What We've Learned from 1 Year of GA4

It’s been roughly a year since Universal Analytics, the platform web professionals were using since 2012, was officially sunset and succeeded by Google Analytics 4. It’s a new generation of analytics Google tells us. 

It tracks event-based data, has predictive capabilities, provides more direct integrations, and follows visits more accurately as they move from websites to apps. It’s amazing, they say without really saying. 

Unfortunately, “amazing” is the exact opposite of how most SEOs and web pros are feeling about it.

Look, there are growing pains that happen with every new iteration of technology. We accept it. We expect it. You should have seen the blowback from the Google Florida update in 2003, which aimed to tackle spammy websites using unsavory search engine techniques. People were rioting in the streets.

Or… so I hear. I was only 11. Too young for the SEO streets.‍

The point is, we generally trust these updates are being made to improve the user experience. Eventually, we get used to the new tools and move on with our lives. The same will happen with GA4, but, damn is Google making it difficult this time around.

Now that we are 90 days into the change, we’d thought it’d be a good idea to share what we’ve learned and how we are feeling so far. It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it’s good information for you to have as you look to navigate this version of analytics.

You Should Expect a Drop In Traffic

I know that sounds scary, but it isn't. This is actually one of those things that is a net positive when you get what is happening behind the scenes. And there are two major things you need to understand: 

1. Traffic is tracked differently.

Universal Analytics was based entirely on users and user sessions. This means every time someone made it to your website, even if it was for a grand total of .2 seconds, it was counted toward your site traffic. This is not the way it works anymore.

GA4 tracks what it calls Active Users, which are visitors who either 1) spend at least 10 seconds on the website or 2) visit at least two pages on your site. If neither of these criteria are met, they are not counted toward your web traffic.

On a large scale, this will have an impact on your website’s traffic, and it could seem like your site is performing worse when, in reality, it is exactly the same.

2. Google has a bot problem. 

Not exactly breaking news, but part of the equation you need to consider is that bots, who were programmed to visit a site and artificially bump traffic or search the site for some kind of information, will likely no longer be reflected in your overall traffic.

Unfortunately, there are some less-than-savory SEO services out there that promise to bump your traffic by a huge margin. If that was part of your ecosystem, you might notice a major drop in performance, even if it was artificially inflated.

For most practices, this won’t be an issue, but it is something to be aware of when looking at your new traffic numbers. The new traffic numbers you see reflected are legitimate traffic only — people who are visiting your site for the right reasons.

Ultimately, these changes are a good thing for your analytics and tracking since you will have a more accurate idea of how your users, potential patients considering treatment, are behaving, allowing you to make better informed decisions. 

Conversion Tracking Is Harder to Set Up

This isn’t really an overly complex one. There are more steps required to set up proper conversion tracking when compared to Universal Analytics. It’s not a huge problem, but it does mean you’ll need to spend a little more time figuring out the system to get your tracking optimized.

If you find yourself lost, you can try checking out the official instructions from Google, but it is likely you’ll run into some unique issues as you work through the process. If you do, reach out to us and we will help you figure out how to navigate through them. We got you.

There Is No More Audience View

Many Universal Analytics users used Audience View to get a clear idea of their monthly or yearly traffic growth. It was a very easy, accessible way to get a bird’s eye view of your performance. Unfortunately, Audience View is no longer a viewable option in GA4. RIP, I guess.

There are some workarounds, but they don’t really fill the void left behind by audience view. Nevertheless, let’s walk through them in case they are helpful to you in some way. The first thing you can do is get a traffic count for a set period. To do this, navigate to “Traffic Acquisition.” 

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Once you do that, you’ll be met with the following screen. In the top right, you can choose the time period you want to view.

You can even choose to compare it to another time period, but it doesn’t exactly paint the same kind of picture that Audience View did.

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This will give you a side by side of the two time periods… but that is all you can do. There is no way to add a third option. Which means looking at growth over time on GA4 is impossible.

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If you want to see your monthly growth over the course of anything more than two months, you’ll need to spend the time creating a customized external report for your site. 

Your Data Is Only Being Stored for 2 Months

Universal Analytics was like a friend you could rely on, it did not put an expiration date on your data and let you reference it for as long as you wanted. GA4… doesn’t give a f*ck about you. Which means, by default, your data is only being stored for two months. There is an option to change it to 14 manually, but if you want to save your data for any longer than that, you will have to pay for a subscription to BigQuery, Google’s enterprise cloud storage service, to hold that data.

And once you do that, you’ll need to purchase a program that lets you access that data from BigQuery. Two new services and a whole lot of work for what used to be a free native feature.

This is one of the biggest differences between the two analytics platforms, and it is going to be a real pain for anyone who is not aware that their data will be gone forever if they don’t actively seek to save it. For anyone serious about web growth, data is mission critical, so this change is going to have strong adverse impacts in the near and distant future.

GA4 Reporting Sucks

Hope you don’t mind the candor, but it is true. It isn’t just the lack of data storage that is killing reporting, either. It is the lack of customizability and 

If you are one of Incredible’s clients, you probably haven’t even noticed a difference because we create custom reports to view with all the information you need to easily reference. These reports are free from GA4’s interface, so we can make it look a lot cleaner and easily digestible.

But, if you aren’t partnered with Incredible or a different agency providing you with the same service… you are going to have a much harder time parsing through your data and setting up easily viewed dashboards you can pop in and look at.

Have More GA4 Questions?

We know the transition and growing pains are tough, especially for a platform that literally no one is enjoying right now. But, we are here to help you make the best of it if you need some help along the way. If any of this seemed overwhelming, concerning, or just straight up irritating — don’t worry, you are in good company.

But over the course of the last year, we’ve been able to figure out the best ways to navigate through GA4 and extract meaningful and useful information from it. Unfortunately, it isn’t something that is always a one-to-one guide, so if you are struggling, reach out to us. We will get you sorted.