Google Analytics 4 Event Tracking for Beginners

Google Analytics 4 Event Tracking is a powerful tool that helps you understand how users interact with your website or app.

To set up event tracking in Google Analytics 4, you'll need to create a new event in the "Events" tab of your Google Analytics 4 property.

You can choose from two types of events: "User-defined events" and "Automatically collected events".

Automatically collected events are triggered by specific actions, such as a user clicking a button or submitting a form.

Google Analytics 4 Event Tracking allows you to track a wide range of events, including button clicks, form submissions, and even scrolling behavior.

The data collected from these events can be used to create custom reports and analyze user behavior in more detail.

A fresh viewpoint: Azure Events

To set up Google Analytics 4, you need to create a property in the Google Analytics web interface.

You can access the Google Analytics web interface by signing in with your Google account.

First, go to the Google Analytics website and click on the "Create" button in the top right corner.

Google Analytics 4 is a property-based system, which means you need to create a property for each website or app you want to track.

Each property has its own unique ID, which is used to track events and other data.

You can create multiple properties under a single account, but each property must have its own unique name.

Worth a look: How to Find Unique Website Visitors Google Analytics

Tracking events in Google Analytics 4 is a powerful way to understand user behavior and optimize your website or app. You can track up to 500 unique events, with each event name limited to 40 characters.

To get started, you can use the recommended events provided by Google, which are categorized by industry and business vertical. These events provide valuable information about how users interact with your website or app, and can help you improve your marketing campaigns and website design.

Here are some key events to consider tracking: Page Views: This is a basic but essential event to track.Clicks on Key Buttons: Track clicks on call-to-action buttons like ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Sign Up’.Form Submissions: Whether it's a contact form or a newsletter sign-up, tracking form submissions can show you how many users are interested in getting in touch or receiving updates.Video Plays: If you have video content, track plays and completions.Ecommerce Transactions: If you run an online store, track purchases and checkouts.

You can also create new events based on existing events, or send custom events using Google Tag Manager. Remember to check the limits when it comes to event tracking, such as the maximum number of unique events and parameters you can track.

For another approach, see: How to Track Form Submissions in Google Analytics 4

In Google Analytics 4, events have taken the place of hits, giving you more flexibility in tracking user interactions.

Events in GA4 are categorized into four types: automatically collected events, enhanced measurement events, recommended events, and custom events.

Automatically collected events require no setup and include basic interactions like page views, which are tracked by GA4 without any additional configuration.

Enhanced measurement events track more detailed actions, such as scrolls and outbound clicks, providing a better understanding of user behavior.

Custom events allow you to track unique interactions specific to your business goals, giving you a richer understanding of how users engage with your content.

In Universal Analytics, data was always sent as a 'hit', with predefined types of hits you could send, including pageview hits, event hits, ecommerce hits, social interactions hits, exception hits, user timing hits, and screen hits for apps.

Here are the predefined hit types in Universal Analytics:

With events in GA4, you're no longer restricted to these predefined options, giving you the freedom to collect data for anything you like.

You can track a wide range of events in Google Analytics 4, including page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, and more. This is because events in GA4 are categorized into four types: automatically collected events, enhanced measurement events, recommended events, and custom events.

Automatically collected events are basic interactions like page views, which are tracked without any setup. Enhanced measurement events track more detailed actions, such as scrolls and outbound clicks. Recommended events are standard use cases that help improve reporting accuracy. Custom events allow you to track unique interactions specific to your business goals.

Some examples of what you can track with events include pages people load on your website, actions people perform within a page, elements people have clicked, and information from the URL of the page. You can also track transaction and product details, elements that are visible in the browser, and details you’ve collected about a user.

A different take: How to See Page Views in Google Analytics 4

Here are some examples of events you can track:

Google also recommends tracking events for online sales and the gaming industry. For example, you can track the number of people entering their contact details using the generate_lead event. You can also track the number of impressions of a special offer using the view_promotion event.

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You can track up to 500 unique events, which is a pretty generous limit.

If you're using Google Analytics 4, be aware that the name of each event can be a maximum of 40 characters. This is something to keep in mind when setting up your tracking.

Here are the event limits in a quick reference format:

You can send up to 25 parameters with each event, which is a good thing since parameters are what make events so flexible.

Each parameter's name can be a maximum of 40 characters, and the value of the parameter can be a maximum of 100 characters.

You can register up to 50 text-based parameters and up to 50 numerical parameters from your events.

If this caught your attention, see: Google Analytics 4 Custom Events

Batching is a key concept in event tracking that can impact how you investigate and validate your implementation.

Google Universal Analytics makes a separate network call for each hit triggered, whereas Google Analytics 4 batches events that occur within a few seconds into a single call.

This means you may see multiple events sent with a single network request when investigating network calls.

To configure Google Analytics 4, you'll need to set up the Google Analytics 4 tag. This involves configuring the Measurement ID, Global Object, Data Layer Name, Send Page View, and Clear Vars settings.

You can also use Google Tag Manager to configure the tag and trigger, and pass them to GA4. In GTM, find the Clicks trigger and enable variables, such as the Click ID variable. Decide when to fire the trigger, and consider setting a Minimum Percent Visible and minimum on-screen duration for the tracked element.

Suggestion: Google Analytics 4 Measurement Id

Here's a quick rundown of the settings you'll need to configure in the Google Analytics 4 tag:

You can also use Enhanced Measurement to collect additional data automatically. This feature lets you track optional automatic events, such as scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads.

If you're already using event tracking with Universal Analytics, then I recommend documenting the current events. To get started, you can check the events reports in your Universal Analytics property by navigating to 'Behavior', then 'Events', and then 'Top Events'.

You should then check to see if any of these events will be replaced by the automatic tracking available in Google Analytics 4. If all of your events from Universal Analytics are automatically tracked, then you will be good to go. For example, if you implemented Universal Analytics events to track embedded YouTube videos, then Enhanced Measurement will look after this for you automatically.

Intriguing read: How to Check Blog Traffic on Google Analytics

However, if there are events that won’t be tracked automatically, then you’ll need to create a recommended event or a custom event. It’s essential to spend time thinking about how you translate your events from Universal Analytics to events in Google Analytics 4. This involves considering the new flexibility you have in Google Analytics 4, where you can use events with parameters like 'chat_current_time' and 'page_location'.

Here's an example of how you might translate events from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4:

This is better than replicating the previous category, action, and label structure from Universal Analytics, and gives you the opportunity to collect richer insights about the actions people take and their experience on your website.

User properties in Google Analytics 4 allow you to collect user-scoped properties that describe segments of your visitors.

These properties can include language preference or geographic location. You can set user properties by choosing the data layer variable to map and selecting the User Properties category.

To do this, you'll need to enter the GA4 property name in the format set.user_properties.USER_PROPERTY, where USER_PROPERTY represents the GA4 property name.

For example, if you want to set a user property for language preference, you would use the format set.user_properties.language.

Here's a list of user properties in GA4:

By setting user properties, you can gain a better understanding of your visitors and create targeted segments for analysis.

In the Google Analytics 4 interface, you can modify existing events to make them more accurate or relevant to your reports.

To get started, navigate to the "Events" section and click on "Modify Event" on the top-right corner.

This feature allows you to modify events, parameters, and values before they're available in your reports.

You'll need to select the data stream that includes the event you want to modify, and name the modification.

You can also enter your conditions to specify when the modification should be applied.

For example, you can modify the click event to track outbound links, and it will be reported as "outbound_link" moving forward.

For your interest: Google Cloud Next Event

To see the values of the parameters you've sent with your events, you need to register them in Google Analytics. This is a crucial step, as you won't be able to view them in your reports if you don't.

You can register a parameter by navigating to 'Custom Definitions', choosing either 'Custom Dimensions' or 'Custom Metrics', and then selecting 'Create'. Custom dimensions are used to report text-based information, such as the name of a Country or the URL of a link someone has clicked.

Custom metrics, on the other hand, are used to report numerical values, like a count or a percentage. For example, if you're sending a dollar value as a parameter, you would register this as a metric. After registering your parameter, you'll find it in your Google Analytics 4 reports moving forward.

Once you start tracking events, the next step is analyzing the data to gain meaningful insights. You can use the Events Report to get a summary of all the events you've set up, showing how often each event occurs.

For another approach, see: Google Analytics Website Metrics

Segmenting your data by creating comparisons and segments allows you to filter your data based on specific criteria, such as user location or device type. This can help you understand how different groups of users interact with your site.

Here are the steps to analyze your event data:

Google Tag Manager is a powerful tool that helps you manage and track events in Google Analytics 4. To set it up, you need to create a tag configuration in GTM, which involves copying the Measurement ID from your GA4 property.

You can find this ID in the Data Streams section of your GA4 panel, specifically in the Stream details. Once you have the ID, you can paste it into the Measurement ID field in the tag configuration.

Here are the key settings to configure in the tag:

To create a GA4 configuration tag in GTM, follow these steps:

1. Go to your GA4 panel and navigate to the property dedicated to your landing page.

2. Click Data Streams and choose your stream.

3. Copy the Measurement ID from the Stream details.

4. Paste the ID into the Measurement ID field in the tag configuration.

5. Choose All Pages as the trigger.

6. Name the trigger and click Save.

Once you've saved the tag, you can preview it to ensure it's working correctly. In the Tag Assistant pop-up window, paste your website's URL and click Connect. Then, click Continue, and Tag Assistant will open a new window with your website.