What’s new in Google Analytics 4?

This time has come, GA4 has entered our lives and is here to stay. The new version differs from the familiar Universal Analytics, and in this article, I decided to show not just a comparison of what was and what is, but rather what new features have appeared in GA4.

It is also worth remembering that GA4 is not just an improvement of UA; it is a new methodology for data collection and transformation that opens up new opportunities for analysis. GA4 is almost a new analytics platform, and that is how it should be regarded.

Exploration

Google Analytics 4 can be criticized for many things, but if there is something to praise, it should be done. My favorite part is the Exploration section. Its only downside is that in the Ukrainian translation, it is called “Reports.” Here you can create reports similar to dashboards using explorations in GA4. I like to say that Exploration is the brainchild of user dashboards from Universal and the Data Studio user interface.

Personally, I have just created several exploration reports for the marketing team based on their tasks. So that the targeting specialist no longer has to navigate through different tabs but can see on one screen which ads and campaigns brought leads and what the quality of the traffic is. So that the content manager can see which articles bring in the most clients and which articles are the most conversion-friendly. So that the marketer can see the entire sales funnel in front of them and identify where the “bottleneck” is.

So, it is essential to understand this section first.

Product Linking

One of the latest options in property settings is product linking. It is quite possible that you have previously used product linking with Google products, perhaps through Search Console or Google Ads.

Essentially, all it does is link data between different Google products. With product linking in GA4, there is no real difference except for the available platforms.

In GA4, you now have the option to connect Google Merchant Center, Google Optimize, and BigQuery directly and for free!

I don’t know about you, but I love having everything in one tab and being able to analyze all the data in one program.

Available Settings

Perhaps the most underrated feature of Google Analytics 4 is the ability to customize the platform according to your needs.

You can not only create custom reports in GA4 as you would in UA, but you can actually add these reports directly to the navigation. So, no more need to go to a separate part of the platform. In GA4, if you want to create a new report, you can place it anywhere in the report navigation panel.

Other configuration options include changing the names of collections and themes in the secondary navigation using the library.

Machine Learning Capabilities

We began to observe the rollout of machine learning tools with Universal Analytics. In 2018, Insights was launched to help people find trends and anomalies in their data. Over time, machine learning has become more sophisticated, allowing users to “ask questions” in the search bar as a way to quickly find information.

When GA4 was released, the platform included more information than ever before. Statistics are available and highlighted not only across the platform but also new machine learning tools have been introduced!

To do this, you simply click “Suggestions” and AI prepares human-like responses for you. For example, you can just find out “how many users came in the last 90 days from organic search.” It was possible to determine this before, but now you can just write it that way and get an answer.

Anomaly Detection

Anomaly detection, which was previously reserved for statistics, is now available on most line charts. This tool is extremely useful for quickly identifying statistical differences in your data. For anomaly detection to work, Google must have enough historical data to create predictive models. This leads to the next new tool — predictive analytics.

Predictive Analytics

Previously, if someone wanted access to predictive analytics, they had to pay for another tool or create it themselves. But that is no longer the case! GA4 has introduced predictive analytics for LTV, churn probability, likely churns, likely highest spenders, likely purchases, purchase probability, and more. Now planning your actions will be a bit easier.

Attribution

Over the past few years, Google has been working on its tools. With the rollout of Universal Analytics, it deployed multi-channel sequence tools. Then, in December 2019, it released its Attribution Project tool, which allowed users to access a suite of tools related to attribution and conversion.

Now in GA4, we see a section in the main navigation panel called “Advertising.” By clicking on this GA4 section, we find all the same tools from the attribution projects. This includes conversion paths, time to conversion, model comparison tool, and conversion touchpoints. And to be honest, I like the design here much more. It is visually easier to assess the results.

But tools are not the only attributes you will see in GA4. All GA4 properties have been changed to use a data-driven model as the default conversion model, while UA still relies on last click.