Google Universal Analytics (UA) will be replaced on the 1st of July 2023 by Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Starting with this date, Universal Analytics will stop processing any new hits and you’ll only be able to use GA4. You can still access your previously processed data in Universal Analytics for at least six months. That being said, there’s no better time to start preparing for the implementation!
In this comprehensive resource, we begin by answering some of the most pressing questions we’ve extracted from our clients at Zitec, regarding the inevitable switch to GA4, and continue by offering you a step-by-step implementation plan, together with support to ensure a smooth setup.
Let’s start with the basic questions first:
You can use both UA and GA4 until the 1st of July, 2023. According to Google, through dual tagging, you can keep your Universal Analytics implementation in place while you set up your GA4 implementation. This allows you to build a historical record in GA4 while continuing to depend on UA until you’re ready for the switch.
The entire audience setup must be re-created in GA4; you cannot import audiences from Universal Analytics. In order to be able to use a GA4 audience with your Google Ads campaigns properly, you have to activate Google signals. Then, you need to enable ads personalization when you link your analytics property to Google Ads. You can create up to 400 links per property.
UA hit types include page hits, eCommerce hits, event hits, and social interaction hits, while in GA4 data is event-based, meaning that any interaction can be captured as an event. Therefore, UA property hit types translate to events in a GA4 property.
GA4 » Reports » Acquisition » Traffic acquisition » Paid Search.
After connecting Google Ads to GA4, in the Paid Search section you’ll find the entire list of Google Ads reports: Accounts, Campaigns, Treemaps, Sitelinks, Bid Adjustments, Keywords, Search Queries, and Hour of Day. Your Ad Manager revenue data will be available in the Monetization » Publisher ads reports and the Explorations workspace.
No. GA4 will only be a more robust and meaningful tool for website traffic analytics, tracking, and reporting. It helps you better measure your marketing efforts, providing you with more insights into what your target audience actually finds more relevant and engages with.
At the moment, GA4 uses first-party cookies to identify users across sessions. However, with country-level privacy controls, you can minimize the collection of user data (cookies and metadata) and still preserve key measurement functionalities.
Currently, GA4 is not fully GDPR compliant. Although it added extra privacy-focused features, due to the invalidation of the Privacy Shield framework in 2020, Google is yet to regulate EU-US data protection. However, you can use IP anonymization and avoid sharing collected data with other Google products or obtain the explicit user’s consent to use the GA cookies on your website.
Now let’s get down to more applicable things and have a look at what actions the UA – GA4 swap requires of you:
GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics, a cross-platform analytics tool that allows you to monitor website traffic and engagement. It was introduced in 2019 in a bid to address the evolving measurement standards and help businesses succeed in the digital economy.
The main difference between UA and GA4 is related to events, instead of page views, which you can set up by yourself. GA4 also measures certain events by default: scrolls, pageviews, video engagement, outgoing clicks, search queries on the site, or file downloads. The new version also leverages machine learning technology to predict new insights and to keep up with evolving needs and user expectations.
Since the launch, Google brings new features and upgrades almost on a monthly basis. If you want to keep up with what’s new, you can check the Analytics announcements section. Here are some of the most important updates so far:
GA4 gives your businesses the flexibility to monitor a wide range of data. Besides keeping up with digital consumer behavior and bypassing data privacy constraints, there is a bunch of other benefits worth having in mind when optimizing your campaigns:
GA4 helps marketing teams and professionals better measure their marketing efforts by providing more insights into user behavior. Even though the new version still has some finetuning to address, early adopters of GA4 have already reported certain benefits:
However, there are also reported certain challenges, mostly related to mistakes in configurations that need to be avoided, some of them being caused by the still-developing GA4 interface.
It’s better to start the transition process sooner than later, to make sure you can build more historical data that you can already use when Universal Analytics is discontinued.
2 and 32 weeks after GA4 is set up and starts collecting data, the machine learning model will be sufficiently trained to analyze data and predict users’ actions. This is when marketers will begin to see “Insights” appear on their GA4 Home page, which will show any changes, emerging trends, or inconsistencies about their site or app.
In order to properly go through this process, you can work with an agency or discover the steps via Google Support.
It’s recommended to have GA4 installed along with your existing Universal Analytics property due to the fact that starting with July 1st UA won’t be recording any new data. 6 months after this day, you will still be able to see the historical data in the Universal Analytics property. Afterward, it’s most likely that all data will be deleted. We recommend that you download all data from the UA after July 1 if they’re still legally accessible (if you have rights to keep the data according to GDPR).
You can learn how to create custom reports in GA4 by using the new Explore tab and experimenting with the settings. When you first set up a report, you’ll notice the report editor has two columns, Variables and Tab Settings. To avoid being overwhelmed, try to focus on one at a time.
When you’re ready to create your first custom report, you can follow these steps:
Choose Free Form in the Explore Tab » Pick Date Range » Add Segments (Optional) » Add Dimensions » Add Metrics » Drag and Drop Segments » Drag & Drop Rows and Columns » Drag & Drop Values
Bear in mind that there’s no landing pages report in the GA4 reporting interface. You can create a custom report so you can still see your landing page data easily.
Google Universal Analytics will be replaced on the 1st of July 2023 by Google Analytics 4, meaning that you need to start preparing your GA4 property, follow UA and GA4 reports in parallel, and customize your reporting dashboard. Once you've finished the initial Google Analytics 4 initial setup, you can also have a look at our recent article designed to help you get more relevant insights about your audience and business.
Contact our Digital Marketing team for any questions related to your GA4 implementation!