Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics is the world’s most popular analysis tool for digital data. The free web analytics tool from Google makes it possible to analyse your website’s visitors down to the smallest detail. As a pioneer in digital innovation, Google’s Update to Google Analytics 4 ensures that the tool stays atop of the current digital advances.

Ignoring to add an analytics tool to your site, is a sure way to losing interesting and relevant information about your website visitors. Is your website user friendly? How long do visitors stay on your site? Which content attracts their interest the most? Google Analytics can provides you with all these valuable insights as well as many more.

Learn more about why Google Analytics 4 is essential for and beneficial to your business. As an experienced Google Analytics agency, we are happy to support you.

„Get to know the advantages of digital data analysis and see for yourself how valuable Google Analytics 4 can be in advancing your company’s goals.“

Adnan Kasem

Google Analytics 4
What
Advantages

WHAT IS GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4?

Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google Analytics (GA) and will replace the Universal Analytics version effective July 31, 2023. Standard properties will then no longer be processed within the older version. Every newly created Google Analytics account now automatically becomes a GA4 account. Even if you already have a GA account, we recommend that you set up Google Analytics 4 now and use it alongside your existing UA account. This way you ensure that your historical data will be available to you in the future.

But why was Google analytics updated? The main reason includes technical developments over the past two years. Users gradually shifted from static websites to mobile applications. Since Universal Analytics was not designed to track traffic on mobile applications, it became increasingly difficult for the tool to keep track of and evaluate app usage. Another important factor is data protection. Tightening of the GDPR has made it significantly more difficult to collect user data. The update manages to deliver convincing solutions to the changing legal landscape.

What’s new in Google Analytics 4 – an overview

Google Analytics 4 offers numerous innovations, which provide a user-friendly, meaningful web tracking tool despite digital evolutions and stricter data protection guidelines. The most important changes include the event-driven data model as well as behaviour and conversion modelling.

The event-driven data model

Since the beginning of web analysis, the number of visits to a webpage – the so-called page views – have been called sessions. All subsequent analyses were often based on these sessions. However, with the increasing use of mobile applications, this approach became more and more error prone.

The page view is an important key figure in web analysis. It is used as a benchmark for calculating the bounce rate, the time spent on the website, the time on the page and the pages viewed per session. Older analysis tools are often no longer able to meaningfully map user behaviour with the traditional page view approach.

A Google Analytics 4 Property therefore follows a more flexible, event-based approach. This allows for more accurate reportings and additional information to be processed by Google Analytics. In this way, more data can be collected for each interaction, since each user interaction is sent to Google Analytics as an independent event – in this way visiting a website and it subsequent pages becomes more than a single session. In other words up to 25 additional event parameters can now be tracked by GA4 – far more than the four event categories currently allowed in Universal Analytics (Category, Action, Label, Value). On top, up to 500 uniquely named events can be sent to GA4, providing a broader range of data to evaluate engagement.

The second fundamental change in Google Analytics 4 is the way Google restores data that has been fragmented by browser restrictions and consent settings.

Behavior and Conversion Modeling

Analytics data is not perfect. Incorrect data records can be caused by, for example ad blockers, which prevent data collection. Rejecting cookies also restricts data collection. Analytics tools and their users are therefore confronted with various challenges.

To close gaps caused by cookie restrictions and cross-device user patterns, Google Analytics 4 differentiates between high-quality data and lower-quality data. Bbased on the modelling, trends in the high-quality data are identified, which are then applied to the collected low-quality data. This procedure is aided by machine learning.

Google Analytics 4 and Privacy Policy

With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), websites must obtain user consent for the use of cookies in order to be able to measure a website’s performance and the user’s behaviour. Upgrading to GA4 reduces this reliance on cookies. In fact Google Analytics 4 uses machine learning to achieve this goal. This is meantto ensure that data gaps caused by denied consent or cross-device use are minimized and filled.

The previous version of Google Analytics, the user’s’ entire IP addresses were recorded by default. This was problematic in terms of data protection laws, since IP addresses are treated as personal data. In order to still be able to use Universal Analytics in compliance with data protection regulations, the anonymization of the IP address had to be set manually in the tagging code. This step is no longer necessary. In Google Analytics 4, IP anonymization is activated by default and cannot be switched off. The length of time that data can be stored has also been drastically reduced. This corresponds to the principle of data minimisation.

Additionally, Google’s updated User Explorer tool a much-needed feature to comply with all privacy policies, is comprised in GA4. With the switch to GA4, it is now possible to delete the entirety of collected data from an individual user. This is an improvement, since before only data from a certain period of time could be removed.

BENEFITS

Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics

During the development of GA4, next to data protection, , special emphasis was placed on not only the scalability and growth of websites or an app – in fact the entire user journey was considered and can now be tracked. This is probably the biggest difference to Universal Analytics. Moreover, there are many more advantages that come with the use of Google Analytics 4, following we present you our best of:

More conversions:

Universal Analytics’ “Goals” are now referred to as “Conversions” within Google Analytics 4. While only a maximum of 20 goals could be defined in the free version of UA, Google Analytics 4 increases the maximum number to up to 30 conversions.

More data:

If extended measuring is activated, additional events are automatically recorded, while individual, additional parameters can be added. This means that as soon as the Google Analytics 4 Property is set up, the collection of useful data can begin immediately – without having to set up additional tags or change the code.

More efficient data presentation:

Other changes in Google Analytics 4 include the more efficient data presentation. Originally, GA divided the data into multiple tabs per report section and presented those in subject-specific tables. GA4 consolidates the data into an overview panel and uses widgets to display each piece of information. A welcome improvement over the spreadsheet-heavy Universal Analytics interface, this new layout makes it easier to spot key trends and anomalies in your data.

Advanced cross-device and cross-platform tracking:

Identity Spaces are identifiers that to identify users across devices and platforms. When Google Analytics 4 processes data, all available information is included in order to link it across devices and platforms. First the r User ID, then Google Signals, and finally Device ID is verified, as long as no other data is available. This allows GA to link user activity from one device/platform to activity on another device/platform. From now on, all user touchpoints are taken into account, regardless of the device or platform. With Google Analytics 4, the individual tracking of user journeys is therefore effortless.

Precise addressing of target groups:

Based on user data, Google Analytics 4 provides the ability to create target group lists. Users are grouped byGA4, for example based on the likelihood of whether a user will make a purchase in the next 7 days or not.

Target group lists can be linked with Google Ads or Search Ads 360 and be used for personalised ads within Google Ads Search Campaigns. In this way, individually defined target groups can be addressed based on user actions and attributes. This approach has the advantage that one’s own advertising behaviour is used to derive forecasts and one does not have to rely on data provided by the “black box” of a third-party provider.

Other free analysis options:

Even if you don’t manage a mobile app, you will find that GA4 is a significantly more powerful analysis tool, even compared to its previous versions. This is due to the “Exploration” reports, which were previously only available to GA360 users and are now available for free and on top have been greatly improved.For example, data can be easily searched through, individual users can be analyzed, custom conversion funnels can be created, and segments can be compared. The Big Query export, which was previously only available in the paid version, will also be available to every user. In the future, the user will have access to all raw data in order to link it to other sources or to run SQL queries.

DebugView:

GA4 has a report called “Debug View”, which allows you to isolate the real-time data coming into your own device while you debug your code. This means that you can quickly and easily test technical changes to ensure they are error-free.

internetwarriors – your Google Analytics agency in Berlin

Do you need support with the implementation of Google Analytics 4? With more than 20 years of experience as a Google Analytics agency in the heart of Berlin, we are happy to take care of the GA4 setup for you!

We set up Google Analytics 4 in accordance with your wishes and the requirements of your company. Our web analysis warriors will support you throughout the entire process – from creating and integrating a proper tracking code and integrating the Google Tag Manager to the individual configuration of the account and the Google Analytics 4 property. When setting up Google Analytics 4, we prioritize data protection and enable you to use the web tracking tool in compliance with data protection regulations. If you are currently using the previous version of Universal Analytics, we can use our expertise to switch to the new Google Analytics 4 for you.

We would be happy to provide you with regular reports on the most important data and figures as part of our SEO support and other marketing measures. Together with you we will find individual solutions to increase your performance.