10 Steps to Configure GA4 Correctly: Complete Beginner's Walkthrough
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- Опубликовано: 25 июн 2024
- GA4 can be confusing but the initial setup and property configuration doesn't need to be. Check out this guided tutorial for a complete walkthrough of installing your Google Analytics 4 property and then properly configuring it.
Let's do it!
Have questions or comments? Leave them in the comments. I'm always up for learning more...and for new video ideas.
There's typically a new video every week or two about GA4 or Google Tag Manager or Looker Studio or sometimes Google Ads or SEO. If you want to follow along with what I'm learning (trying to learn) you can subscribe at the link below:
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🔗 Links to 📖📖📖 BLOGS: These are the most popular blogs on the Root and Branch site from RUclips visitors
✭ Do These 10 Steps to Install AND Configure GA4 Properly: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ Events in GA4 and How it Compares to UA: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ev...
✭ GA4 Reports Explained: Standard Reports, Explorations, Custom Reports: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/go...
✭ A Practical Guide to Event Parameters: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ GA4 Problems (And What You Can Do About Them): www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ Google Analytics 4 Link Click Tracking: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/go...
✭How to Install Google Tag Manager (GTM) on Wordpress: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ho...
✭And Some SEO! How to Edit robots.txt on Wordpress!
www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ed...
🔗 Links to 📹📹📹 VIDEO TUTORIALS: These are most popular GA4 instructional videos as measured by views or watch time
📺 How to Set Up GA4 in 5 Minutes With GTM: • Set Up GA4 (in 5 Minut...
📺 How to Properly Configure Your GA4 Property: • 10 Steps to Configure ...
📺 6 Key Differences Between GA4 and UA: • Google Analytics 4 (GA... 🔑🔑🔑🔑🔑🔑
📺 The Truth About GA4 Event Parameters: • The Truth About GA4 Ev...
📺 GA4 Hits, Events, Sessions, and Users Explained: • Google Analytics Event...
📺 How to set up GA4 FORM SUBMISSION tracking with a thank you page: • How to Set Up a GA4 Fo... 🙏
📺 How to set up BUTTON CLICK tracking with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • Set Up Page Timer Trac...
📺 How to set up PAGE TIMER tracking with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • Set Up Page Timer Trac... ⏲
📺 How to Set Up LINK CLICK Tracking with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • Button Click Tracking ... 🖯
📺 How to Set Up SCROLL DEPTH Tracking (25%, 50%, 75%, 90%) with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • How to Set Up GA4 Link... 🖯
📺 How to Build a Link Click Tracking Report Using GA4 data and Looker Studio: • Google Data Studio GA4... 📊📊📊
📺 Campaign Tracking in GA4 to See UTM Tagged Traffic: • Campaign Tracking GA4 ...
📺 GA4 Conversion Tracking Compared to UA: • GA4 Conversion Trackin...
📺 Registering Custom Dimensions in GA4 Explained: • GA4 Custom Dimensions ... -
📺 How to Link GA4 and BigQuery: • Google Analytics 4 + B...
📺 Users in GA4 Explained vs. UA Users: • GA4 Users Explained: N...
📺 Creating and Using Audiences in GA4: • How to Create GA4 Audi...
📺 3 Practical Ways to Use the Path Exploration Report: • GA4 Path Exploration: ...
📺 How to Set Up Site Search in GA4 and UA: • Video
📺 Video review of the Source/ Medium report in GA4: • GA4 Reports: How to Re...
📺 All about the GA4 Certification: • Google Analytics 4 Cer... 🏆
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0:00 Introduction
0:29 Create New GA4 Property
2:27 Install GA4 Tag on Website
4:16 Adjust Session Timeout
7:10 Filter Internal and Developer Traffic
8:57 List Unwanted Referrals (Referral Exclusions)
10:41 Cross Domain Tracking
11:30 Review Enhanced Measurement Events
15:28 #8 Register Custom Dimensions for Enhanced Measurement Event Parameters
15:57 Change Data Retention Settings
16:43 Review Attribution Settings
Thanks for coming by!
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Google Analytics can be hard, but there is someone whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.
Rest easy. Mathew 11: 28 - 30
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Super helpful. One quick comment - at 14:40 you mention going to the Configure section of GA, but that has been deprecated and is now all part of the Admin menu. Didn't take me too long to figure this out, but did slow me down!
Scott! Thanks for the kind words and especially for pointing this out.
If you could, do me a favor and like your comment. I’ll pin 📌 yours to the top so hopefully some other folks will see it as well.
Thanks again!
@@rooted-digital done!
Thanks for pointing out that segment. It will save sometime to figure it out. Cheers!
Great video.... Followed along very easily. Thank you!
That's awesome. I'm glad to hear it helped!
there are 50.000 tutorials but this one was exactly what I needed. To the point and PRACTICAL!! Thank you!
Well Leena, thanks for officially making my day with these encouraging words. Much appreciated. 😄
I am grateful to hear it was helpful for you. Best wishes to you in all things GA4.
Super helpful and easy to follow! Google makes this very difficult, you made it simple! Thank you :)
Well thank you, Julie. I'm very grateful you took the time to share and I'm so glad it was helpful for you.
If you decide to go extra *wild* with learning GA4, this longer comprehensive tutorial might be worth a shot. Just don't watch the last 15 minutes or so since it's a rehash of what you just saw! 🙂
ruclips.net/video/oPngBJsxUmI/видео.html
Zack, as always, great job! I am using this to implement GA4 on both of our domains. Hats off, my friend!
Jess, thanks for the kind words. So glad it was helpful for you!
This video is outstanding! Can't thank you enough. Keep it up!
Thank you, Nir. I’m grateful for the feedback. 🙂
Feel free to keep me posted if you have ideas for future videos. There’s so much to learn with GA4 and I still feel like I’m only just starting to wrap my head around all of it.
Great checklist to get your started with GA4!
Glad you found it helpful, Brent. 👍👍!
One of the best videos about this out there. Thanks boss! Much appreciated!!
Thanks for the kind words. Very glad to hear it was helpful. 🙌!
Great video with in-depth knowledge. Your videos are helping me a lot.
Boom! Let's get it, Ahmad!
Glad you found it helpful.
Thank you, I was pretty confused and you helped me through it!
Love it! Thanks Cala. So glad this was useful for you.
Amazing! Thank you!
So glad to hear it was useful for you. Thanks, Iliana!
This was extremely helpful!
I am glad to hear it!
Thanks for taking the time to share the feedback. 😎
Awesome tutorial from a non techie! thanks so much
Thanks for the feedback, Rebecca. Glad you found it helpful!
Good luck and Godspeed to you in all things GA4 related. 😎
Surely know your onions!!! Can you suggest a great solution to migrate my UA annotation files to GA4?
James, I've never heard this expression before and I absolutely love it. I'm not sure if I know as much as you're giving me credit for, but I will aspire to know my onions.
I've heard there is a tool called Crystal Ball that can help with what you're looking for. I haven't used it myself, but it might be something that I explore in the future depending on how things shake out. Best of luck!
Got many useful tips from this video for my GA4.... would like to ask if there is a solution to migrate annotation data from UA to GA4?
Hello there. And thanks for watching.
I don't have a good solution for annotations but I'd certainly be up for hearing about it if you come across something that works for you. Best of luck to you!
Is there any advantage in manually setting GA4 up as you describe here rather than using the GA4 Setup Assistant?
Hi David, unfortunately the GA4 setup assistant is only "meh" in my opinion (and the opinion of others whom I've also read).
It partially depends on what kind of goals / conversions you have to migrate over. Some of them may migrate over fine, but others will not work in the automatic tool Google has simply based on how the GA4 property type works relative to UA.
Here's one article that has a similar perspective if you're interested: searchengineland.com/ga4-auto-migration-opt-out-393786
Wishing you all the best.
Nice. Is there a tool to upload annotations from Universal to GA4?
I wish. Sadly, annotations aren't yet available in GA4. It has to be added at some point, right?!
I mean, I sure hope so. But to the best of my knowledge, annotations are not yet available in GA4.
I'll be keeping my fingers crossed with you, Luna!
Wish you all the best.
Zack
Not a lot of info included on why such a long session duration. Default is 30 minutes and you set yours for almost 8 hours. Curious about your rationale for that.
Hi there. Thanks for the great question! This came down to some pretty significant data discrepanices I was seeing in session counts between my UA and GA4 data. I hypothesized that the differences in how sessions are counted in GA4 vs. UA might be the cause, and that lengthening the session duration window would bring things back in line.
If you're interested, here's an earlier video I had made comparing sessions and pageviews in GA4 to UA where I show the differences: ruclips.net/video/31R-5w6QWgY/видео.html
I'm not sure if my rational was correct or not, but that was what I had been thinking. If you have a different take or any other thoughts, I'd be glad to hear it.
Thanks again for the thoughtful question. Best wishes in all things GA4 going forward.
Zack
Is there supposed to be a step that transfers the data from UGA to GA4? Or does the initial setup you show automatically do that? I didn't hear that was mentioned.
Hi NT, there isn't a step that transfers your historical data from UA to GA4. It would be nice, but it (unfortunately) doesn't work that way. The data models are actually different enough that it doesn't even allow for a 1:1 transfer like that.
You have two options:
1.) You can still use your UA property to access your historical data. You'll have access to this for 1 full year (until July 2024) so you can compare this way.
2.) You can export your UA data if you'd like. This blog has more info on that: www.searchenginejournal.com/ga4-historical-data/447519/
This is just me, but I'm doing option 1 and saving more time to work on GA4. Here are two resources you might consider checking out next if you agree:
Conversion tracking: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/google-analytics-conversion-tracking-ga4/
Creating Custom Events: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-custom-events/
Wish you all the best!
Hi, why do we need to do this in GTM @4:02 when we can put the GA4 Measurement ID tracking code (install manually) from GA4 into the backend of our Blog? I thought it was either we track with GA4 or GTM, have I misunderstood?
Is GA4 the basic reporting tool and then GA4 can be used to add extra features on top of the data from GA4?
So why is there in GTM install GTM on website? And then the GA4 one install manually?
That part I don't understand
Do we need to install both of those on the blog or just one?
Sorry about the essay
Hello! You are right that you do not *need* to use GTM in order to use GA4. That is the most important note.
I personally think that installing GA4 with GTM is the most helpful because it unlocks some other tracking capabilities in GA4. For example, if you wanted to track things like specific button clicks or custom scroll depths in GA4, you need to use GTM to make that happen.
But if you don't need to track those sorts of things, you can ignore Google Tag Manager and just use GA4. Thanks for the good clarifying question. Best wishes!
Some links, just in case!
Button Clicks: ruclips.net/video/JOFtjLpwBLE/видео.html
Scrolls: ruclips.net/video/m1jVbh79ZnM/видео.html
@@rooted-digital thank you for the detailed response I will check out the links
If you have a website by Square and use its payment gateway on the e-commerce side of your site, would listing square as an unwanted referral confuse GA4 of my direct traffic?
Hi Gabriela,
Your situation sounds like the first example of the "Common Uses" for unwanted referrals on the GA4 support article (support.google.com/analytics/answer/10327750?hl=en).
Quote below...
"Common uses
Third-party payment processors
An ecommerce site that uses a third-party payment processor, and users return to your site after checking out on the third-party domain."
With that said, I believe that listing it as an unwanted referral would move it your direct traffic bucket. I don't think Google Analytics would be "confused" in this case, as much as acting as it's intended to in this situation (which admittedly might not be ideal). I suppose it's a question for you in how you'd want to see your data.
Good luck.
You didn't mention putting the gtm JS on your site. Isn't that needed if you're installing GA4 via GTM?
Yes, you're right. The Google Tag Manager container code definitely needs to be there first in order to deploy the GA4 configuration tag through it. If you don't have GTM, I had made this short video about how to install GTM quickly on a WordPress site: ruclips.net/video/jjIsn-pniMw/видео.html
If you've got some other CMS, there may be an even easier integration.
Thanks for the good question.
Zack
Any idea? How can i automate annotations in google analytics 4?
Hi Ashley. I don't believe annotations are yet available as a built in feature in GA4. This is disappointing since annotations were always so helpful in UA.
There may be tools you can use to help with this, but I am not informed on the subject. Sorry I can't be more helpful.
Good luck!
Zack
You should have blurred out your data. 🤔
Thanks for the concern.
If I acquire better editing abilities in the future, that's a good process improvement idea. ; )
Thanks for watching and have a great one out there. God bless!