What makes Google Analytics 4 Unique? Everything You Need to Know About It

It’s been a few months since Google Analytics 4 (GA4) was launched, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty about the fundamental changes between GA4 and the previous Universal Analytics.

We’ll take a closer look at three critical distinctions between the two Google Analytics services, and why you should be aware of them. But before that let’s dive into what is Google Analytics 4.

What Exactly Is Google Analytics 4?

The most recent Google Analytics version is called Google Analytics 4. This is an entirely new generation of web analytics that will enable marketers to monitor vital consumer use characteristics rather than merely measure traffic.

Google Analytics 4 follows a customer’s journey across various platforms and uses AI and machine learning to deliver more detailed insights into how customers engage with your website and app.

GA4 is similarly concerned with client privacy. This runs counter to some of the most current privacy laws, such as GDPR and CCPA. GA4 is a powerful solution that gives unprecedented insights thanks to privacy-first tracking, cross-channel data measurement, and AI-driven predictive analytics.

What Is the Difference Between Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Universal Analytics?

Various Measuring Models

The primary distinction between Universal Analytics and GA4 is their measuring approach. Universal Analytics measures based on sessions and page views.

A session is a collection of user engagements (hits) with a website that occur over a specific period. Multiple pageviews, events, and eCommerce purchases can occur throughout the same session.

On the other hand, Google Analytics 4 uses a measurement approach based on events and parameters. The idea is that any interaction may be recorded as an event. As a result, all Universal Analytics hit kinds are converted to GA4 events.

What might be perplexing is that with Universal Analytics (and all prior versions of GA), an event has its hit type, category, action, and label. In GA4, there is no category, action, or label. Every hit is an event, and events can (but are not required to) include parameters.

Monthly hit limits have been removed

The elimination of monthly hit restrictions is another key distinction between Universal Analytics and GA4. The free edition of Universal Analytics has a monthly limit of 10 million hits. That has vanished.

Some of our clients were having difficulty gathering all of the data they need while keeping under this restriction.

Instead, GA4 restricts the number of events that may be recorded (500). At the time of writing, there is no limit on the number of hits that may be gathered. As a consequence, several companies have already chosen a GA4-first strategy for their analytics.

Free BigQuery Connection

The final distinction I’ll discuss is GA4’s free BigQuery connection. This capability was previously exclusively available to GA360 customers (and was one of the big differentiators between the free and paid versions of GA).

BigQuery, for unfamiliar people, allows huge and complicated data sets to be searched very rapidly. If you’ve ever attempted to generate complicated segments in GA, you’re aware of the impact sampling may have on your ability to analyze data.

Big Query extracts data from GA and allows you to explore it without needing a sample.

Google Analytics 4 is the way of the future. You’ll understand exactly what advantages you’ll gain from adopting GA4 and why you should stop hesitating right now.

Here are a few benefits of GA4 that will help you plan for the future:

• Unsampled Information

The data that may be gathered using Universal Analytics (UA) is limited to 10 million hits per site each month. And a lot of sampling might happen when processing data, such as when you use an advanced segment and have more than 500,000 sessions.

In GA4 standard reports, sampling has been abolished, and the amount of data that may be captured is now infinite. Having access to unsampled data is important since it guarantees that your judgments are based on solid data.

While sampling can be beneficial when dealing with segments and secondary dimensions, relying on sampled data puts you at risk of working with incomplete information.

• Tracking Across Several Platforms

Before GA4, website and app engagement was always tracked separately. It’s easy to see why Google Analytics 4 was dubbed Google Analytics App+Web when it was still in development.

GA4 now integrates Firebase Analytics data from applications and Google Analytics data from websites into a single property. This implies that getting a holistic picture of interaction across your platforms no longer needs to be a time-consuming and laborious effort.

This takes us to the second significant advantage of GA4.

• Improved Tracking Intelligence

With governments and regulatory agencies enacting new and stronger privacy regulations, it is becoming increasingly difficult to follow users via cookies. We also know that existing tracking systems rely largely on cookies. 

GA4 implements more intelligent tracking that is not dependent on cookies by utilizing AI and machine learning.

• Advanced Investigation

Previously available solely to GA360 users, a collection of tools for doing sophisticated analysis and designing ad hoc funnels is now freely available in GA4.

• More advanced funnel customization features enable you to create highly precise funnels.
• Path analysis allows you to determine the most popular user pathways (e.g., from reading an article to signing up for the newsletter).
• Heat maps give your study a new depth.
• The segment overlap report displays the connections between the segments you’re interested in.
• The user explorer report allows you to take a deeper look at specific user segments that you believe are most important to your investigation.

• Higher ROI

You can now better plan your campaigns and target the correct audience within the timeframe that counts since you have very insightful analytics data to work with.

If you play your cards correctly, you should be well on your way to establishing effective marketing campaigns that meet objectives, resulting in a higher ROI on ad expenditure.

And there you have it: the ten most important perks of GA4 that you are missing out on if you choose to stay in your comfort zone.

While we don’t recommend abandoning your old Universal Analytics property, you should begin using Google Analytics 4 right now. GA4 is jam-packed with exciting new capabilities that will help you plan for the future of your analytics strategy.

Conclusion

GA4 is simpler and somewhat more powerful than GA, decreasing the barrier for marketers to leverage their data. However, instead of switching from GA to GA4, why not run both at the same time and discover which insights and interface you prefer?

However, bear in mind that GA4 is where Google is focusing its efforts to enhance, so don’t be shocked if GA4 continues to evolve as some features and functions in Google Analytics are phased out. Don’t wait until you’re forced to change; instead, be proactive and gain greater insights now!