GA4 Replaces Universal Analytics

New Kid on Block: GA4

The sunset of Universal Analytics arrived on July 1, 2023, and businesses data tracking experts should transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Standard Universal Analytics (UA) properties will “no longer process new data.” Though, UA is far from obsolete yet for simpler sites without multiple data streams (such as mobile applications).

What does GA4 do differently?

(UA) can measure separate mobile-specific screen views properties (Screen Name, App Name, App Version, App ID, App Installer ID, Campaign Name, etc) whereas GA4 combines both web and app data in the same property. GA4 combines traffic data between different sources such as your site and app. These two sources are refereed to as “data steams”, and it is sometimes important to remember to separate the data to more accurately track each data stream. Make sure you realize GA4 traffic is combined from all across your websites and apps when analyzing data metrics.

Simple Page View Tracking to Event-Centric Model

Universal Analytics utilized Page-views as metric data. Page-views were the fundamental unit of measurement until GA4 came along.

GA4 redeployed UA to a more “event-centric” model which tracks user interactions as events.

• has specific machine learning capabilities that offer trend analysis metrics. This gives businesses the power to anticipate future user behavior and patterns.
• integrates data from your websites and mobile apps, providing a centralized view of user behaviors across different platforms. Basically, your business might have multiple sites or multiple apps and using GA4, you can blend all of these metrics into one larger model or separate them for potentially better analysis.

Why care about GA4?

All of this provides a more detailed and flexible approach to tracking user engagement beyond traditional page-views. Simply tracking page views, (such as with UA) cannot offer insights about detailed user engagement with your web pages. GA4 is the tool to do this.

In any marketing campaign, specific and well-organized data directly equals more control over your marketing investment. You can trim the fat of what is not working and invest more effort into successful marketing avenues.

Google is always updating data metric tracking practices. It can be difficult to jump into these advanced digital marketing tools without any previous experience or in-depth knowledge of these terms. At LionLink Digital Marketing LLC, we want to create a partnership with your business to help you achieve your full potential. We can further explain how GA4 works and how it can specifically benefit your company’s marketing goals.

If you have questions, we have answers.