What is Google Analytics 4 and why do I need it set up correctly?
An in-depth look at what is google analytics 4 and why do i need it set up correctly and what it means for your business. Full answer and strategy on the SEO page.
Google Analytics 4 is the current version of Google's web analytics platform and it replaced Universal Analytics permanently in July 2023.
If you are still seeing Universal Analytics data somewhere, you are looking at historical data from a property that no longer collects new information.
GA4 is what tracks your site now, and if it was not set up correctly when Universal Analytics was migrated, your data may be incomplete or inaccurate.
The most consequential setup error in GA4 is missing or broken conversion tracking. By default, GA4 tracks page views, sessions, and some engagement events automatically.
It does not automatically track form submissions as conversions, phone clicks as conversions, or purchases as revenue events. Those require configuration.
An account that has been running for six months with no conversion events configured has six months of traffic data and zero insight into which traffic actually did anything useful.
The second most common problem is GA4 not being linked to Google Ads. When these two properties are linked, your Google Ads cost data and your GA4 conversion data live in the same place.
You can see which campaigns, which ad groups, and which individual keywords produced conversions and at what cost. Without the link, you have two separate data sets that require manual reconciliation to compare.
Most of the value of having both tools comes from having them connected.
The third issue is attribution model selection. GA4 uses a data-driven attribution model by default which distributes credit across touchpoints in a session.
This is generally better than last-click attribution, which was the Universal Analytics default.
But it means that some campaigns that appeared to produce no conversions under last-click will now show attribution credit, and some campaigns that appeared to produce many conversions will show less.
Understanding that your GA4 data may look different from your old UA data is important before concluding your campaigns suddenly changed performance.