What Is Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's free website and app analytics platform — the tool that tells you who is visiting your website, where they came from, what they did while they were there, and whether they took the actions that matter to your business.
GA4 was officially released in October 2020 and became the mandatory standard when Universal Analytics (UA) was shut down in July 2023. If you still have not migrated to GA4, you are operating without data — and that puts your competitors ahead of you.
From Sessions to Events: The Big Shift
The most important difference between old Universal Analytics and GA4 is how data is collected. Universal Analytics grouped everything into sessions. GA4 is built around events — every interaction is recorded individually: a page view, a scroll, a click, a video play, a form submission. This gives you a far richer, more granular picture of user behaviour.
GA4 vs Universal Analytics: Key Differences
| Feature | Universal Analytics Sunset 2023 | Google Analytics 4 Current |
|---|---|---|
| Data Model | Session-based | Event-based |
| Cross-platform | Website only | Web + iOS + Android |
| Primary Quality Metric | Bounce Rate | Engagement Rate |
| Privacy | Basic compliance | Built for GDPR / CCPA / privacy-first |
| Machine Learning | Limited | Built-in predictive insights |
| Custom Reports | Standard reports only | Advanced Explorations |
| Data Retention | Up to 50 months | 2–14 months (configurable) |
| Status | Shutdown | Active standard |
Why Google Analytics 4 Matters for Your Business
Without analytics, every marketing decision you make is a guess. With GA4, those decisions become evidence-based. Here is why GA4 is critical for businesses of every size.
GA4 and SEO Performance
GA4 is deeply connected to your search engine optimisation performance. When linked with Google Search Console, you can see not just which pages receive organic traffic, but how users behave after they arrive. A page ranking on page two that sees users leave in 10 seconds is a clear signal that the content is not matching search intent — and a direct opportunity for on-page SEO improvement.
GA4 and Content Marketing
GA4's engagement reports reveal which blog posts and landing pages are genuinely resonating with your audience. Combined with a strong content marketing strategy, this data tells you what to write more of — and what to stop writing. See also: how to write SEO-friendly content and understanding search intent.
GA4 and Paid Advertising
If you are running Google Ads, GA4 is the measurement engine that tells you whether your campaigns are working. Link GA4 to your Google Ads account to track the complete journey from ad click to conversion and calculate your true return on ad spend.
A Real-World Local Business Example
Consider a Sydney-based plumbing company investing in both organic SEO and Google Ads. Without GA4, they just know traffic is coming. With GA4, they can discover:
- 60% of website traffic is mobile — meaning mobile speed is a priority (see: website page speed optimisation)
- Organic search users convert at 3× the rate of social media users
- Their 'Emergency Plumber Sydney' landing page has low engagement — a content issue
- A blog post about burst pipes spikes in winter — a targeting opportunity
Each insight translates directly into smarter, more profitable decisions. This is why GA4 is the backbone of any serious local SEO strategy.
Setting Up Google Analytics 4 — Step by Step
Setting up GA4 from scratch takes about 30 minutes. Follow these steps carefully and you will have tracking running on your website today.
Step 1: Create or Sign Into Your Google Account
You need a Google account to use GA4. If you use Gmail or Google Workspace, you already have one. Go to analytics.google.com to begin.
Step 2: Create a New GA4 Property
On the GA4 homepage, click the button to begin the account setup process.
Use your business name. One account can hold multiple properties (websites).
Enter a property name, select your reporting timezone (e.g. Australia/Sydney), and choose your currency.
Select your industry category and business size. This configures relevant default reports.
Select goals like generating leads, driving sales, or raising awareness. You can change these anytime.
Step 3: Set Up a Data Stream
After creating your property, GA4 prompts you to create a Data Stream — the pipeline that sends data from your website into GA4. Select Web, enter your website URL, and click Create Stream. GA4 will generate your unique Measurement ID (formatted as G-XXXXXXXXXX). Keep this handy.
You will also see Enhanced Measurement — turn all options on. This automatically tracks scrolls, outbound clicks, file downloads, video plays, site search queries, and form interactions without any additional code.
Step 4: Install the Tracking Code
Option A — Google Tag Manager (Recommended)
Create a free account at tagmanager.google.com. Install the GTM container on your website. Inside GTM, create a new Google Tag, enter your GA4 Measurement ID, set the trigger to All Pages, and publish. This is the most flexible approach and pairs perfectly with technical SEO work.
Option B — WordPress Plugin
Install the free Site Kit by Google plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. Follow the on-screen prompts to connect your Google account and GA4 property. Site Kit automatically installs the tracking code on every page.
Option C — Manual Installation
Paste the Global Site Tag (found in Admin → Data Streams → View Tag Instructions) into the <head> section of every page on your website.
Step 5: Verify Your Installation
Open your website in a new incognito window. Return to GA4 and click Reports → Realtime. If your visit appears within a minute or two, your installation is confirmed. You can also use the free Google Tag Assistant Chrome extension to verify tags on any page.
Understanding the GA4 Interface
The GA4 interface looks very different from Universal Analytics. Here is a plain-English guide to navigating it.
Left-Hand Navigation Overview
- Home — Your daily dashboard with key metrics at a glance. Customisable to show what matters most to you.
- Realtime — What is happening on your website right now, including active users, pages being viewed, and live events.
- Reports → Lifecycle — The core reporting area: Acquisition, Engagement, Monetisation, and Retention.
- Reports → User — Demographics and Technology reports showing who your users are and what devices they use.
- Explore — GA4's custom reporting workspace, far more powerful than standard reports.
- Advertising — Attribution and conversion reports, especially useful if you run paid search advertising.
Key Terminology Explained Simply
Key GA4 Reports Explained
GA4 has dozens of reports. Here are the ones you will use most often and what to look for in each.
Realtime Report
Shows active users, the pages they are viewing, events firing, and their locations — all updating in real time. Use it to verify a new installation is working, monitor the first hours of a new campaign, or confirm a conversion event is firing after you set it up. This is your live SEO monitoring window.
Acquisition Reports
Answers the most important question in digital marketing: where does my traffic come from? Two key reports:
- User Acquisition — where new (first-time) users came from.
- Traffic Acquisition — where all sessions came from, including returning visitors.
Traffic is grouped into Channel Groupings — Organic Search, Direct, Referral, Paid Search, Organic Social, Email, and more. Understanding which channels drive the most valuable traffic — not just the most traffic — is one of the highest-value insights GA4 offers. This directly informs your competitor analysis and channel strategy.
Engagement Reports
What do users actually do on your website? Engagement reports tell you:
- Pages and Screens — your most visited pages ranked by views, engagement time, and conversions. Essential for SEO auditing.
- Events — all tracked interactions with their count.
- Conversions — how often your most important events occur.
- Landing Pages — which pages are the 'front door' to your site and how well they convert. Links directly to your local landing page performance.
Retention Report
Shows how many users return after their first visit and how engagement changes over time. High retention means your content is delivering ongoing value. For local content marketing, this is a key health metric.
Demographics and Technology Reports
Who is your audience? Age, gender, location, language. What devices do they use? For local businesses, geographic data confirms you are reaching your target service area. Technology reports are critical for design decisions — if 70%+ of your audience is on mobile (common for local service businesses), this should drive your mobile-first design and page speed priorities.
Events and Conversions in GA4
Events and conversions are the engine room of GA4. Without setting up conversions, you have analytics data but no way to measure whether your marketing is actually working.
The Three Types of Events
- Automatically Collected Events — tracked from day one with no setup:
page_view,session_start,first_visit. - Enhanced Measurement Events — enabled via your Data Stream settings:
scroll,click(outbound links),file_download,video_start,video_complete,view_search_results. - Custom Events — events you define yourself for business-specific actions like quote requests or location-specific form submissions.
How to Set Up Conversions
A conversion is simply an event you have flagged as important. To mark one: go to Admin → Events, find the event, and toggle Mark as conversion. That event now appears prominently across your reports.
The most important conversions to set up for a local service business:
- Contact form submissions
- Phone number clicks (especially valuable on mobile)
- Direction requests and map clicks
- Email link clicks
- Quote request completions
These conversions feed directly into your local SEO reporting and Google Ads optimisation.
Custom Events via Google Tag Manager
For actions GA4 does not track automatically — like a specific button click or a multi-step form completion — use Google Tag Manager to create custom events. When naming custom events: use lowercase, use underscores instead of spaces (e.g. quote_form_submission), and never use GA4's reserved event names.
GA4 Explorations: Custom Reporting
Standard reports answer standard questions. When you need to answer a question the standard reports cannot — this is where Explorations come in.
Explorations is GA4's advanced custom reporting workspace: a blank canvas where you can pull in any combination of dimensions and metrics, apply segments, and visualise data in multiple ways. Access it via Explore in the left navigation.
Types of Explorations
- Free Form — a drag-and-drop table builder. The most commonly used exploration type.
- Funnel Exploration — visualises the steps users take towards a conversion. Shows exactly where drop-offs occur — invaluable for improving your local landing pages.
- Path Exploration — shows the sequence of pages users follow through your site. Reveals how users navigate and where they go before and after key pages.
- Segment Overlap — compares up to three audience groups to understand the relationship between device type, traffic source, and conversion behaviour.
- User Lifetime — analyses the long-term behaviour of user cohorts. Most useful for subscription businesses or repeat-purchase models.
Connecting GA4 with Other Google Tools
GA4 becomes significantly more powerful when connected with other platforms. These integrations take minutes to set up and provide outsized analytical value.
Google Search Console
Search Console tracks how your site appears in Google search results — queries, impressions, clicks, and average position. When linked to GA4, you get a combined view of SEO and behaviour data in one place. This is essential for small business SEO and tracking keyword performance.
To link: Admin → Search Console Links → Link. Allow 24–48 hours for data to appear. Also read: how to set up Google Search Console for your website.
Google Ads
Linking GA4 to your Google Ads account allows you to import GA4 conversions directly into your campaigns, use GA4 audiences for remarketing, and track post-click user behaviour in detail. To link: Admin → Google Ads Links. You need admin access on both accounts.
BigQuery
For advanced users: BigQuery is Google's cloud data warehouse. Most small businesses will never need it, but if you outgrow GA4's 14-month data retention or need to run complex SQL queries on raw data, BigQuery is the natural next step. The export from GA4 to BigQuery is free.
GA4 and Privacy: What You Need to Know
Privacy is no longer an afterthought — it is a legal and reputational requirement. Here is what every GA4 user needs to understand.
GA4's Built-In Privacy Features
IP anonymisation — meaning that the full IP addresses of your visitors are never stored — is enabled by default in GA4 and cannot be turned off. This is a significant improvement over Universal Analytics, where it had to be manually configured. GA4 also uses a first-party data approach, reducing reliance on the third-party cookies that browsers are increasingly blocking.
Cookie Consent
In Australia, the Privacy Act and Australian Privacy Principles govern how businesses collect and use personal information. In Europe, GDPR requires explicit consent. In California, CCPA gives users opt-out rights.
If your website attracts visitors from regulated regions, implement a cookie consent banner. GA4 supports Google Consent Mode v2, which adjusts tracking based on a user's consent choices — tracking consenting users fully and using anonymous modelled data for non-consenting users. This protects your data completeness while respecting user rights.
Data Retention Settings — A Critical Default
By default, GA4 retains user-level data for only 2 months. This means you cannot analyse data older than 2 months in Explorations. Change this to 14 months immediately: Admin → Data Settings → Data Retention → 14 months → Save.
Common GA4 Mistakes Beginners Make
Avoid these mistakes from the start and your GA4 data will be accurate, reliable, and genuinely useful.
1. Not Verifying the Tracking Code
Installing the code is not enough — always verify it is firing correctly using the Realtime report or Google Tag Assistant before trusting any GA4 data.
2. Leaving Data Retention at 2 Months
Change it to 14 months on day one. This cannot be stressed enough.
3. Setting No Conversions
Without conversions, you have data but no score. Define what success looks like for your business — form submissions, phone clicks, enquiries — and mark those events as conversions immediately.
4. Not Filtering Your Own Traffic
Your own visits distort your data. Create an internal traffic filter to exclude your office and home IP addresses: Admin → Data Streams → Configure Tag Settings → Internal Traffic. Then activate it under Admin → Data Filters.
5. Not Linking Google Search Console
The combination of GA4 and Search Console is one of the most powerful free SEO tools available. Linking them takes five minutes and dramatically improves your ability to understand organic performance. See also: common SEO mistakes small businesses make.
6. Comparing GA4 Data to Universal Analytics Data
Because the data models are fundamentally different, direct comparisons are not valid. Session counts, user counts, and other metrics will all differ — this does not mean GA4 is wrong. Establish a new baseline in GA4 and measure progress against that going forward.
7. Relying Only on the Home Dashboard
The home screen is a starting point. The real intelligence is in Acquisition, Engagement, and Conversion reports — and especially in Explorations. Build a habit of going deeper.
Practical GA4 Tips for Small Business Owners
You do not need to spend hours in GA4 every day. Here are focused habits that deliver consistent value.
Focus on 3–5 Key Metrics
Resist the temptation to track everything. For most local service businesses, the five metrics that matter most are: Active Users, Organic Search traffic, Conversions, Top landing pages by conversion rate, and Acquisitions by channel. Master these before expanding. This focus is the foundation of effective local SEO optimisation.
Build a Weekly Analytics Habit
15 minutes every Monday morning. Check traffic and conversion trends, flag anything unusual, and identify one insight to act on this week. Consistency beats occasional deep dives every time.
Use Date Comparison
GA4 allows you to compare two date ranges side by side. Use it to compare this month vs last month, or this quarter vs the same quarter last year. Context is everything in analytics.
Combine GA4 with Search Console for SEO
Cross-reference organic search traffic with conversion data. Which organic landing pages convert? Which receive traffic but generate zero conversions? These answers reveal exactly where to focus your content and local SEO efforts. For a structured approach, see our SEO audit and reporting service.
Set Up Automated Insights
GA4 uses machine learning to flag unusual data patterns — sudden traffic spikes, conversion drops, or unexpected audience shifts. Review the Insights section of your home dashboard regularly. They serve as an early warning system for both problems and opportunities.
GA4 Glossary: Key Terms Reference
Bookmark this quick-reference guide to GA4 terminology.
Frequently Asked Questions
The most common questions we receive about Google Analytics 4.
Conclusion
Google Analytics 4 is the most powerful free analytics tool ever made available to small business owners. Once properly set up, it gives you a clear, detailed picture of who is visiting your website, where they are coming from, what they are doing, and whether they are taking the actions that grow your business.
The key takeaway from this guide is this: data-driven businesses grow faster than businesses that rely on guesswork. GA4 makes data-driven decision-making accessible to every business regardless of size or budget.
Your next step is simple. If you have not yet installed GA4, do it today using the step-by-step setup instructions above. If GA4 is already on your site, spend 15 minutes this week in your Acquisition and Engagement reports and find one insight you can act on immediately.
For a complete view of your digital marketing performance, combine GA4 with our SEO analytics monitoring, SEO audit and reporting, and local content marketing services. Ready to go deeper? Our beginner's guide to SEO is the natural next step after mastering your analytics.