Upgrade to Google Analytics 4

I just upgraded to Google Analytics 4 — the future of analytics! 🔮

In this post, I’ll share a little of my experience.

Introduction

Google Analytics announced a new way to measure apps and websites together in Jul 2019 and launched the next generation Google Analytics in Oct 2020. Unlike the old University Analytics (UA) properties, the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) properties can be used for a website, an app, or both together. GA4 is built with machine learning at its core to help deliver new insights and comes with better privacy handling.

Prerequisites

A Google Analytics Account — Log in to Google account and go to https://analytics.google.com/
A Universal Analytics Property — Set up Analytics for a website

Upgrade

Upgrade to GA4 using Setup Assistant

You can find GA4 Setup Assistant within the Admin console of your Universal Analytics property.
Get started with Google Analytics 4 by auto-creating a new property using the wizard. Click See your GA4 property.
Appears in the Admin section under the Property column, the [GA4] Setup Assistant allows you to further customize your GA4 property and share settings from your Universal Analytics property.

Get your GA4 global site tag (gtag.js)

GA4 Admin –> Data Streams –> Click your stream –> Add new on-page tag

gtag.js

Add your tag directly to your web pages

Copy the entire Analytics page tag into the <head> section of your HTML. It should look like this.

<!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXX"></script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());

  gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXX');
</script>

The gtag.js tag that you added will collect data for your new GA4 property, which is linked to your Universal Analytics property. You now run the UA & GA4 in Parallel!

Warning: Don’t remove the old analytics.js tag. It will continue to collect data for your Universal Analytics property.

Postscript

This simplified guide showed the GA4 upgrade configuration in an existing UA within a few steps. You can also use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to implement a GA4 property, which would be a robust method. If you’re new to Google Analytics and want to set up your first Analytics, it will automatically be GA4.

Check out Google’s walkthrough to learn more about adding a GA4 property. If you want to explore more, try the Google Analytics demo account for free. For a more in-depth understanding of your new property type, take the Google Analytics Skillshop course.

If you’re facing any issues in your upgrade or find any mistakes in this post, feel free to comment here. Thanks for reading. Cheers! 🍻