Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Setup

Google Analytics offers both free and enterprise analytics tools to measure website and app data. The most recent offering is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and has different setup steps to the older analytics package, Universal Analytics.

These steps assume that you use Google Tag Manager and the Design System tracking script to deliver analytics on your site.

• Sign up using your team's Google account

• Create your account and name it appropriately

• Create your Property

• Do not turn on Google Signals

• Turn off ads personalisation

• Switch Reporting Identity to Device-Based

• Change the data retention to 14 months

• Set up GA4 to only run on one domain

• Turn on automated link tracking within enhanced event measurement

• Turn off automated site search tracking (instead we do this as we transform site searches to lowercase using Google Tag Manager)

• Add your custom dimensions into the GA4 interface so that they can be used in reporting (and Looker Studio)

• Copy your GA4 measurement ID and add to the Google Tag Manager variables file along with the site’s domain name

• Set up Google Search Console integration

As with any site, after doing all of this you’ll still need to sort out your reporting dashboards, cookies controls, privacy statement, manage your access to your accounts, etc.

Additional reading

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Checklist – The Complete 2023 Edition (lovesdata.com)

The Traffic Source Challenge in GA4 - Charles Farina's Blog

Help with metrics and dimensions - https://data.ga4spy.com/ and https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/dimensions-metrics-explorer/