In one calendar year, Universal Analytics will disappear and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will be taking its place. Because of this, it is important to get your teams trained and up-to-date on the GA4 platform. Recently, the PCG team did an internal company-wide GA4 Training with a special guest, Brie Anderson.
During this training, we walked through the new GA4 platform, went through any questions our internal team had, and learned a lot about what our team can do within the platform.
Some of the highlights from this training are the following:
Custom Insights
One big change in GA4 is Custom Insights, which basically replaces custom alerts. Custom Insights allows you to create conditions that notice changes in your data that may be important to you or your specific website. Once the insights are triggered, you will be able to see them on the Insights Dashboard. Setting up email alerts will then further notify you of these same website data changes. GA4 allows you to create up to 50 custom insights per property.
Linking Search Console to GA4
Just like in Universal Analytics we are able to link our Search Console to GA4. This is easy to do. First, you need to go to the Admin. Section. Once there, you then, in the Property Column, select the Search Console link within the Product Linking session. When the link is opened, you can then choose which website you would like to link to along with its corresponding web stream. The two new reports you are able to access once Search Console is linked are Google Organic Search Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic.
Custom Audiences Replacing Segments
Many of us are accustomed to creating custom segments in Universal Analytics. To do this in GA4, you will need to create Custom Audiences and set conditions for it based on the dimensions, metrics, and event data you can collect from a property. It can take between 24-48 hours for an audience to accumulate users. Once the audience is created, it will accumulate users who meet the conditions set from that point forward.
Keeping your team trained and up-to-date on Google Analytics 4 is going to be critical in the future. Brian Pasch, the founder of PCG Digital, has created the Automotive Standards Council for GA4, which will offer future training and guidelines for GA4. To learn more about training opportunities for GA4 feel free to contact the PCG Team.
Michele Kowalski
Drive Your Meta Advertising Strategy Using Conversational Commerce
