Google Analytics (GA4) is the newest version of Google Analytics and is set to replace Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. At that time, UA will stop collecting new data, and GA4 will be required for all Google Analytics tracking purposes moving forward.
In this blog, we’ll reveal all the latest news you need to know about the transition to GA4 and how your brand can be prepared. Bookmark this article so that you can stay up-to-date with the most current information on GA4!
January 26
Deciding where to start with GA4 reports
With GA4 comes a plethora of choices as to how to go about pulling the data and insights you need, and the user interface may not always be the right choice. The questions below should help reduce confusion and point you in the right direction for everything you need!
Are you looking for a general overview or deeper insights?
A general overview of common metrics is likely best for the Reports section, although you will likely need to build your own collection of reports to get started. Keep in mind that everyone with access can see and access the collections and topics you add.
Digging in for deeper insights most likely won’t be possible with Reports, so proceed to the following questions to decide where you should look instead.
Are you looking to analyze data on the fly or build a robust, reusable report?
Explore is best for deep analysis on the fly, with the ability to easily interact with data to dig deeper, slice and dice in different ways, compare user segments, or visualize data with funnel and path reports.
Robust, reusable reports are most likely better for Data Studio, especially if it needs to be accessible and editable by multiple people (see next question).
Does your report need to be editable by others on your team (including date range edits)?
If it’s just for you, Explore is a perfectly reasonable option. Sharing an Explore report only shares view-level access, so others will not be able to edit, even just to change the date range.
If you need to share the report with other team members, and those people need to have the same ability to edit that you do, Data Studio is likely the way to go.
Sharing Explore reports may be sufficient if you’re sharing the results of a recent one-time analysis you created, but data that needs to be accessed and updated repeatedly should be built in Data Studio.
The chart below provides a summary, with recommendations in teal. Start with this chart to decide which tool makes the most sense for each task you are looking to accomplish.
We know that many marketers are feeling overwhelmed about the transition to Google Analytics 4. It’s not just that capabilities are changing – so is the entire interface. Having a team of GA4-certified experts by your side could ease the stress a lot for you. To see how we can help you switch to GA4 smoothly, send a message to our team today.
January 12
Customizing your reports in library
With Admin access, you can create new collections, topics, and reports, and you can edit any of the existing collections, topics, or reports to fit the needs of your business. For example, if you’re a lead gen site, it might be smart to delete the monetization reports if you don’t track any revenue-generating metrics.
Note: The changes you make to Reports are applied to everyone with access, and it’s not possible at this time to have a private report collection.
To customize reports, navigate to the Library feature at the bottom of the Reports section. As mentioned above, editing and creating reports requires Admin access, so if you don’t see this option, that means you need Admin access.
Within the report Library, you’ll find all the prebuilt reports we mentioned in our January 5 update (below), and you can click to edit them from there. You can also edit existing reports by clicking the pencil icon in the top right corner of any report.
Building a report is a lot like building a custom report in Universal Analytics, but even more simplified. You can select as many dimensions as you need, and up to 12 metrics.
In your report, your selected dimensions will be provided as dropdown primary dimension options, so secondary dimensions can only be applied outside of the initial report configuration.
Finish out your report by adding dimension-based filters, selecting chart types, and building the summary cards you’ll want to have in your Overview reports. When you’ve finished designing your report, save it and give it a name and description.
Creating overview reports
The summary cards you’ll add to your overview reports are created within your detail reports, so make sure not to skip this step when building a detail report. After your topic’s detail reports are complete, you’ll want to create an overview report and select the summary cards you’d like to display in your overview.
Within the report configuration, you’ll be able to expand or collapse collection headers to find the summary cards from your specific collection. You may also find useful cards in the “Other Cards” tab.
Designing collections and topics
After you finish building all the detail and overview reports for your collection, click “Create new collection.” Once again, you can start from a template or build a blank collection from scratch.
From here, you can drag and drop your reports (provided in a list to the right) into your collection design. When you’re done, click Save and return to the main Library screen.
Publishing a collection
After you’ve finished designing your reports, topics, and collection, you’ll need to publish the collection before it begins showing up in your Reports navigation.
To do this, go to the main Library page, find your collection across the top, click the three dots, and select “Publish.” You will now see the reports in your main Reports lineup (and so will everyone else!). Collections are listed in alphabetical order.
It’s also worth noting that publishing collections and organizing reports into collections and topics is not required. If you save a report without adding it to a collection or publishing that collection, you can still access the report at any time by navigating to the Library screen.
Keep in mind that Reports are very limited, so you should design these to be as top-level as possible. Not all dimensions and metrics are available, so if you run into roadblocks, your report design may be better for Explore or Data Studio. In our next update, we’ll share tips to help you decide which feature is right for your specific needs, so stay tuned!
ROI Revolution is a GA4-certified agency, and our experts have already migrated over 225 websites to the new platform. If you’re dreading the transition or are simply looking for some support with this major change, our experts would be thrilled to relieve the stress for you. Send a message to our team today to connect with our GA4 experts!
January 4
Exploring predefined report collections and topics in GA4
The Life cycle collection of reports in GA4 is predefined to help you break down user activity at each stage of the customer user journey, from acquisition to retention. This collection includes the following topics, each of which houses an Overview report and up to three Detail reports.
Life cycle collection
- Acquisition: These reports are all about where traffic originated, both from a user scope (User acquisition) and session scope (Traffic acquisition). These two detail reports are structured the same way, but with different approaches to attribution. You can think of User acquisition as a first-touch model, whereas Traffic acquisition is a last-touch model.
Attribution models chosen at the property level are not applied to acquisition reports, as they are tied specifically to Conversion reporting.
ROI Tip: The Acquisition overview report contains a link to a Google Ads campaign report that uses a session-scoped campaign dimension by default. Change your primary dimension to “First user Google Ads campaign” for first-touch data, or use Explore or Data Studio to build a more comprehensive report with data-driven attribution.
- Engagement: These reports highlight the engagement users have with the website or app after they’ve arrived. This collection houses reports on events, conversions, and pages, with metrics like engagement rate and user stickiness.
- Monetization: This topic contains ecommerce reporting as well as additional reports like in-app purchases from mobile apps and ad revenue from publisher platforms like AdMob.
- Retention: Retention is currently a standalone Overview report of sparkline to show how frequently and how long users engage with the website, with users grouped into cohorts.
User collection
The User collection is designed to tell you more about the users engaging with your website or app, such as their ages, interests, and devices.
- Demographics: These reports classify users by age, location, language, and gender, along with interests they express through their online browsing and purchase activities.
- Tech: These reports provide details on user platforms, devices, operating systems, and browsers.
We’re excited to help you stay up-to-date with everything you need to know about this major transition. Peruse some of our resources below to build up your knowledge – and if you’d like to partner with our GA4-certified experts to make sure your transition is stress-free and seamless, send a message to our team today!
- How to Set Up Your GA4 Property for Success
- Webinar Replay: Getting More Out of GA4
- ROI Revolution Is Now a GA4 Certified Agency!
- The 411 on GA4: Infographic
- Getting More Out of GA4: Attribution Key Concepts
December 16
A breakdown of reports in GA4
The Google Analytics 4 (GA4) interface is designed with four distinct areas to analyze data:
- Home: Bubbles up relevant information based on your previous behavior in GA4
- Reports: Contains predefined reports to give you top-level insights into your data
- Explore: A collection of advanced data analysis techniques that allow you to uncover deeper insights than what’s possible in Reports
- Advertising: Provides various tools for analyzing multi-channel attribution modeling and conversion paths
In today’s update, you’ll dive deeper into what the Reports section has to offer.
To access GA4 reports, click on “Reports” in the left-hand navigation of your GA4 property.
From here, you can navigate to the Reports snapshot, Realtime reports, or sets of report collections (report group headers) and topics (subsets of reports). The default report collections are Life cycle and User, and topics are the expandable report groups within these collections, such as Acquisition or Demographics. All but the Realtime reports are fully customizable by account administrators.
Reports snapshot
This is an overview report that opens by default when you first navigate to Reports, and can contain a collage of any of the summary cards available from any of your Overview reports.
Realtime reports
Realtime reports let you monitor current performance by showing information about the users on your website or app within the last 30 minutes, i.e. users whose sessions have not yet expired. You can apply comparisons to Realtime reports, but the report cards themselves cannot be edited.
Overview reports
Within Reports, collections contain topics, and each topic typically contains an Overview report. Overview reports are like the Reports snapshot in that they contain summary cards that link to detail reports in the bottom right corner of each card.
Not all linked detail reports are also shown in the left navigation, so going through the Overview report may be the only way to find certain detail reports by default (for example, the Google Ads campaigns report link shown in this Acquisition overview screenshot).
Detail reports
Detail reports are single reports that typically contain a data table, graph, and one additional chart visualization like a bar chart or scatter plot. Data tables in detail reports can show up to 250 rows and can have secondary dimensions and comparisons applied.
Stay tuned for more updates about reports in GA4, including details on the different types of report collections, how to customize GA4 reports to fit your unique needs, how to decide which report to use, and more!
Looking for a more in-depth look into how to use GA4? In our Getting More Out of GA4 webinar replay, you can watch a live walk-through of a GA4 account, plus get an explanation from our analytics experts of attribution models, lookback windows, and data retention in the new attribution platform. Watch the video here.
November 10
A quick GA4 Q&A
The switch to Google Analytics 4 is just under 8 months away. Is your brand ready? There are a few things you should definitely know ahead of time to make the transition as low-stress as possible. Here are a few of the most commonly asked questions about GA4 to help you prepare.
- What is GA4? GA4 is the newest version of Google Analytics that is replacing Universal Analytics.
- When is the switch to GA4 happening? GA4 will replace Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. At that time, UA will stop collecting new data and GA4 will be required moving forward.
- What is scope in GA4? Scope gives advertisers the ability to see what generated an event or session, and to see where the user who generated the session came from. The 3 main types of scope in GA4 are user, session, and event scope.
- What are attribution models in GA4? An attribution model is a rule, set of rules, or data-driven algorithm that determines how conversion credit is assigned to touchpoints. The types of attribution models in GA4 are data-driven, last click, ads-preferred last click, first click, linear, position-based, and time decay. They are applied to event-scoped dimensions and metrics.
- How long are lookback windows in GA4? The max lookback window in GA4 is 90 days, with additional preset options of 30 or 60 days. GA4 also introduces the concept of acquisition conversion events with preset options of 30 or 7 days (though these are only applicable to first_open and first_visit events).
- How long is data retained in GA4? GA4 allows up to 14 months of data retention with an additional 2-month option.
- What about Universal Analytics 360? Universal Analytics 360 is the enterprise version of the platform. It includes more complex and unique measurement capabilities and allows up to 50 months of data retention instead of just 14. Most notably, 360 properties will be migrated on July 1, 2024, instead of 2023.
ROI Revolution is a GA4-certified agency ready to help your brand track sales with high accuracy and low stress in the new platform. If your brand is looking to offload some of your concerns, send a message to our team today to see how we can relieve your worries.
October 27
Getting More Out of GA4: Webinar Replay
Hopefully you’ve done the hardest part of transitioning to GA4 and beat the deadline to implement year-over-year tracking. But do you know where to start when it comes to understanding your data in the new platform?
In this webinar replay video, dive into the next generation of Google Analytics. In addition to giving you a live walk-through of a GA4 account, our analytics experts will help you understand concepts like:
- Attribution modeling: Discover new features in GA4 that allow you to choose the most appropriate model for your business and view conversion data through multiple attribution lenses at once.
- Lookback windows: Understand what they are and what shorter windows in GA4 mean for your data.
- Data retention: Learn what you can do today to maximize your year-over-year data in GA4.
- The importance of scope: Explore how scope contextualizes metrics and pairs with attribution models for insightful reporting.
Ready or not, GA4 will be the required path forward for marketers as of July 1, 2023. Watch the video to get ahead of the game when it comes to understanding your data in GA4.
October 13
4 Keys to Setting Up GA4 for Success
Picture this: You’ve migrated your Universal Analytics property over to GA4 and have basic year-over-year tracking set up. Now what? Taking a thoughtful approach to tracking and reporting design in GA4 now will empower you to truly take advantage of all the new features GA4 has to offer.
When setting up your GA4 property for success, there are four key GA4 attribution concepts you’ll want to consider.
- Event tracking: For most ecommerce organizations, pageview and purchase tracking are the bare minimum. These data points likely fall short of the tracking you have set up in Universal Analytics. Events have conceptually changed in GA4, and there are a few considerations to make before mapping them into your new property.
- Custom dimensions and metrics: These are important data points to track membership status, page types, and other details that Google Analytics does not provide by default. While these are still available in GA4, it is vital to review what is still necessary and how custom definitions have changed.
- Standard report customization: If you’ve started to dabble in GA4, you may have noticed that the standard reports and navigation structure contain elements that may not be directly applicable to your business. The good news is that GA4 makes this completely customizable.
- GA4 property settings: It can be confusing to determine what property-level customization settings apply to your organization vs. what might cause issues down the line if left unaddressed.
Want to dive deeper into these 4 keys to setting up GA4? Read our blog on how to set up your GA4 property for success.
October 10
What You Need to Know About Data Retention in Google Analytics 4
Data retention is one of the main factors that will change with the transition from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4. Data retention refers to the amount of time before user-level and event-level data stored in GA4 is automatically deleted from Analytics servers.
In GA4, this only affects Explorations and does not affect any standard aggregated reporting. The recommended event data retention setting is 14 months to allow for year-over-year reporting on user and event-level data.
Data retention will be different in GA4 compared to Universal Analytics. One major change is that Universal Analytics allows for indefinite data retention, while GA4 allows up to 14 months of data retention.
UA offers 14-, 26-, 38-, and 50-month options, while GA4 also offers a two-month option.
Lastly, in UA, a change in the retention setting does not affect data that was captured while the old setting was applied. In GA4, a change in the retention setting also applies to data already collected.
The PPC and analytics experts at ROI Revolution are GA4 certified to make sure your brand is ready to track your sales with high accuracy in the new platform. Making the switch effectively can take a lot of time and bring a lot of stress. If your brand is looking to offload some of your concerns, reach out to our team today to see how we can make the transition stress-free and accurate.
October 5
ROI Revolution Becomes GA4 Certified!
As part of setting our clients up for success with GA4, ROI Revolution was one of the first agencies to earn a GA4 certification. We earned our certification within three weeks of the exam being released.
With Universal Analytics going away in July 2023, brands that didn’t transition before July 2022 won’t be able to track year-over-year data in GA4. ROI Revolution’s dedicated Analytics team has been working diligently to onboard clients to GA4 tracking and make GA4 their single source of truth, and we’ve completed GA4 tracking setups for over 200 websites!
We’ve worked with all of our clients on getting tracking implemented in GA4, pushing them through each stage of tracking implementation and ensuring that they actively analyze GA4 to ensure our clients have everything they need for tracking and their data looks as expected.
We provide recommendations on how to utilize GA4 features to your advantage, including how GA4 integrates with other Google products like Merchant Center, Optimize, Search Console, BigQuery, and Data Studio.
“Our goal is not to just get by with the transition to GA4 and do the bare minimum to be okay when it changes, but to really take advantage of the opportunities to help our clients make the most out of GA4.” – David Austin, VP of Technology, ROI Revolution
ROI’s technology team has also built out a proprietary tool for offline conversion tracking in GA4. Our internal RevolutionSuite technology empowers us to not only set up accurate GA4 attribution and tracking for our clients but also to provide strategic, data-driven insights.
In order to ensure you have the best ad performance, you need to have the best data. GA4 is the future of tracking – and you should have a great partner with you to go along with it.
If you’re considering making the switch to a new agency, the transition to GA4 isn’t something you’ll have to stress about with ROI Revolution. Our experts are equipped to effectively handle GA attribution models, data retention, reporting, tracking, and more so that you have a smooth transition to GA4.
Reach out to our team today to explore how we can ensure your brand has a smooth transition to GA4.
September 9
Scope & Lookback Windows in GA4
Scope describes the extent to which a metric or dimension is applicable in GA4. It allows advertisers to see what generated an event or a session and then zoom out to see where the user came from.
There are three main types of scope in GA4 reporting, each with an assigned attribution model that is used when a dimension of the corresponding scope is applied to a report:
- User scope: First non-direct interaction model (e.g. first user Google Ads campaign)
- Session scope: Last non-direct interaction model (e.g. session Google Ads campaign)
- Event scope: The attribution model selected in the property settings (e.g. Google Ads campaign)
Lookback windows are one of the main offerings that will change with the switch from Universal Analytics to GA4.
Lookback windows dictate how far back in time Google Analytics will consider an event for attribution credit. Once a lookback window is determined, the attribution model is applied within that timeframe. Scroll down to our last update for more on GA4 attribution models!
The key differences with GA4 lookback windows are:
- Maximum lookback window of 90 days – compared to Universal Analytics at two years
- Offers preset options of 30, 60, and 90 days – compared to Universal Analytics with full down-to-the-minute customization
- Introduces concept of acquisition conversion events with preset options of 30 or seven days
As with Universal Analytics, changes to lookback window are not retroactive in GA4.
August 30
What You Need to Know About GA4 Attribution Models
In GA4 reporting, an attribution model can be a rule, a set of rules, or a data-driven algorithm that determines how credit for conversions is assigned to touchpoints on conversion paths.
In all attribution models, direct traffic is ignored and isn’t considered for attribution credit unless the entire conversion path is made up of direct visits.
Let’s explore the different types of GA4 attribution models!
- Data-driven: Disseminates fractional conversion credit based on data for each conversion event – organic, paid search, email, or direct. This model uses actual data from your account to determine the best fit attribution credit for each click interaction or touchpoint.
- Last click: Attributes 100% of conversion value to the last channel the customer clicked through before converting.
- Ads-preferred last click: Attributes 100% of the conversion value to the last Google Ads channel that the customer clicked through before converting.
- First click: Gives all credit for the conversion to the first channel that a customer clicked before converting.
- Linear: Distributes the credit for the conversion equally across all the channels that a customer clicked before converting.
- Position-based: Attributes 40% credit to the first and last interaction, with the remaining 20% credit distributed evenly to the middle interactions.
- Time decay: Gives more credit to the touchpoints that happened closer in time to the conversion. Credit is distributed using a seven-day half-life, meaning that a click eight days before a conversion gets half as much credit as a click one day before a conversion.
ROI Revolution has an entire team of experts who are dedicated to analytics. We’ve transitioned nearly 100% of our clients to GA4, meaning no year-over-year data will be lost. Being ahead of the curve in adopting the changes means that we’re able to help brands like yours take serious advantage of all of the capabilities the new platform has to offer. Reach out to our team today to explore how we can help you discover untapped profitable growth opportunities with GA4!
Sources
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Apply comparisons to reports.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Topics.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Collection.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Realtime report.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Reports snapshot.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Get started with Advertising.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Get started with Explorations.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Understanding Google Analytics Reports.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, About the Home page.
- Google Analytics Help Blog, Customize report navigation.
