Blog

Google Analytics has recently announced a major update to its software. The new version of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) comes with several new features that are entirely different for web and mobile tracking. The new version may be a bit overwhelming, but don’t let this discourage you.

Google Analytics is one of the most popular digital marketing software tools that track users, monitor marketing channels, and provides valuable insights that can help grow your business. It’s completely free and used worldwide by millions of marketers and businesses. Some of the new features include:

Customer Journey: Google’s advanced machine learning models can automatically provide helpful insights into your data and can anticipate the customer’s future actions. The AI fills in gaps within the data for the user’s journey that Universal Analytics was blocking. 

Events: GA4 will now allow you to edit events without having to edit the code on the site. The original platform was required to modify the Analytics tracking code or gtag.js script. With this new feature, it will now reduce the time for any internal changes.

Goals/Conversion: You can now refer to Goals as Conversions. The new feature will now be event-based and not the URL. Once your property is set up and installed, the enhanced measurement event tracking must be enabled to capture more events as conversions within the property.

Google Ads: Users can now build and maintain the channels from visitors across the web and app. If a user is taken off the web and redirected to the app, the list would be automatically updated and the user removed so that are not targeted with ads.

Don’t feel comfortable upgrading to GA4? Don’t worry. As of right now, Google has not announced when they will discontinue the Universal Analytics version of Google Analytics. All new Google Analytics accounts created will have to be Google Analytics 4, but there is no date for when a user would have to convert the old accounts over to Google Analytics 4

You still have time, though it is encouraged that you create a new Google Analytics 4 property (previously called an App + Web property) alongside your existing properties to start collecting the data now in order for the AI engine to pull that data. Just be very careful when upgrading your account to avoid any disruption with your analytics.

For some, the learning curve will be steeper than for others. If you need assistance with the GA4 upgrade, reach out to one of our SEO specialists to learn more about the changes and how to manage your Google Analytics account.