA4. Let's head back to Google Analytics... And
let's select 'Explore'... There are different types of custom reports you can create. These are
presented at the top, and include... 'Free Form' which presents your data in a table... 'Funnel
Exploration' which lets you create a funnel report... 'Path Exploration' for seeing
how people travel through your content (or complete other actions)... 'Segment Overlap' to
see if users are included in multiple segments... Cohort Exploration' to group users bases on
time... And 'User Lifetime' to see lifetime metrics for your users... Next up are the
'Advertising' reports... These reports focus on attribution for your marketing channels.
Let's open the 'Model Comparision' report... This lets us compare two different attribution
models to see how using the different models would impact your conversions and revenue... For
example, we could compare the last click attribution model to the time decay
model to see how switching models would impact our metrics... And the 'Conversion
Paths' report... This shows you the touch points leading to conversions on your website,
so you can see if people engage multiple times and with multiple marketing channels before
converting... Next is the 'Configure' section... This groups different reporting configuration
options. 'Events' shows you all of the events that have been collected into your GA4 property. And if
you have edit permission, you can mark individual events as conversions, so they are counted as
conversions in your reports. Then 'Conversions'... Which only includes events that
are enabled as conversions... 'Audiences' for creating custom segments
to use in your reports... Any audience you create can also be used for remarketing if
you've linked your Google Ads account to GA4... 'Custom Definitions' lets you register and
view custom information that you're collecting into GA4... And 'DebugView' which lets you see
check your implementation and see your events as you're using Tag Assistant... I'm going to keep
things simple for this tutorial, so I don't want to overload you with all of the different options
you can configure in Google Analytics 4. So if you would like to learn more about the ways you
can send custom events to GA4, how to configure conversions and other customization options,
I've included links to even more tutorials in the description below this video. Okay, now let's walk
through the steps to upgrade to Google Analytics 4. So let's head back to Google Analytics...
Let's open my Universal Analytics property... We can see the GA4 Setup Assistant
at the top of the property column... Let's select this... Since I already
have a Universal Analytics property, let's select 'Get Started' under 'I want to
create a new Google Analytics 4 property'... The setup wizard highlights some important
things to consider. Including that your new property won't contain historical data, that
it will only copy the most basic settings, and that enhanced measurement will be enabled by
default. Enhanced measurement will automatically track actions on your website, including clicking
outbound links, watching embedded videos, downloading files, and scrolling. If you would
like to learn more about enhanced measurement, then check out my dedicated video. I've
included a link in the description below. Since I'm using Google Tag Manager to add
the Google Analytics tag to my website, we can see a message at the bottom of the wizard
telling us that we need to install a new tag to start using Google Analytics 4.
Now let's click 'Create Property'... Our new GA4 property has now been created, so
let's click the 'See Your GA4 Property' button... And let's select 'Tag
Installation' under 'Collection'... You will now see the data stream that the
GA4 Setup Assistant automatically created. You can think of a data stream as the
equivalent of the tracking code you are given for each of your Universal Analytics
properties. Now let's select the data stream... This opens the 'Web Stream Details' window.
On the top right corner of this window, we can see the Measurement ID, which is the
equivalent of the Tracking ID you will find in your Universal Analytics property. Let's copy
this... Now let's head to Google Tag Manager... Let's select the option to create a new tag...
Let's name the tag. I'm going to name my tag 'Google Analytics GA4', but you
can name it anything you like. Let's select 'Tag Configuration'... And choose
'GA4 Configuration' as the tag type... Now we need to paste the Measurement ID we copied from Google
Analytics into our new GA4 tag configuration... And let's select 'Trigging'
to add a trigger to our tag... Let's select the 'All Pages' trigger. This will
add your GA4 tag to every page on your website. Now we need to save the trigger... And the
tag... Since our new tag uses the 'All Pages' trigger and we haven't made any customizations.
I'm just going to publish the tag on my website. However, if you want to preview your tags before
they're published, you can click the 'Preview' button... This will load Tag Assistant. If you
would like to learn more about Google Tag Manager, including Tag Assistant, then you can find
links to my Google Tag Manager tutorials in the description below this video. Okay, so I'm
going to click 'Submit' to publish the changes... And I'm going to name the version so I
know that I added GA4 to my website... Once your tag is published, your new GA4 property
will begin to collect data. So that's how you can get started with Google Analytics 4. If you're
already using a Universal Analytics property to track your website, then I recommend you continue
tracking your website into that existing property. You can then set up a new Google Analytics
4 property and track your website into both types of properties at the same time. This gives
you the best of both... You can continue to use your existing reports, while you also have access
to new reports and features. Are you using Google Analytics 4? I'd love to know! Let me know in
the comments below. And if you found this video helpful please like it so I know to make more
videos like this. See you in the next video!
