GA4 Is Different — Here's What That Means for You
If you used Universal Analytics, Google Analytics 4 will feel unfamiliar. The data model changed, the reports reorganized, and several metrics you relied on either don't exist anymore or work differently.
UA was officially sunset in July 2023. If you're still finding UA references in guides, they're outdated. This is the GA4 version.
Setting Up GA4 Correctly
Before anything else, confirm you're collecting the right data.
Verify your tracking code is installed. Go to Admin > Data Streams, select your web stream, and check that you're receiving data. If the "last 48 hours" indicator shows no data, your tracking code isn't firing.
Link to Google Search Console. Under Admin > Property Settings > Search Console Links, connect your GSC property. Once linked, you can see organic search queries alongside on-site behavior in the Search Console integration reports.
Configure conversions. A conversion in GA4 is any event you mark as valuable. By default, GA4 automatically tracks first_visit, session_start, and page_view. You need to mark the events that matter to your business as conversions.
For lead generation sites: mark form_submit or a thank-you page view as a conversion.
For e-commerce: mark purchase as a conversion.
For content sites: scroll (90% depth) or file_download might be your primary engagement conversion.
To mark an event as a conversion: go to Admin > Events, find your event, and toggle "Mark as conversion."
Set data retention to 14 months. By default, GA4 retains event-level data for only 2 months. Go to Admin > Data Settings > Data Retention and change it to 14 months. Do this immediately — you can't recover data you didn't retain.
The Reports You'll Actually Use
GA4 has many reports. These are the ones worth checking regularly:
Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition
Shows where your visitors come from: Organic Search, Direct, Referral, Paid Search, Social, Email. This is your channel performance overview. Check it weekly to spot changes in traffic distribution.
Key question: is organic search growing over time? If you're doing SEO work, this is where you see it paying off.
Reports > Engagement > Pages and Screens
Shows your most-visited pages with engagement metrics. Columns to pay attention to: - Views (raw page loads) - Sessions (visits that included this page) - Average Engagement Time (how long engaged users spent on this page) - Conversions (if you've set them up)
Pages with high views but very low engagement time are getting traffic but not holding attention. Investigate whether the content matches what visitors expected.
Reports > Engagement > Events
Shows all events GA4 is tracking. This is where you confirm that your conversion events are firing correctly and see the volume of each tracked action.
Explorations > Free Form
The most powerful report in GA4. You build custom reports by dragging dimensions (Page Path, City, Device Category) and metrics (Sessions, Conversions, Engagement Rate) into a table. This is where you answer specific questions: "Which pages convert visitors from organic search?" "What's the conversion rate by device type?"
Key Metrics That Changed from UA
Sessions. Still exists but defined differently. In UA, a session reset at midnight and after 30 minutes of inactivity. In GA4, sessions are counted differently and the numbers won't match UA exactly.
Bounce Rate. UA's bounce rate (single-page sessions with no interaction) is replaced in GA4 by Engagement Rate — the percentage of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion, or had 2+ page views. A high GA4 Engagement Rate is good; a high UA Bounce Rate was bad. They're not inverses of each other.
Goals / Conversions. UA Goals are now Events marked as conversions. The concept is similar but the implementation is different.
Average Session Duration. Still available but calculated differently. Less comparable to historical UA data.
The Exploration I Run on Every Site
Organic search conversion analysis:
- Go to Explore > Free Form
- Add dimension: Landing Page
- Add dimension: First User Medium (filter to "organic")
- Add metric: Sessions, Conversions, Conversion Rate
This shows which pages organic traffic lands on, how many sessions they produce, and which ones actually convert. The pages in the top of the list by sessions that have low conversion rates are your highest-priority optimization opportunities.
Common GA4 Problems
"My traffic looks lower than in UA." Expected. GA4's session definition is different. Don't compare GA4 numbers to historical UA data directly.
"I can't find the All Pages report." It moved. Go to Reports > Engagement > Pages and Screens.
"My conversions aren't showing up." Check two things: is the event actually firing (look in the DebugView under Admin)? And is it marked as a conversion (Admin > Events > toggle on)?
"I'm seeing a lot of Direct traffic." Direct traffic includes sessions where the referral source was lost — this can include email links without UTM parameters, some social traffic, and links from non-web apps. Adding UTM parameters to email and social links reduces unexplained Direct traffic.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I see keyword data in GA4?
Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, then click on "Organic Search" in the table. Or use the Search Console integration under Reports > Acquisition > Search Console > Queries. Direct keyword data is limited due to the "not provided" issue in Google's SSL search.
Is GA4 GDPR compliant out of the box?
Not fully — it depends on your configuration and jurisdiction. GA4 sends data to Google's US servers by default, which creates issues under GDPR. Adjustments needed: enable IP anonymization, configure data retention properly, and review whether your consent setup meets requirements. Consult your privacy counsel for jurisdiction-specific requirements.
What's the difference between Users and Sessions?
Users are people (or more precisely, unique browser/device combinations). Sessions are visits. One user can have multiple sessions over time. A user who visits your site three times in a week counts as 1 user but 3 sessions.
The Monthly Review Routine
30 minutes per month is enough to stay on top of GA4 for most sites:
- Traffic Acquisition: Any significant channel shifts from last month?
- Pages and Screens: Any pages with unusual drops in engagement time?
- Conversions: Is your conversion volume trending up or down?
- A custom Exploration: This month's specific question (example: "How does mobile vs desktop conversion rate compare?")
Consistency matters more than depth. Reviewing monthly means you catch problems early rather than after three months of decline.
Marcus Reed is Senior Editor & Digital Strategist at High5Expert. He has configured and analyzed Google Analytics across dozens of client properties in e-commerce, SaaS, and service industries.
Discussion
9 commentsThe data retention setting is something I wish someone had told me when GA4 launched. Didn't change it from the 2-month default for the first six months. Lost event-level data I needed for a quarterly analysis. Changed to 14 months immediately and told every client to do the same.
We review and update our guides regularly to keep them current. This one was last updated recently, and we plan to add new sections as the landscape evolves. Bookmark it and check back!
The Explorations tool is what finally made GA4 click for me. It took about two hours of experimentation but once I understood how to build custom reports by dragging dimensions and metrics, it's actually more flexible than anything in UA. The default reports are worse but the custom capability is better.
That's a great suggestion! We're exploring video content for our most popular guides. Stay tuned — it's on our roadmap.
The organic search conversion analysis exploration you described is exactly what I needed. Set it up and immediately found that our most-visited blog page (4,800 monthly sessions from organic) has a 0.1% conversion rate, while a less-visited page (900 sessions) converts at 4.7%. The second page was getting no internal linking. Fixed that the same day.
Welcome aboard! We publish new guides every week. Glad you found this helpful!
That's a textbook internal linking opportunity — a high-traffic page that doesn't convert being identified, then a high-converting page with low traffic that's being undersupported. Adding internal links from the popular page to the converting page is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost improvements in SEO. The Exploration you ran is exactly what it's designed for.
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Question: I'm running GA4 on a site that gets about 300 visits per month. Is there enough data to make meaningful decisions, or should I just wait until traffic grows to get reliable insights?
Thank you! We do offer consulting and implementation services. Feel free to reach out through our contact page and we can discuss your specific needs.
At 300 visits per month, GA4 still provides meaningful directional data — just with more statistical noise. You can reliably see traffic source distribution, top pages, and engagement patterns. Where you'll struggle: conversion rate analysis (if you're getting 3-5 conversions per month, any rate calculation is too noisy to act on). Focus on qualitative improvements (content, UX) rather than A/B testing until traffic grows.
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The 'bounce rate vs engagement rate' clarification is something that confused me for months. In UA, a 65% bounce rate felt like a problem. In GA4, my engagement rate is 71%, which is good — but they're measuring different things. Comparing them as if they're inverses caused a lot of misinterpretation in my reporting.
Great question! You can bookmark our blog page — we publish new content regularly. We're working on a newsletter feature that will be available soon!
The UTM parameter point is underappreciated. We added UTMs to all email campaign links three months ago. Direct traffic dropped by 22% and Email channel traffic appeared as if from nowhere. The traffic was always there — we just couldn't see it. Now email attribution is clean and we can actually measure email campaign performance properly.
That's the best compliment we can get! Glad it helped resolve the debate. Data-driven decisions are always the way to go.
UTM parameters turning invisible email traffic into attributable channel data is one of the most consistent quick wins in analytics hygiene. A simple rule helps: every link in every marketing email gets a UTM. It takes 60 seconds per campaign and immediately makes your channel reporting meaningful. The alternative is attribution drift where your most active marketing channel is partially invisible.
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