Understanding GA4 by Comparing it with Universal Analytics

It’s been several months since Google released its new analytics platform Google Analytics 4 (GA4). You might be wondering what the differences are between the GA4 vs Universal Analytics, and you’re not the only one. Here the team from WSIDMINC wanted to highlight some of the differences between the two, so you can understand which one is right for you moving forward.

1. No More Monthly Hit Limits One big difference between GA4 and Universal Analytics is that there are no more monthly hit limits with GA4. What this means is that the limit of 10 million hits that Universal Analytics has is gone. This enables marketers to capture more analytics data without being hindered by a hit limit. Currently, GA4 hasn’t implemented any hit limits.

2. Different Measuring Parameters Universal Analytics measures events with a label, category, action, and hit type. However, GA4 employs a different way for measuring interaction based upon events that are grouped into four different categories:

1. Enhanced Measurement Events: These events are automatically collected when using the GA4 base code but can be categorized based on-site search parameters, video engagement, scrolls, and outbound clicks.

2. Automatically Collected Events: Including things like first visits, session starts, page views, and other info, these events are automatically collected upon installing GA4.

3. Recommended Events: These types of events are simply recommendations split into various industry types via Google to set things up you may want to track. This can be especially helpful for eCommerce companies.

4. Customized Events: With GA4, you’re also able to develop custom events based on your own descriptions and website requirements.

3. BigQuery Connection for FREE Another huge difference between Google’s Universal Analytics and GA4 is that the latter gives digital marketers a free connection to BigQuery. If you’re not familiar with BigQuery, it gives you the tools to process very complex and large data sets and query them very fast. This eliminates the necessity of having to create samples of data to analyze and instead gives you all the information you need right then and there with a simple query. Contact us today for more about GA4 vs Universal Analytics! To learn more about how to capture the best analytics data and increase your leads and sales, contact WSIDMINC online today or call 1 (888) 455-3230.

Book a meeting directly with Heidi Schwende now!