What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the newest version of Google Analytics. GA4 is an updated data analytics platform that offers your website more user behavior insight, target more audiences and provide more influence in your marketing campaign goals to target stronger leads and increase your website's ROI.
It will be replacing the current analytics, called Universal Analytics (UA) on July 1st, 2023.
How will the switch to GA4 impact my website?
Google will stop collecting data on their Universal Analytics system on July 1st, 2023. All websites still using this version will not be able to track any website traffic. To avoid losing valuable website analytics data, you will need to setup GA4 on your Real Geeks website before the shutdown date.
How do I migrate my website from UA to GA4?
If you are using your own analytics account:
Follow our quick-start guide instructions to learn how to set up a GA4 Property, and add the tracking code to your Real Geeks website.
If you are using an analytics account set up by Real Geeks:
You will need to create a new account in your analytics account.
To do this:
- Go to analytics.google.com
- Click Admin (gear icon, bottom-left)
- In the Accounts column (left), click Create Account
After the account is created, follow the steps outlined in our quick-start guide to help you create a new GA4 property, and add the tracking code to your website.
What will happen if i don't switch to GA4 July 1st?
Universal Analytics will stop collecting data on July 1st, 2023. If you haven't setup and added GA4 to your website before that date, you will be missing analytics data from your website until GA4 has been added.
Will my goals and data in UA migrate to GA4?
If you are using your own analytics account:
Goals that were setup in Universal Analytics will be migrated over to GA4 for you. Please note, that the term goals will no longer be used in GA4. Instead, these will be called events in GA4.
Learn more about events, and how to use them to track your leads website actions in this article .
If you are using an analytics account set up by Real Geeks:
We are unable to connect your (older) UA account with the new GA4 account, which means no historical data from your UA account can be migrated over.
What Data is Available in GA4?
In GA4, an event is any action taken on the website. You can mark an event that is important to your business as a conversion. Tracking these conversions will help you better understand your audience and tailor your website to meet their needs.
Along with the data created automatically when you use GA4, Real Geeks has created the following 5 events for you:
- Contact form submitted
- Sign-up form displayed
- Sign-up form submitted
- Valuation form displayed
- Valuation form submitted
These events correspond to the custom goals created in your Universal Analytics. Make sure you mark these as conversions, so they can be utilized to measure your important website activities. You can l earn how to mark an event as a conversion here.
How long does it take for data to appear in GA4?
“Realtime” data can appear in as quickly as 5 minutes. Data reports, conversion reporting, and other persistent data can take 24-48 hours to appear in a GA4 property dashboard.
It says my property is “connected”, why am I not seeing data?
After adding your GA4 property's Measurement ID to your website, it can take anywhere up to 24-48 hours for data to begin appearing in your analytics account.
Do we need to send the gtag to support?
We made it easy to start tracking your website with GA4 without support help! Follow the instructions outlined in our quick-start guide to start tracking website activity !
What if I Used Goals in UA to create Google Ads?
The GA4 equivalent of goals are called conversions. You can learn more about conversions, and how they're tracked here.
Use conversions to help you track important events on your website, and utilize these metrics to retarget users on your website. You can learn how to use your GA4 conversions in Google Ads here.