Beginner Guide
Getting Started with Google Analytics 4: A Complete Guide for Marketers
Everything you need to set up GA4, understand its event-based data model, navigate the key reports, and start tracking conversions — written for marketers, not developers.
Skip the complexity — try ClimbPastWhat is Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4, commonly called GA4, is Google's current analytics platform for measuring website and app traffic. It replaced Universal Analytics (often called UA or GA3) in July 2023 and is now the only version of Google Analytics available for new properties. If you are setting up analytics for a website today, GA4 is what you will use.
The most important difference between GA4 and Universal Analytics is the underlying data model. Universal Analytics was built around sessions and pageviews. Every time a user visited your site, UA created a session and counted each page they viewed within it. Events existed but were a secondary concept, requiring a separate category/action/label structure that felt bolted on.
GA4 flips this model entirely. Everything in GA4 is an event. A page view is an event. A scroll is an event. A form submission is an event. A purchase is an event. Sessions still exist as a concept, but they are derived from events rather than being the foundational unit of measurement. This event-based approach is more flexible and aligns with how modern websites and apps actually work, where users interact through clicks, scrolls, video plays, and custom interactions rather than simply loading pages in sequence.
GA4 also introduces a different approach to user identity. It can stitch together user journeys across devices using Google Signals (for users logged into Google accounts), User-ID (if you implement your own authentication-based identifier), and device-based modeling. This cross-device tracking was limited in Universal Analytics and is one of the genuine improvements GA4 offers.
For marketers, the practical impact is this: GA4 collects richer data with less configuration, but the interface for accessing that data is significantly more complex than what Universal Analytics offered. The learning curve is real, and it is the single biggest complaint teams have about the platform. This guide will help you get past that curve.
How to Create a GA4 Property
Creating a GA4 property takes about five minutes. Here is the step-by-step process.
Go to analytics.google.com
Sign in with the Google account you want to own the analytics property. If you are setting this up for a company, use a shared team account or a Google account tied to a company-managed email address rather than a personal Gmail account. This avoids the common problem of analytics access being locked to an employee who eventually leaves.
Click Admin, then Create Property
The Admin section is accessible from the gear icon in the bottom-left corner of the GA4 interface. If you already have a GA4 account, you will see a “Create Property” button in the Property column. If this is your first time, you may need to create an Account first (an account is just a container that holds one or more properties).
Enter your property details
You will be asked for a property name (use something descriptive like “Company Name — Production Website”), your reporting time zone, and your currency. The time zone setting affects how daily metrics are calculated, so choose the time zone where your primary audience or team is located. You will also answer a few questions about your business category and size, which help Google customize the default reports.
Create a data stream
After the property is created, GA4 will prompt you to set up a data stream. Choose “Web” for a website. Enter your website URL (including the https:// prefix) and a stream name like “Production Site.” GA4 will generate a Measurement ID that starts with “G-” followed by a string of characters. You will need this ID in the next step to install the tracking code.
Enable enhanced measurement
While still in the data stream settings, make sure enhanced measurement is toggled on. This automatically tracks page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads without any additional code. You can toggle individual measurements on or off based on what is relevant to your site. For most websites, leaving all of them enabled is the right choice.
Tip: If you are migrating from Universal Analytics, create a completely new GA4 property rather than trying to reuse any legacy configuration. GA4 properties cannot import UA historical data, and starting fresh ensures a clean setup without inherited configuration issues.
Installing the GA4 Tracking Code
Once you have a Measurement ID, you need to install the tracking code on your website. There are three common methods, and the right one depends on your technical setup.
Method 1: Direct gtag.js installation
The simplest method is to paste the Google tag (gtag.js) snippet directly into the HTML of your website. In your data stream settings, click “View tag instructions” and then select “Install manually.” GA4 will provide a snippet that looks like this:
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async
src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXXXXX">
</script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX');
</script>Replace G-XXXXXXXXXX with your actual Measurement ID. Paste this snippet into the <head> section of every page on your site. If you use a templating system or a static site generator, you typically only need to add it to one layout file.
Method 2: Google Tag Manager
If you already use Google Tag Manager (GTM), you can add GA4 as a tag within your existing container rather than adding a new script to your site. This is the recommended approach for teams that manage multiple marketing tags.
Open Google Tag Manager and select your container
Click Tags > New, then choose "Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration" as the tag type
Enter your Measurement ID (G-XXXXXXXXXX)
Set the trigger to "All Pages" so the tag fires on every page load
Click Save, then publish your container
The advantage of GTM is that you can add custom events, modify configurations, and manage consent settings without touching your website code. The disadvantage is that GTM introduces an additional layer of complexity, and misconfigured tags are a common source of data quality issues.
Method 3: CMS plugins and built-in integrations
Most modern content management systems offer native GA4 integrations or plugins that handle installation for you:
- WordPress: Use the official “Site Kit by Google” plugin, which connects GA4 (and Search Console) directly within your WordPress dashboard. Alternatively, plugins like MonsterInsights or Analytify offer additional reporting features.
- Shopify: Go to Online Store > Preferences and paste your Measurement ID into the Google Analytics field. Shopify also has a Google & YouTube app that handles GA4 integration with enhanced ecommerce events.
- Squarespace: Navigate to Settings > Developer Tools > External API Keys and enter your Measurement ID.
- Wix: Go to Marketing Integrations > Google Analytics and enter your Measurement ID.
- HubSpot: Add your Measurement ID in Settings > Tracking & Analytics > Tracking Code. HubSpot also supports GTM container integration.
Verifying your installation
After installing the tracking code, verify it is working correctly:
Open your website in a browser (use a normal browsing session, not incognito with ad blockers enabled)
In GA4, go to Reports > Realtime and look for your visit appearing within a few seconds
Use the Google Tag Assistant Chrome extension (tagassistant.google.com) to debug the tag and confirm it is firing correctly
Check the DebugView in GA4 (Admin > DebugView) for a detailed stream of events from your browser
Understanding GA4's Event Model
The event model is the single most important concept to understand in GA4. If you grasp how events work, everything else in the platform makes more sense. GA4 categorizes events into four types.
1. Automatically collected events
These events are collected by GA4 the moment you install the tracking code, with no additional configuration required:
page_view— Fires every time a page loads or the browser history state changessession_start— Fires when a user begins a new sessionfirst_visit— Fires the first time a user visits your siteuser_engagement— Fires periodically while the user has the page in focus
2. Enhanced measurement events
These are automatically tracked when you enable enhanced measurement in your data stream settings (which you should). They include:
scroll— Fires when a user scrolls beyond 90% of the page depthclick— Fires when a user clicks an outbound link (a link pointing to a different domain)view_search_results— Fires when a user performs a site searchvideo_start / video_progress / video_complete— Fires at key points during embedded YouTube video playbackfile_download— Fires when a user clicks a link to download a file (PDF, XLSX, DOCX, etc.)form_start / form_submit— Fires when a user interacts with or submits a form (requires enhanced measurement v2)
3. Recommended events
Google maintains a list of recommended event names for common use cases like ecommerce (purchase, add_to_cart), lead generation (generate_lead), and content engagement (sign_up, share). These events are not automatically collected — you need to implement them in your code or through GTM. The benefit of using Google's recommended names is that GA4 pre-builds certain reports and features around them. If you name a purchase event purchase instead of order_completed, the Monetization reports will automatically populate.
4. Custom events
Custom events are events you define yourself for interactions specific to your business. For a B2B SaaS company, these might include demo_requested, pricing_page_cta_clicked, or free_trial_started. You implement them by calling the gtag function in your code:
gtag('event', 'demo_requested', {
form_location: 'pricing_page',
plan_type: 'enterprise'
});Each event can carry up to 25 custom parameters (key-value pairs) that provide additional context. Parameters are how you add detail to events. In the example above, form_location and plan_type are parameters that tell you where the form was submitted and what plan the user was interested in.
Key GA4 Reports for Marketers
GA4 organizes its reports into several categories in the left-hand navigation. Here are the five report groups that matter most for marketing teams, what they tell you, and when to use them.
Realtime report
The Realtime report shows you what is happening on your website right now: how many users are active, which pages they are on, where they came from, and which events are firing. It is most useful for two things. First, verifying that your tracking code is installed correctly after a new deployment. Second, monitoring traffic during a campaign launch or event to make sure everything is working. The data in Realtime is live and unsampled, but it only covers the last 30 minutes. It is not a report you check daily — think of it as a diagnostic tool.
Acquisition reports
Acquisition reports answer the question “How are users finding my website?” There are two sub-reports to understand. The “User acquisition” report shows the first channel that brought each new user to your site (their very first visit). The “Traffic acquisition” report shows the channel for each session, regardless of whether the user is new or returning. For most marketing analysis, you will use Traffic acquisition. It breaks down your sessions by channel group (Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Referral, Social, Email, etc.) and lets you see how each channel performs across engagement metrics and conversions. This is where you answer questions like “How much traffic is organic search driving this month?” and “Which paid campaigns are generating the most engaged sessions?”
Engagement reports
Engagement reports tell you what users do after they arrive. The “Pages and screens” report is the most used report in this group — it shows pageviews, unique users, average engagement time, and conversions for every page on your site. The “Events” report lists every event GA4 has recorded, with counts and user counts for each. The “Landing page” report shows which pages users arrive on first, which is critical for understanding which content is attracting new visitors from search or ads. For B2B marketers, the Engagement reports are where you identify your top-performing content, find pages with high bounce rates that need improvement, and understand how users navigate through your site.
Monetization reports
Monetization reports are primarily designed for ecommerce sites that track revenue events like purchase and add_to_cart. For B2B companies that do not sell directly on their website, these reports are less relevant out of the box. However, if you assign monetary values to your conversion events (for example, assigning an estimated pipeline value to a demo_requested event), the Monetization reports can surface useful revenue-oriented insights even without traditional ecommerce.
Retention reports
Retention reports show how effectively your site brings users back over time. The main retention report displays new versus returning users and cohort-based retention curves. For B2B websites with longer sales cycles, this is useful for understanding whether your content keeps prospects engaged across multiple visits before they convert. If your retention curves are flat (users visit once and never return), it may indicate that your content is not compelling enough to drive repeat visits, or that your remarketing and email nurture programs need work.
Setting Up Conversions in GA4
Conversions in GA4 work differently than goals did in Universal Analytics. In GA4, a conversion is simply an event that you have marked as a conversion. There is no separate goal configuration interface. This is actually simpler once you understand it, but it means you need events to exist before you can turn them into conversions.
Marking an existing event as a conversion
If the event you want to track as a conversion is already being collected (either automatically or through enhanced measurement), you can mark it as a conversion with a single toggle:
Go to Admin > Events in your GA4 property
Find the event you want to mark as a conversion (for example, form_submit)
Toggle the "Mark as key event" switch to on
The event will now appear in all conversion-related reports going forward
Creating a custom event for form submissions
For B2B websites, the most common conversion is a form submission — a contact form, a demo request, or a newsletter signup. If enhanced measurement is not reliably capturing your form submissions (which happens when forms use JavaScript-heavy implementations), you can create a custom event. There are two approaches:
Approach A: Create an event in the GA4 interface. Go to Admin > Events > Create Event. Define a new event name like contact_form_submit and set conditions based on an existing event. For example, you could create an event that fires when page_view occurs on a “thank you” page (page_location contains “/thank-you”). This destination-based approach works for forms that redirect to a confirmation page.
Approach B: Use Google Tag Manager. Create a form submission trigger in GTM that fires when a specific form is submitted (using CSS selectors, element visibility, or the built-in form submission trigger). Link it to a GA4 Event tag that sends a custom event like demo_requested to your GA4 property. This is more reliable for single-page applications and JavaScript-heavy forms.
Important: GA4 allows a maximum of 30 conversion events per property. This sounds like a lot, but it adds up quickly if you are tracking multiple form types, button clicks, and engagement milestones. Be strategic about which events you mark as conversions — focus on actions that directly indicate buying intent or lead quality.
GA4 Limitations and Common Frustrations
GA4 is a powerful platform, but it has real limitations that affect how marketing teams use it daily. Understanding these upfront will save you time and frustration.
Data sampling and thresholds
When you run reports that cover large date ranges or apply complex filters, GA4 may apply data sampling, meaning it analyzes only a subset of your data and extrapolates the results. You will see a small icon in the report header indicating the sample percentage. Additionally, GA4 applies data thresholds when it determines that showing certain data could identify individual users (particularly when Google Signals is enabled). Thresholded data simply disappears from reports with no warning, which can make row counts look suspiciously low. To reduce sampling, use shorter date ranges, fewer filters, or export your data to BigQuery for unsampled analysis.
The learning curve is steep
GA4's interface is not intuitive for marketers who grew up with Universal Analytics. The Explore tool, which is where the most powerful analysis happens, requires you to manually configure reports by dragging dimensions and metrics into specific fields. There are no pre-built reports for many common marketing questions, and the terminology has changed significantly (sessions vs. engaged sessions, bounce rate now being the inverse of engagement rate, goals replaced by key events). Teams consistently report that GA4 takes weeks to become comfortable with, even for users who were proficient in Universal Analytics.
Missing features from Universal Analytics
Several features that existed in Universal Analytics are either missing or significantly different in GA4:
- Custom channel groupings are more limited. In UA, you could create fully custom channel groupings at the view level. GA4 supports channel groupings but with less flexibility.
- Annotations (the ability to add notes to specific dates in reports) are not available in GA4. This was one of the most-requested features from UA.
- Content grouping requires custom dimensions rather than the built-in content group feature UA provided.
- Filtered views no longer exist. UA let you create multiple views with different filters (like excluding internal traffic). GA4 has a single data stream with report-level filters that are less flexible.
24-48 hour processing delay
While the Realtime report shows live data, most GA4 standard reports have a processing delay of 24 to 48 hours. This means that if you are looking at yesterday's data in the morning, it may not be complete. For teams running time-sensitive campaigns or trying to react to traffic changes quickly, this delay creates a blind spot. Universal Analytics typically processed data within a few hours, so this is a step backward in data freshness for many teams.
Data retention limits
By default, GA4 retains user-level and event-level data for only 2 months. You can extend this to 14 months in the property settings (Admin > Data Settings > Data Retention), and you absolutely should. However, even 14 months is significantly less than the unlimited data retention Universal Analytics offered. For long-term analysis, Google recommends exporting data to BigQuery, which is free for up to 10 GB of storage but adds complexity to your analytics workflow.
Using AI to Simplify GA4
If the sections above made you feel overwhelmed, you are not alone. GA4 is powerful, but its complexity creates a gap between the data it collects and the answers marketing teams actually need. This is exactly the problem AI-powered analytics tools are designed to solve.
Rather than learning the Explore interface, configuring custom reports, and manually cross-referencing data from multiple report groups, tools like ClimbPast let you ask questions about your GA4 data in plain English. Instead of spending 20 minutes building an Explore report, you type “Which blog posts drove the most demo requests from organic search last quarter?” and get a structured answer in seconds.
ClimbPast connects to your existing GA4 property through a read-only API integration. It does not replace GA4 — it reads the same data GA4 already collects and makes it accessible without the interface friction. You still need GA4 installed and collecting data, but you no longer need to become a GA4 power user to get value from it.
Beyond plain-English querying, AI analytics tools can also help with:
Automated anomaly detection that alerts you when important metrics change unexpectedly, without requiring you to check dashboards daily
Combining GA4 traffic data with Google Search Console keyword data in a single interface, eliminating the need to switch between tools
Surfacing content optimization opportunities by identifying pages where small improvements could drive significant traffic gains
Generating plain-language summaries of your analytics data for stakeholder reports, saving hours of manual reporting time
The goal is not to avoid learning GA4 entirely — understanding the concepts in this guide will make you a better marketer regardless of which tools you use. The goal is to remove the unnecessary friction between having a question and getting an answer from the data your GA4 property already collects.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Google Analytics 4 free to use?
Yes. Google Analytics 4 is completely free for the vast majority of websites. There is a paid tier called Google Analytics 360 that offers higher data limits, service-level agreements, and BigQuery export without sampling, but it is designed for large enterprises processing billions of events per month. The standard free version of GA4 is more than sufficient for small and mid-size businesses, startups, and most B2B marketing teams.
How long does it take for data to appear in GA4 after installation?
The Realtime report in GA4 shows data within seconds of a user visiting your site, which is the fastest way to verify your installation is working. However, most standard reports in GA4 take 24 to 48 hours to fully process and display data. Some reports, particularly those involving attribution modeling or user-scoped metrics, can take even longer. If you do not see data in standard reports after 48 hours, check that your tracking code is installed correctly using Google Tag Assistant or the Realtime report.
Can I use GA4 and Universal Analytics at the same time?
Universal Analytics stopped processing new data on July 1, 2023 for standard properties and July 1, 2024 for 360 properties. Historical Universal Analytics data was accessible in a read-only state through late 2024, but Google has since shut down access entirely. If you have not already migrated to GA4, you need to set up a new GA4 property from scratch. There is no way to import historical Universal Analytics data into GA4.
Do I need Google Tag Manager to use GA4?
No. You can install GA4 using the global site tag (gtag.js) directly in your website HTML without Google Tag Manager. However, Google Tag Manager is strongly recommended for most teams because it allows you to manage your GA4 configuration, add custom events, and modify tracking without editing your website code. If you use a CMS like WordPress, Shopify, or Squarespace, many have built-in GA4 integrations or plugins that handle installation without either gtag.js or Tag Manager.
What is the difference between GA4 events and Universal Analytics goals?
In Universal Analytics, you tracked conversions by creating goals, which were separate from the hit types (pageviews, events, transactions) that collected data. In GA4, everything is an event. There are no separate hit types or goal configurations. When you want to track a conversion, you simply mark an existing event as a key event (conversion). This means a form submission, a button click, and a page view are all events in GA4 and any of them can be flagged as a conversion with a single toggle. The event-based model is more flexible but requires a different mental model than the session-based approach Universal Analytics used.
Get answers from your GA4 data without the complexity
ClimbPast connects to your GA4 and Search Console properties and lets you ask questions in plain English. No Explore reports, no custom configurations, no waiting on analysts.
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