This week’s chat was hosted by Julie Friedman Bacchini with special guest, Google Analytics 4 expert Krista Seiden. The topic was “Google Analytics 4”.
Read the full chat recap here.
Listen to the podcast recap here.
(Podcasts are also available on iTunes and Google).
Some Questions Posed to Krista Seiden during the chat:
From Tim Jensen:
QUESTION: Do you know if there will be a way to “merge” historical data from an old UA property to a GA4 property? Or are we stuck looking back just to the timeframe we set up GA4 in that particular property?
ANSWER: They are completely different data models, so ‘merging’ data between the two will not likely be possible. That being said, you could use a Data Studio dashboard to bring your historical UA and new GA4 data together in a single dashboard side by side.
From Neptune Moon:
QUESTION: Will Google have things like this readily available (Data Studio templates or reports) or will we need to build it all ourselves, do you think?
ANSWER: Well, Data Studio is already available, and has connectors to both UA and GA4. I’m sure someone (Google or otherwise) will build a nice template to share that brings the data sets together nicely.
From Andrew Miller:
QUESTION: What happens to the long tail of UA users that will never intentionally upgrade to GA4? They don’t know it exists or don’t know how. A forced migration someday?
ANSWER: I guess we’ll see!
From Krista –
GA4 IS quite different from Universal Analytics (current version). UA was focused on sessions and pageviews. GA4 is a completely different data model – it’s built around events and parameters, which requires you to rethink everything you’re doing.
Follow up question from Andrea Cruz:
QUESTION:Could you please expand on this? how should we be thinking about it?
ANSWER: You need to study up on the data model, the limits, and how things translate from 1 system to the other. Best example is Events in UA are a unique combo of Category/Action/Label, in GA4 events are not unique, you should reuse, and parameters help distinguish.
Follow up question from Julia Vyse:
QUESTION: I didn’t quite get all that. App data is included, but events aren’t unique? that feels like it should be the opposite to me. can you say more please?
ANSWER: Event names aren’t unique. For example, you might have a “view_item” event that you use 100 times on your site or app, but the parameters that define it will have unique values to help you know which “view_item” event you are looking at.
From Andrew Miller:
QUESTION: I would love to know if there’s more documentation about the event based model. Specifically how to configure goals?
ANSWER: Everything is event based in GA4 😉 But yes, read up on event creation here.
From Neptune Moon:
QUESTION: What is the recommendation for implementing GA4 currently?
ANSWER: Right now, the best approach is to dual tag – i.e. run both Universal Analytics and GA4 in tandem. That way you can get used to the new data model and take advantage of new features available in GA4, but not lose your source of truth from UA.
Links & Resources
Krista Seiden’s “Hello to GA4” post
Krista Seiden’s “GA4’s Data Deletion Feature” post
Brainlabs Everything About GA4 post