You might have heard about the new Google Analytics release that happened this year. It is a complete reshape of Google Analytics and is now branded under the name Google Analytics 4 (GA4 for short).

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What is Google Analytics 4?

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It’s a massive improvement to the original Google Analytics Universal platform and has a few key differences to how it handles and shows you your website data. Some of these differences are:

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• You can now collect both website & app data. This is a great way to cross reference your users' movements. 

• You will now use event-based data instead of standard session-based. This makes it a lot easier to see what your users are doing on your website.

• Google has increased the privacy controls.

• You can now add further integrations to other platforms to help get insight on your users across the web.

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How to setup & configure Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

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If you prefer video based content, you can watch my GA4 Tutorial.

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Step 1: The first step is to login into your Google Analytics account. 

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Step 2: Once you have logged into your account, you will now need to select the account you currently use for Google Analytics.

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Step 3: You will now need to create a new property for that account. Press the blue “Create Property” button.

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Step 4: Fill in the required details on the new property. Click the blue “next” button and then the blue “create” button.

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Step 5: You will now be asked to select a data type (platform). For this example we will select “Web”.

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Step 6: You will now need to enter the website URL and give it a stream name. Then click the blue button called “Create Stream”.

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Step 7: Now that your stream is created, you will be taken to the “Web Stream Details” page. Click the yellow “View Tag Instructions” button.

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Step 8: Click on the “Install Manually” tab and copy the “Google Tag” code.

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Step 9: Add that code to the header of your website and remove your old Google Analytics Universal code.

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Step 10: You are done. In about 1 or 2 minutes you should see the new Google Analytics 4 property picking up your website traffic.

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Conclusion: Google has gone out of their way to make it extremely easy to setup GA4. Due to Google Analytics Universal being discontinued in July 2023, changing to GA4 is a must do for any website owner.

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