GA4 on a laptop screen

Google Analytics 4 tips and tricks

It’s now been over a year since Google replaced Universal Analytics with GA4 – and the reviews have been mixed. We talked to a couple of Google Analytics ‘power users’ to get some insights into how to thrive rather than just survive on GA4.

Tami Iseli

16 October 2024

9 minute read

In mid 2023, Google cut the apron strings of its trusty platform, Universal Analytics (UA), forcing us all to transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). If you’re like most of us, you accepted the change with the reluctance of a toddler who’s just been told to go to bed. There was a bit of kicking and screaming, a few indignant foot stomps, and finally, a reluctant submission to the inevitable. 

You’ve probably had enough time to get over the initial shock of adapting to GA4’s foreign-yet-vaguely-familiar interface, but can you really say, hand-on-heart, that you’ve mastered it? 

While there are some things that just don’t work like they used to (segmentation frustration, anyone?), GA4 does have some redeeming qualities, and it even gives you some functionality that wasn’t available in UA. 

To help unearth some of the advantages of GA4, we spoke to our own Digital Analytics Specialist Sarah Crooke, and Business Assist’s Digital Strategist Pip Baddock.

In the interests of ending on a high note, let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first…

GA4 - the drawbacks 

The main criticisms of GA4 centre around limitations on data availability due to increased privacy protection, and a reduction in out-of-the-box reporting capabilities.

Changes to data retention and reporting 

While one of the key motivators for the transition to GA4 was around bringing the platform into line with privacy regulations like the GDPR, some of these changes have led to challenges for users of Google Analytics. Chief among these is that you can only extract two months worth of data by default, for use in their explorations or Looker Studio (this can be extended to 14 months, but more on that later). 

GA4 also applies data thresholds, which are designed to prevent anyone viewing data from inferring the identity or sensitive information of individuals. “Putting aside the moral or ethical discussion about privacy, this can be a frustrating experience when you really want to understand web or app usage for a specific scenario,” says Business Assist’s Pip Baddock. “It’s likely you had no interest in specific individuals, you just wanted to know what was happening with a campaign or web page, but this limiting of displayed data in GA4 can make it difficult.” 

Lack of packaged reporting 

Many of the standard reports that were available in UA have not been brought across to GA4. “For frequent users of Universal Analytics, we all had our favourites,” says Baddock. “In GA4 a massive number of these standard reports have simply not been recreated, and instead we are left with a vastly smaller number of reports that do not allow the same level of slicing and dicing of the data, or at least it feels quite a lot more challenging to do that slicing and dicing now.”

As well as lacking many of the old familiar reports that were available in UA, GA4 also lacks an easy way to segment reports. “Previously, in UA, if you wanted to segment your data by, for example, people who landed on a certain page and then clicked the CTA, you could use the segment feature and explore the data about these users,” says Luminary’s Sarah Crooke. “In GA4 you need to go into the Explore section and create a funnel report.” The catch is that the data for this new audience only begins to collect after the time you create the report, so you can’t look back in time at this view of the data, like you could with UA. 

But it’s not all bad…

Despite these drawbacks, GA4 is not all doom and gloom. One of the key advantages that GA4 offers is better cross-platform tracking. GA4 tracks user interactions across multiple sources (apps, websites, etc.), providing a more accurate picture of user behaviour. 

“Universal Analytics was built primarily to support web browsing, where the prevailing type of interaction was a ‘page view’ on a website,” explains Baddock. “GA4, on the other hand, uses a more flexible ‘event’ model where you have more control over defining what makes an event (page views, messages, clicks, or other interactions), making it more suited to app tracking.”

GA4 also allows for data from different sources to be consolidated into a single account. “This supports tracking of users across multiple stages of their interaction with your organisation, which may be via an app, a web page, and other types of interactions,” adds Baddock. “App tracking in Universal Analytics typically involved setting up a separate account or property, which basically meant your reporting often had to be done in two separate environments, one for apps and one for websites.” 

In addition, setting up event tracking is easier in GA4. There are many events that are automatically tracked in GA4, including scrolls, clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads. You no longer have to manually add labels to everything you want to track, and you don’t have to add code in the back end to buttons. 

Although it can be challenging to find the information you need, GA4 is actually highly customisable. Google is also listening to all the feedback, and changes are coming thick and fast. It recently added useful plot rows in UA, and rumour has it that annotations are coming soon.

Tips for getting more out of GA4 

Set data retention to as long as possible

If you haven’t done it already – and your privacy policy allows for it – it’s worth extending your data retention settings. To do this, simply go to Admin > Property settings > Data collection and modification > Data retention. From here, you can select up to 14 months for event and user data. This covers data in the Explore reports, however, note that the two month period is always applied to age, gender and interests data, regardless of your settings. 

Extending data retention

Connect GA4 to BigQuery 

Another way around the data retention limitations in GA4 is to link your Google Analytics account to BigQuery, Google’s cloud-based data warehouse. Unlike Google Analytics, there is no forced data retention period in BigQuery, so you can store the data as long as you like. BigQuery also gives you access to raw data; while GA4 reports are based on sampled data (where a subset of the data is used to identify patterns and trends), BigQuery stores all of the imported data. This means it can provide deeper and more accurate analysis. 

The downside is that BigQuery exports only start from when it’s enabled. “Connect GA4 to BigQuery as soon as possible so you have access to the raw data,” advises Crooke. “You may not want it now but it doesn't backdate, so when you do want it, you will have a lot more data.” 

For guidance on how to link GA4 with BigQuery, check out this Google Analytics help page.

Use Library for easy access to relevant reports

Although there are many articles online that will help you find alternative pathways to specific types of data that aren’t easy to find in GA4 – like this one on setting up segments – GA4’s Library feature gives you easy access to the reports that are most relevant to your organisation.

Adding a business objectives collection

If you specified your business objectives at the point of setting up your GA4 account (e.g. generate leads, drive online sales, etc), you will have a tailored collection of reports in your Reports menu, called a ‘Business objectives collection’. If you didn’t specify business information during setup, or you migrated from an Analytics property using the Setup Assistant, your reports will default to the baseline collection of reports (i.e. the ‘Life cycle collection’). To replace this with a Business objectives collection, go to Reports > Library > Business objectives > Edit. You can then drag reports from the box on the right over to your Business objectives collection. Tip - don’t forget to hit save when you’re done!

For assistance, visit Google’s help page on setting up a Business objectives collection.

Business collections

Using the Library to save your own reports

As well as providing a suggested set of reports tailored to your business objectives, the Library also allows you to save your own reports and dashboards in GA4. “This is very helpful as you labour to create reports that you find useful, and replace various Universal Analytics reports,” says Baddock. “It means you now have an ability to add your own customer-specific menu or section in the GA4 menu. So for example, you could add ‘ABC Company Reports’ as a new section in the menu and set up your own favourite reports.” 

To save your own reports, go to Library > Reports > Create new report. If you want to create a dashboard, select ‘Create overview report’, otherwise select ‘Create detail report’. From here, you can either create a report from scratch or start from a template. 

Consider using Looker Studio for reporting

With many of the old familiar reports from UA now missing in action, many analytics users are turning to external reporting tools to bridge the gap. One of the most popular options is Looker Studio, Google’s free data visualisation platform (formerly known as Google Data Studio). The advantage of Looker Studio is that it allows you to create reports in a visually appealing and easily digestible format.
It also acts as a data aggregator, which means you can pull data from a range of different sources so you’re not restricted to the data you can extract from GA4. “Tools like Google’s Looker Studio consult all available data and in many cases allow you to report on this data without the same restrictions that GA4 applies,” says Baddock.  

Looker Studio also makes it easy to share reports. “Explore is not shareable to people who don’t have GA4 access,” explains Crooke. “Even if they do have access, they can’t change the date or filter the data. In Looker Studio, you can share reports with a wider audience and they can have more interactions with the data.”

The challenge with Looker Studio is that, while the outputs are intuitive and accessible, it does require a significant level of technical expertise to set up. So if you’re not overly tech savvy you may need some assistance to get it up and running. That said, Looker Studio is great if you have other reporting tools and you need to consolidate the data, or present it visually and share it with others.

UA v GA4: The verdict

While GA4 has failed to replicate some of the reports that users had come to rely on in UA, it does offer improvements in multi-channel tracking, along with some handy new features like automatic event tracking. 

GA4 also facilitates some powerful customisations, but on the whole, its interface is far less intuitive than UA. Getting to the deeper insights that can be found on the platform often requires time and a significant level of data expertise to set up. 

Hopefully this article will help to alleviate some of the headaches associated with GA4 and allow you to make use of some of its new features. However, if you feel you could use some guidance on how to get the most out of the platform, please feel free to reach out to our analytics experts.

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