GA4 Resources

Browse our GA4-specific content or check out the full, 1-hour GA4 beginner’s tutorial here.

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Google Tag Manager Basics: Master Tags and Triggers

[Updated 3/13/24] Learning Google Tag Manager basics begins with mastering tags and triggers. So let’s learn how GTM tags and triggers work and then walk through the process of setting up a GA4 event tag in GTM.

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Update Your Looker Data Source

If you have existing Looker Studio reports that use your GA4 data, you may need to update your Looker data source to see all the dimensions and metrics you need. This short guide shows you how.

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GA4 Session Start Event Explained

Updated: 2/2/24 Google Analytics collects the session_start event every time a new session (a new visit) begins on your site. The event is used to counts total sessions.

Not only can you use the session start event to keep tabs on your total site visits, but you can use the event to create segments and audiences from your users based on how many visits they’ve made. You’ll learn how in this article.

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Google Analytics Source Medium: Session Source/Medium in GA4 Explained

The Google Analytics source medium traffic dimension is one way to analyze your website traffic. The source tells you the specific “place” the traffic came from. The medium tells you about the “type” of traffic. Put them together and you have source / medium.

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Google Signals Explained: What You Need to Know

Google Signals provide enhanced functionality in Google Analytics. It also presents some potential downsides that marketers should understand.

Here’s the information you need.

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Automatically Collected Events in GA4

Automatically collected events are the foundation of GA4 event tracking. Unlike other events, there is nothing you need to do to set them up. They are collected – you guessed it – automatically.

Let’s review the three automatically collected events and how you can use them in your analysis.

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Microsoft Clarity vs. Google Analytics

Microsoft has its own digital analytics tool called Clarity. But it serves a different purpose than Google Analytics. You’ll learn all about it in this comparison of Microsoft Clarity vs. Google Analytics.

Let’s do it!

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GA4 Views: How To Create a “View” in Google Analytics 4

Updated: 8/8/23 When it comes to Google Analytics views, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that technically Views no longer exist in GA4. The good news, however, is that we can use report filters to replicate much of the same functionality that we liked about views from the days of Universal Analytics.

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GA4 User Engagement: Understanding the User Engagement Metric

The user engagement metric in GA4 is a new change to Google Analytics relative to the days of Universal Analytics. It is both used to log time (using engagement_time_msec event parameter) and it’s an event that you will see in your GA4 reports. It’s a foundational metric that has direct implications for calculated metrics like engagement rate, bounce rate, and more.

In this guide you’ll learn about GA4 user engagement and how to better understand your Google Analytics 4 reports.

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GA4 Problems: What Can You Do About Them?

UPDATED: 8/11/23 Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is now the only option for collecting data with Google Analytics. But there are problems with GA4, at least for those of us who used and loved Universal Analytics (UA). In this author’s opinion, the new platform is still not yet as good as UA was. Let’s review 4 common GA4 problems and explore what options we have.

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