Unleash Advanced Campaign Control with Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides a whole range of reports and options for investigating the origins of your users and analyzing their acti...

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides a whole range of reports and options for investigating the origins of your users and analyzing their activities on the website.

Unleash Advanced Campaign Control with Google Analytics 4

Users may have accessed your offerings in many ways, such as the following:

• Found your offering in a search engine and clicked on it
• Clicked on a link on another website
• Clicked on a link in an email newsletter
• Seen and clicked on an advertisement for your offerings
• Scanned a QR code that leads to your website
• Clicked on a Facebook or LinkedIn post
• Discovered your articles in a shopping search
• Entered your website URL directly into the browser

You can deliberately create some of these links for users and control them, for example, your advertisements or newsletters. But your influence on other channels is pretty limited, for example, hits in a search engine or a post by one of your users on Facebook. In all cases, a user reaches your offering after clicking on it and is recorded and tracked there by GA4 (if the user has consented to tracking).

Data about the origins of your users can be found in GA4 either in the Acquisition section of the Life cycle menu or in the Business Goals menu under Leads. The Acquisition overview provides some initial insights into the various reports, as shown in below figure.

 New Users and Started Sessions

The general trend of your website users is followed by data on user acquisition and newly generated visits. The two tiles may look quite similar at first, and depending on the web 3.0, they may not differ greatly in the distribution of individual entries. However, the messages that these two reports are trying to convey are different because GA4 distinguishes between users and sessions when considering sources:

The User acquisition report shows from where users arrived at your website. If users came to your offering multiple times during the period, only the first channel is considered in the table.

The report also distinguishes between new users and returning users. New users have not been on your site before, or GA4 does not know them yet. The term “returning users” means users that have already received a cookie (or another marker) from Google Analytics on a previous visit.

For many website operators, an important goal is to build up a kind of regular customer base that repeatedly finds its way to their website for new content, products, or services. In the detailed view, you can see which sources led to such regular customers in the given period and which did not.

Sessions are viewed in the Traffic acquisition report. A session describes a continuous usage process (i.e., the accessing of pages and events within a certain timeframe). A user can start one or more sessions on your website within a certain timeframe. Each session has its own source, which is listed in this report.

Sessions show where views of your offerings specifically came from, but do not make any further subdivision of the users. A first-time, new visitor is counted in the same way as an “old acquaintance.” In this view, you tend to look at the result of key events and events for individual sources.

The two detailed reports in the menu use the same channels, sources, and mediums as dimensions. Where they differ is in the metrics considered: users versus sessions.

How Do Users Get to The Website?

Google Analytics organizes the origin of your users in several stages. First, it considers the website from which a user came (the source). Then, GA4 tries to recognize certain types of links. Some hits from search engines, paid ads, or emails will be recognized and assigned a type (the medium). The result is then assigned to categories the channels.

Each source from which users come to your website is divided into these three parts and saved for the reports. A clicked hit in a Google search can be broken down into the following information:

• Channel: Organic Search
• Source: google
• Medium: organic

Source and Medium

When a user goes to your website by clicking on a link, their browser automatically transmits the URL of the page on which the link was clicked to Google Analytics. This information is called the referrer. GA4 stores this information in the page referrer dimension, which you can analyze in the Explorations section. The page link contains all source URLs, including URLs on your own website, as shown below. The empty second line corresponds to an empty referrer field, which becomes a (direct) in the report.

Page Referrer Dimension with Both External Websites and Your Own

GA4 fills two dimensions based on the page referrers: source and medium. The source contains the domain from which the user came. Google Analytics makes an initial assignment for the medium based on the source domain. You can explicitly specify the values for source and medium yourself by appending parameters to links.

Source and Medium Dimensions Showing the Origins of Your Users

You can select the source and medium in the dimension list above the detailed tables under Acquisition, both individually and in combination. above image shows the Session source / medium list with several entries.

Explaining Channels

When you view the detailed reports, you’ll see the entries shown below, namely, Direct, Referral, Organic Search, and more. These labels refer to channels into which GA4 sorts users or sessions, depending on their origins. Channels organize user sources according to various criteria so that you can access a simple overview even with many sources.

Channels Organizing the Websites Linking to Your Offerings

GA4 currently provides 18 channels in the default setting. These channels can be expanded and supplemented with your own entries. 

User Acquisition and Generated Traffic

You can analyze the data collected on campaigns and on the sources of your users in the two reports in the Acquisition section. At the beginning of this post, you learned how the Traffic acquisition report shows the origins of all users or sessions within a given period of time, as shown below.

Traffic Acquisition Dimension Showing the Origins of Sessions

In the data table, you can switch between the different dimensions for references and campaigns, while the columns in the report remain the same:

• Primary channel group
• Default channel group
• Source/medium
• Medium
• Source
• Source platform
• Campaign

The first two dimensions list the channels through which users arrived. In addition to the default channel group defined by Google, you can set up additional groups in Admin section. You must define one of these groups as the primary channel group, which is the default setting when the report is viewed.

In addition to the number of sessions per channel, you’ll see engagement metrics that answer the following questions:

• How many sessions had engagements?
• How long did the session last on average?
• How many events and key events were measured in sessions via this channel?

These values allow you to analyze channels according to whether they have brought active users to your website. Above figure shows values under Engaged sessions and Average engagement time per session.

Higher values mean that users have engaged for a longer time and more comprehensively with your offering via these channels. (The concept of engagement is defined as a few seconds spent on a page.)

Now, let’s compare the Organic Search and Paid Search channels. Both the engagement rate and the engagement time are significantly lower for the paid channel. Engagements were measured for around 47% of Paid Search sessions (Engagement rate column)—the other 53% of users left the page within the first few seconds.

The Email line enables further analysis. Although a few users came to the website via emails or newsletters, they had a much higher engagement rate than the average, the highest overall in our example. The key event rate is also higher than via search channels.

Looking at the Details

With the menus for events and key events, you can break down what else users have done on a page. In the example shown below, only the sales initiated via the two search channels are considered: 0.71% of sessions via organic search led to a sale; sessions via paid search, in 1.38% of cases. However, the sales revenue was much higher in organic sessions.

Comparison of Key Event "purchase" via Search Channels

In the menu above the table, you can switch from channels to other dimensions. After switching to the Source/Medium dimension, you’ll see details on the individual websites from which users have reached your offering, such as ecosia.org, as shown below.

What Sources Bring Users to Your Offering

The comparison of the Google and Bing search engines, for example, is extremely interesting. Although Bing clearly delivers fewer users, these users overall engage slightly more with the offering.

In addition to selecting the dimensions above the first column, you can add a second dimension to the analysis by clicking the plus sign icon. For example, select the Landing page + query string under Page/Screen, as shown below.

Adding Another Dimension to Source_Medium

Now, you’ll see, for each source, on which page in the offering the session started, as shown below.

Source and Landing Page in One View

The combination of channel and device category is also interesting. This combination shows you the ratio of desktop users to mobile users across the individual channels. In the other columns, you can then see how these users continue to browse the site. In the example shown below, a higher engagement rate was recorded for users that arrived via an organic search on mobile devices.

The Combination Shows Differences in Use

If you have integrated a store and its corresponding e-commerce purchase data or if you transfer values with the key events, these values will be added to the revenue. As shown below, the purchase key event is selected as the conversion moment, and you can see the total revenue for the period.

Key Events and Revenue per Source

The User acquisition report is similar to the last report shown. This report contains metrics with reference to the user instead of the session. A distinction is made between new users and returning users. GA4 recognizes returning users by looking for a cookie set during a previous visit. All users without such a cookie are tracked as new.

As a result, if a user loses their cookies, for example, by way of explicit deletion, a change of device, or by enhancing privacy features in the Safari browser, GA4 recognizes this user as a new user on each subsequent visit.

Looking more closely, notice the difference in the dimension menu: In this report, all dimensions begin with the text First user. The report on new traffic acquisitions, on the other hand, uses the term Session at the start of each dimension, as shown below.

Key Event purchase and Revenue per Source

Campaigns and UTM Parameters

For users and sessions that come to your offering via a link, you can explicitly overwrite the values for tracking the source and medium and also transfer additional information. If you pay money for advertising material or links, you’ll want some way mark to these campaigns clearly for detailed analysis later. For this purpose, Google Analytics provides campaign parameters, also called UTM parameters.

These parameter-value pairs are appended to the link on which a user clicks to go to your site. The Google tag on your page (or Google Analytics itself) recognizes these parameters and writes the values directly to the relevant dimension. The parameter values take precedence over the automatically collected data for the source and medium.

Google Ads and UTM Parameters

The autotagging function is available for ads that you place via Google Ads. Google automatically marks these ads with a URL parameter, and the data is exchanged using a link. You then do not need any UTM parameters for these ads.

If you append UTM parameters to a link, you should always pass values for source, medium, and campaign. Two additional parameters for search term and content can be used optionally in certain cases.

UTM Parameters for Universal Analytics (UA) and GA4

The UTM parameters listed above were already in use in UA, and thus, you don’t need to adapt existing advertising material or mailings for GA4. However, GA4 introduces some new parameters, described below.

When Should You Use UTM Parameters?

The use of UTM parameters is recommended in many cases, such as the following:

• For links whose clicks must be tracked as precisely as possible: The referrer, is an optional feature of the browser and can be changed or simply deleted by scripts and servers. UTM parameters are more robust.
• For links that you use in advertising material: After clicking on such links, the user is usually directed via various intermediate systems before arriving at your offering. The information on the original source is lost in the process.
• For landing pages that you use for different channels: You can differentiate and reliably analyze campaigns and advertising media.
• For links in emails, PDFs, apps, or other links that send users to the browser: The Google tag does not receive any data via these upstream programs and therefore regards the session as (direct)/(none).

How Do You Use Parameters?

Parameters are appended after the page URL. For the https://www.luna-park.de/blog/ page, for example, appending parameters might result in the following URL:

https://www.luna-park.de/blog/?utm_source=gabook&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=ga4

If a user accesses the website via this link, the dimensions and parameters listed in Table below will be recorded for the session.

Dimensions and Their Parameters in a URL

You can append additional parameters to the URL using &.

Hash Parameter with Hash

If your website uses parameters with a hash (also referred to as fragments) in the URL, for instance, something like #start or #service, you must make sure to insert the UTM parameters before the hash value. Our earlier example must therefore be revised in the following way:

.../?utm_source=gabook&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=ga4#service

In UA, you had an option to append the UTM parameters as hash values, that is, separated by a hash (#utm_source=...) instead of a question mark. However, this option is not available in GA4.

To avoid making mistakes when adding parameters to a URL, you should use Google Campaign URL Builder for individual URLs, available at https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/ga4/campaign-url-builder/. With this tool, you’ll enter the URL of the destination page and the desired campaign parameters, as shown below.

Campaign URL Builder Creating UTM Parameters

Once all the required fields have been filled in, the form will display the complete URL including all parameters. Simply copy and paste this link wherever you want.

Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets are ideal for creating or documenting multiple URLs. Such a table can be easily created with a few simple formulas or you can google “sheet utm parameters.” You’ll find dozens of templates.

How Do You Name the Values?

The names of UTM parameters are fixed, but you can define their values. Although you’re quite free to choose the name, a few points you should bear in mind include the following:

Do not use any special characters or spaces in the values for the parameters. URLs can be encoded differently, and then such characters can cause problems. Thus, use newsletter_may as the name instead of Newsletter May.

Write all values in lowercase only. For Google Analytics, lowercase and uppercase letters make a difference, and in a worst-case scenario, you’ll end up with two entries for a campaign instead of one.

Channels recognize matching entries based on certain values of the source, medium, or campaign dimensions.

Use the different parameter values uniformly across different campaigns. Define a nomenclature to use consistently with colleagues and service providers.

Use individual links for different sources. As mentioned earlier in this section, UTM parameters overwrite the values Google Analytics would otherwise automatically recognize for a session. If you assign the source external for all external links, you won’t be able to distinguish between different source websites.

How Do You Check That the Parameters Are Working?

For subsequent analysis, an important step is that the parameters are tracked by the Google tag and are not lost after clicking on an ad or search result.

If you have created a URL with UTM parameters for a banner, mailing, or other advertising material, you should first test that the URL works. Consequently, you must call the page including all parameters in a browser, as shown below.

URL with Campaign Parameters

You should land on the correct page and not see an error message. This step demonstrates that the parameters are appended in the correct notation and that you generally have no typos in the URL.

If you continue to use the finished URL in another tool (i.e., an ad server, newsletter system, etc.), you should also check whether you’re still landing on the correct page when you click on the advertising material or link and, above all, check whether the UTM parameters are still appended!

The more systems are involved in the entire chain that leads users to a final page, the more important testing is. An incorrect redirect, a spelling mistake in the URL, or a forgotten parameter can be enough to prevent the unique count.

How Do You Check the Campaign Parameters in GA4?

The values of the UTM parameters must be transferred to Google Analytics for them to be included in the reports. This inclusion happens automatically if they are appended to the URL of the page that’s being viewed.

You can see and test whether everything arrives in GA4 live in the Realtime report, as shown below. Either click on the page_view item in the event overview and search for the campaign, source, or medium entry of the new campaign.

Campaign Parameters in the Realtime Report

Alternatively, you can find the user session of the test in the individual overview, as shown below. That is where the individual parameters of the first calls are shown. If you find the campaign, source, and medium parameters with the corresponding data, everything has arrived correctly.

Campaign Information in the Individual Overview

Unfortunately, both test variants are somewhat cumbersome, so you may not need to test every link in advance. For larger actions where you cannot easily correct a mistake, the time is still well invested. After all, a mailing to 10,000 potential customers that you cannot measure later because the UTM parameters do not reach the destination page is more than annoying.

For this reason, you should invest a little time in playing through the link route you want to send users along. 

Examples of Using UTM Parameters

Various use cases for UTM parameters exist beyond tracking paid campaigns.

Newsletters and Mailings

Newsletters and mailing systems such as MailChimp, Hubspot, or rapidmail route clicks in emails via their own servers to measure opening rates and user numbers. These services then redirect users to the specified destination, which is usually a website with additional information.

To reliably identify these users on the website, UTM parameters are the right choice. You can use destination URLs within the email that you previously provided with parameters, as shown below. As soon as you specify a URL that should be referenced by a button or link, you can add UTM parameters.

Storing a URL with Parameters in the Mailing Tool

Most systems provide the option of automatically appending UTM parameters to links, in which case, all you must do is activate the option. The system then sets the UTM values in such a way that you can recognize different campaigns and variants on the website. In no case will personal data be transferred to Google Analytics, and therefore, you cannot recognize individual people from the newsletter distribution list.

To ensure that newsletters and mailings are automatically assigned to the Email channel, you must use email or e-mail as the medium.

Ads, Banners, and Advertising Material

Advertising material also usually contains links that lead to a website or landing page. You can append UTM parameters to these links as well.

As with newsletters, many ad systems automatically append parameters. Especially if you use Google Ads, you can leave the topic of parameters to the Google system.

Google Ads

Google Ads provides its own options to pass on data about clicks and users to Google Analytics, called automatic tagging. If you activate this feature and have linked your Google Ads account and your Google Analytics property, parameters are automatically appended, and campaign data is exchanged. Google Ads uses its own gclid parameter for this task, not the usual UTM parameters from Google Analytics.

However, you can also use UTM parameters as described if you need them for other systems or analyses, for example.

Microsoft Ads/Bing

The Microsoft search engine provides the option of automatically assigning UTM parameters to all links in your ads.

Social Postings

If you create posts with links to your website in social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you can use UTM parameters. Use social or social-media as a UTM medium.

A post can includes a URL with UTM parameters:

https://www.example.com/blog/27156-seo-fehler-bei-internationalen-websites/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Blog

All Fixed Links

In general, you can assign UTM parameters to all links that lead to your website, including the following:

• Links from within an app
• Links from PDFs or other documents
• Links in QR codes
• Links in URL shorteners such as bit.ly

As long as your tracking code is installed on the landing page, incoming users are recorded in Google Analytics and assigned to a campaign or source.

Differences in Clicks, Sessions, and Users

You’ll receive data from other systems for many of the channels through which users visit your offerings. Google Ads, Facebook, or LinkedIn Ads provide values for impressions and clicks on your ad. A mailing tool like Hubspot provides data about when a user opens an email and clicks a link. These clicks describe how often a link in an ad, a button in the newsletter, or an advertising medium was clicked in total.

Let’s say you’ve appended UTM parameters to these stored links. Now, you should be able to track in GA4 what these users have subsequently done on the website, shouldn’t you?

When comparing the click values from an external system with the user or session values in GA4, you’ll notice that they do not match, as shown below. The deviation may be so large that you think it is an error. If supposedly only 10% of clicks arrive as sessions on your offer, there must be an error, right?

Clicks from Google Ads and Sessions from GA4

In such a case, you must consider how new users in particular experience the first visit to the website: Before a user can visit your website, they must first give their consent for their activities to be tracked. This consent query acts as a kind of additional barrier a user must overcome. Analytics tags are only displayed to the user, and tracking calls are only sent after the consent has been given.

Users who did not necessarily want to visit your website and only clicked on an ad out of curiosity, for example, end up on the consent query, as shown below. If they then click on Deny or close the browser, no page request has been fired, and no referrer or UTM parameter is recorded by GA4. These users and the associated channel therefore do not appear in the report. The discrepancy between clicks and sessions due to the consent query, and the associated denial of users is therefore to be expected.

Consent Query as Block Between Click and Session

This discrepancy distorts the engagement rate because users who click on Deny might still continue to engage with your offerings. If these users were measured, the engagement rate could be increased. But users who come to the offering and leave without another action would lower the rate.

The rate of deniers (i.e., users who explicitly object to tracking) is influenced by the structure and content of the consent banner. This rate is rather constant across all users of your offering. These users will then behave on the landing page in a way that is similar to that of users who have accepted.

The rate of users who leave the website without making a selection in the consent banner and without any engagement, on the other hand, can depend heavily on the source or campaign. For example, if the content of the advertising material and the landing page do not match well, the number of bounces is higher. A similar result occurs if you link to content in a mailing that does not match the text described.

For this reason, you shouldn’t just compare the values of users and sessions with each other but also include the clicks in the analysis. If the difference only affects certain campaigns or even only selected advertising media, take a closer look at the engagement between audience, advertising media, and landing page.

If you discover a large discrepancy between clicks and sessions across all channels, you should check your tags and trigger rules. Perhaps you have a problem with the UTM parameters or the tracking code; perhaps, the code is not firing correctly on the page? 

Editing Channels

We briefly encountered the topic of channels earlier. Based on the data from the source, medium, and campaign parameters, Google Analytics assigns user entries to a channel. GA4 currently has a total of 18 channels in the default setting, listed in Table.

Predefined Channels in GA4

Unrecognized references are collected in the unassigned channel. A complete list of the websites GA4 uses for internal mapping can be downloaded at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9756891?hl=en.

GA4 refers to the 18 default channels as the default channel group. In the Admin section of your GA4 property, you can manage your own settings for channels in the Data display section. When you first call the program, you’ll see the default channel groups and can view the configuration of each channel but you cannot edit these default settings. You must first click the New channel group button.

Creating and Editing a New Channel Group

GA4 then generates a new group with the default settings of the standard group, as shown in above figure. In this new group, you can edit, rename, and rearrange the channels. You can also add your own entries. National or regional websites in particular are not always correctly recognized by Google and assigned to a channel.

For example, some smaller regional search engines are not recognized by GA and therefore regarded as a simple website link. Users from such a website end up in the referral channel. To route users correctly in your new, custom channel group, click the Organic Search entry. The standard group is already entered as the default setting in the details. Click the Or button to add another rule to be checked. Select the Source parameter in the first field and then enter the domain name in the second field.

Next, you must save the channel first and then save the entire channel group. In a detailed report in the Acquisition area, you’ll then find the newly created channel group available for selection, as shown below, and you can quickly switch between several groups.

New Channel Group in the Dimension Menu

You may have noticed the Primary Channel Group (Default Channel Group) entry. In the default setting of a property, this entry has no new functions and shows the same results as the default group. However, as soon as you define your own channel group, you can set this group as primary. For this task, go back to the admin section, to the channel groups, and click the pencil icon in the top right. The primary group can now be changed and saved in the next window, as shown below.

Defining a New Primary Channel Group

The next time you go to an acquisition report, the newly created channel group will be shown first, as shown below. This setting thus saves you having to switch every time you view the report. The default channel group always remains as a selection option in the report, just like your own groups. The primary channel group is therefore more of a shortcut than an independent reporting option.

Primary Channel Group Changed in the Selection

Change Only Effective for New Data

You should note that changing the primary channel group only changes the values in the report from the time of the changeover. The old group is still used for channel data before the primary group was changed.

Payment Services as a Source in the Report

When you go through the source/medium report, you’ll discover entries for paypal.com or stripe.com, as shown. If your website is a store, then these sources are probably generated by the payment process.

Payment Services_ Not a Useful Source in the Analysis

In such a payment process, the user is directed to the website of the service where they can make a payment by executing some login and confirmation steps. The payment service then sends the user back to your website. Not until then is the purchase complete, so only after this return to the confirmation page will the order be recorded by GA4.

In this last step, the host name of the service is entered as the referrer (as a link) and recorded by the Google tag. For GA4, the user seems to be accessing the offering for the first time because they are coming from another website. GA4 therefore starts a new session with the payment service as the source/medium. So, you have two sessions in the report where one would be sufficient.

From your point of view (and also from the user’s point of view), however, the user is in a coherent usage process: from your website, to the payment, then to the confirmation.

Much worse is that the payment service is assigned to all purchases and key events. You can no longer see through which channel the user actually came to your website (i.e., ads, search, and so on). Therefore, you cannot analyze each channel.

The solution can be found in the administration section: You must add these domains under the data stream settings so that GA4 ignores them in future.

You may encounter the same effect if your website offers a login area and users are allowed to use external services such as Google or Facebook to log in. Thus, you must check the Source/Medium report for any domains that seem strange to you.

Creating Audiences

Audiences enable you to subdivide your users according to specific characteristics and view them individually. Almost all data that GA4 collects for users can be used as properties: the content viewed, the actions performed, their origins, languages, and more. You can use audiences you create as filters for your reports in GA4 and thus analyze the activities and properties of specific user groups.

Audiences in Google Analytics and Google Ads

UA contained segments with which user groups could be defined and viewed in reports. This functionality is still available as a comparison in GA4. However, comparison settings can no longer be saved globally. Audiences are therefore the simplest method of defining user groups and using them for subsequent or repeated analysis. Segments are still available as a feature, but only in the Explorations section for each individual report.

This function is useful for advertisers because you can export created and filled audiences to Google Ads or Google Display & Video 360 (DV360). Then, you can use audiences to control campaigns and to address users again.

Audiences can be created and managed via the Configure • Audiences menu item, as shown in Figure 4.28. When you call this menu item for the first time, you’ll find two groups:

All Users includes all users of the page.

Purchasers contains users for whom a purchase event has been recorded.

GA4 automatically creates these two groups with every new property. You cannot edit them, only archive them.

GA4 Automatically Defining Two Audiences

After archiving, an audience is removed from the list and is no longer available. A corresponding note warns you before the final removal takes place. From an analytics perspective, archiving therefore corresponds to deleting because you’ll no longer have access to that data.

You can create and maintain up to 100 audiences at the same time. If this quota is used up, you must first archive entries; there is no way to delete audiences.

Creating a New Audience

You can create a new audience by clicking the button in the top right. On the screen that follows, define a new empty audience or select a suggested audience, as shown below. Most of these suggestions and templates relate to e-commerce activities.

By clicking Create a custom audience, you can access the actual configuration screen where you’ll assign a name and add a description for your audience, both of which will be shown in the overview list.

Creating a New Audience from Scratch or Using a Template

Then, select some criteria. After clicking the New condition menu, a selection window opens in which all dimensions and metrics are listed that can be used in a definition. For example, you can select the Page path and screen class dimension under Page/screen.

An Audience for Users Who View Specific Pages

Next, use the Add filter button to enter the desired page to be filtered. For our example, enter contains /blog/ as a condition. All users who have been on a page in the /blog/ directory will be included in this group.

After confirming, GA4 shows you an initial projection for users and sessions in the tile on the right, as shown below. For this purpose, data from the last 30 days is analyzed. Thanks to the summary, you can check your settings directly and adjust them if necessary.

Preview of Audience Metrics

To refine the audience, you can add further criteria, perhaps additional pages that users have viewed or a campaign through which users came to your offering. What is missing from the menu is a selection option for users who have triggered a specific key event. However, you don’t need this option because you can use all events as criteria for the audience. Whether this event is also defined as a conversion is irrelevant.

In the example shown below, the group tracks users who accessed a blog post via a search engine and fired the page_view_book event at some point. This event is triggered by a Create event rule as soon as the URL of the Google Analytics page is viewed.

The selection of events to define an audience has another advantage: Unlike conversion definitions, you can also query and restrict the parameters of an event in this case. All parameters that were recorded with the event can be used for selection. For example, a minimum value can be specified for the Value. However, you can also filter on custom parameters, which means that the audiences can be individually tailored to your offerings.

An Audience for Blog Users via Organic Entries

Condition groups can be used to combine multiple different definitions in one audience. Users must fulfill the criteria for all condition groups to be included in the audience as a whole. Exclusion groups enable you to explicitly exclude users from a total set. For example, you can view all users of the website except those who are already subscribed to your newsletter.

Understanding Condition Scoping

An audience definition can consider a certain timeframe for user actions. In the top right, you can select the scope for the current condition group. These settings allow you to determine the time relationship between the measured actions: Must users have reached these points at some point, or is it enough if they are measured within the same session (or event)? In the first case, the actions can therefore be spread across multiple visits and thus days or weeks. This setting is only relevant if you specify more than one criterion for the group.

Determining How Closely GA4 Analyzes the Data

Series of Conditions as a Sequence

We can go a step further in the temporal view by creating a sequence. After clicking on Add sequence below the user conditions, a new field appears below the previous input fields. where you’ll find most of the fields for setting conditions. The difference becomes visible after clicking Add event: You can use a sequence to define multiple consecutive steps (or phases) a user must go through.

The individual steps can be performed directly after each other or within a time interval, which you can also define. The user does not belong to this group until all steps have been completed. A time can also be set for the entire sequence using the Time Constraint option.

For example, you can use a sequence to map registration processes where a user must click on an email confirmation within around 30 minutes. Step 1 is the submission of a form; step 2 is the re-entry on a confirmation page or (with UTM parameters) after clicking in an email.

Various Steps That Must Take Place Within a Specified Time

Duration of the Audience Membership

The duration is set above the summary and refers to the time during which a user is counted in this group. The default value is 30 days. Thus, as soon as a user fulfills the criteria for inclusion into this audience, they are listed as a member of this group for 30 days.

In this example, users are removed from the group after 30 days. If they then meet the conditions again, they will be added to the group again. For example, you specify that only buyers who have bought from you in the last three months (not a year ago) are in the group.

Instead of the default of 30 days, you can choose between 1 and 540 days. The upper limit results from the limitations within Google Ads campaigns. For viewing within GA4, you can use the Set to maximum limit option to view users in the group for longer.

By defining an audience trigger, GA4 can log an event for a user as soon as they are added to this group. This trigger allows you to track how many new users are added to a group based on the event calls. However, you can also define such an event as a conversion. This intermediate step can also be used to recognize complex processes on your website that take place over several steps or over sessions as a conversion.

Suggested Audiences

When creating an audience, GA4 suggests some definitions. Which definitions and how many GA4 will suggest depends on your offerings and the measured data. Groups of buyers and active users are always suggested to you. However, if you have an e-commerce store and the corresponding events occur, a whole category of different groups will be recommended to you.

Google Analytics Making Suggestions for Audiences

If you click on a suggestion, you’ll be taken to an audience setup page with several conditions selected already. The Demographics template, for example, has all the dimensions for these user characteristics preselected, as shown below; you only need to enter values to define the group more precisely.

Therefore, we recommend looking at the various templates for a picture of what is possible when defining audiences and perhaps get a few ideas. In some cases, the templates can save you a few clicks.

Parameters Already Selected by the Template

Suggestions from the Predictive category represent a special feature. In these templates, forecasts are used, which GA4 calculates for certain user actions (such as a purchase), as shown below.

Audiences with Forecasts

These entries do not become available until the necessary data has been collected in a sufficient quantity for your offering. If the Not ready for use message is displayed for your website under Eligibility Status, then no data is available for a forecast.

Viewing and Using Audiences

You can view created audiences in the Audiences list. Click an entry to opens its overview and see its development over time and its most important key figures.

Number of Users in an Audience

For analysis, audiences are important for segmenting and analyzing your users. You can add a comparison to every GA4 report and every overview. One possible criterion for such a comparison is membership in an audience.

By requesting a comparison with this audience 1, you can view the sources 2, the content viewed, and the other activities of this user group, as shown below.

Audiences can also be used as filters in data reports, enabling individual reports for each audience.

Audience Serving as a Criteria in a Comparison

Understanding Attribution in the Advertising Menu

Attribution describes the way in which GA4 assigns key events to the various channels, sources, or campaigns: For example, does a user come across your offering via a Google search and then place an order? The success of that order is attributed entirely to the Google search.

But what if the same user has already been on your website before and came via a LinkedIn post? Doesn’t this LinkedIn post then also have a share in the order? And how large was this proportion? GA4 refers to the sequence of different touchpoints (i.e., the channels through which a user came to you each time), as the attribution path.

As often the case with questions of analysis, there is no absolute right or wrong answer it depends on your offerings, your channels, and your initial situation. The success and failure of a channel depends on how influence and share are assessed.

To analyze and evaluate your campaign attribution, GA4 has an Advertising section. You can access it in the menu after the Reports and Explorations. For values to be displayed in the snapshot overview, at least one conversion must be defined in the property.

Data Quality in Times of Intelligent Tracking Prevention and the Death of Cookies

In recent years, the issue of privacy has become increasingly important and has led to restrictions on the use of cookies, which until now have been the most important technology for recognizing users on repeated visits to a website.

Google Analytics addresses this issue on different levels. Alternatives for recognizing users include Google signals, or you can provide GA4 with your own user IDs, obtained from customer logins, for example. Google is also trying to use machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to create model calculations that are as accurate as possible.

Attribution across different channels is becoming an increasingly technologically demanding field that requires consent and first-party data and must rely more and more on modeling and projections.

The status of the GA4 reports, which you can see below, may require new requirements in a few months’ time. That’s why you must always keep up to date!

In the snapshot, you’ll see the familiar channel names in the first tile, as shown below, which are also used in the reports under Acquisition. The difference lies in the selection of the metric that is displayed in the diagram: For each channel, the number of conversions that users have triggered via this channel is shown. However, you can also see the values in the acquisition report: These values correspond to the Conversions column from the table on newly acquired traffic.

Advertising Reports on Attribution

Conversions or Key Events?

In the reports, Google Analytics uses the key events concept for actions that are highlighted as special. This term was only introduced later in GA4; previously, reports referred to conversions. Conversions now appear again as the name for these actions in the Advertising section.

Google decided on this renaming to make the difference between measurement in Google Analytics and counting for Google Ads clearer. You can import key events from Google Analytics as conversions in Google Ads.

In the default setting, the tile refers to all conversions that are created in your property. Above the Advertising snapshot heading there is an inconspicuous menu which allows you to select the data for individual conversion events, as shown below. A selection option is also available for the detailed Attribution paths and Attribution models reports.

Selecting Specific Key Events for Reports

Attribution Models: Valuating Key Events

As described earlier, multiple ways of approaching channel attribution often exist. This set of distribution and valuation rules is referred to as an attribution model. Such a model records how much value a channel receives at which position on a conversion path. GA4 now only contains two models that you can select for viewing:

Data-driven model

GA4 analyzes all previous data in your property and calculates the actual influence and the probability that a channel has a positive effect on a conversion. Based on this calculation, GA4 distributes a conversion to the individual touchpoints of each attribution path.

Last click model

In this model, a conversion is assigned 100% to the last channel through which a user came. All previous channels are not rated.

One rule applies to both models: Conversions are only assigned to the Direct channel if it was the only channel of a user (regardless of whether this user visited the offering once or several times). For a user with the conversion path Display > Social > Search > Direct, the Search channel would be assigned the conversion in the Last click model.

Weren’t More Models Available?

In previous versions, Google Analytics provided additional models to valuate conversion paths differently. However, these models have now all been removed, which makes the comparison appear somewhat oversized with two menus in which you can only choose between two entries.

Using the Attribution models report, you can compare the different models and view the effects on your event and revenue figures.

Comparing Attribution Models

In the first column of the table, you must select the level at which you want to view sources: channel, source, medium, or campaign. In the two middle columns, you must enter an attribution model in each case and receive the Key events and Revenue as calculated according to this model. The fourth and final column shows the percentage deviation between the two models.

The example shown above compares data for the Last click model with data for the Data-driven model. Some shifts are recognizable, but interestingly, conversions and revenue do not change to the same extent. With small amounts of data, the way in which the data-driven model is calculated leads to a high degree of similarity with the last click model.

Attribution Paths: Touchpoints Before Conversion

You can view the different attribution models in more detail in the Attribution paths report. You can also view individual key events in this report or examine multiple key events as a group.

The diagram at the top of the report page shown below divides the attribution paths of users into three sections: Early (25% of touchpoints in the path), Mid (50%), and Late touchpoints (25%). The top bar shows the percentage distribution of key events across these three sections; the total number is displayed when you mouse over a section.

Source That Help the Conversion Process

These percentages vary depending on the model. In the Last click model, 100% of the key events are in the third section, as the model only analyzes the last touchpoint.

In the diagram shown above, you can see the individual parts for the calculation of the respective model. Only the result of this calculation is shown in the model comparison and in the acquisition reports. The number of key events is calculated from the values of the three touchpoint sections, as shown below.

Filters and Settings of the Report

In the data table in the lower half of the report, you can see the different paths users have taken. In addition to the number of Key events and Purchase revenue, you’ll find columns on Days to key event and Touchpoints to key event. Both provide a better insight into the time users spend interacting with your offering before they finally trigger an action.

Above the report, you can apply additional filters to the report, such as age, country, or a defined audience. You can also define the minimum number of touchpoints that must occur in a conversion path in the comparison, as shown below. In this way, you can exclude “single paths” where users did not visit an offering more than once.

How Often Must Users Visit Your Website

Planning: Displaying Costs and Successes

Under the Planning menu item, you’ll find reports on the various channels with campaign data. If available, GA4 displays the values for ad impressions, clicks, and costs.

Overview of Clicks and Costs

You can consider channels as a dimension but also campaigns or various combinations of sources. The report shows key events and revenue for each channel, just like the reports in the Acquisition section. The table also contains columns for displaying the following data:

• Impressions: How often was an ad presented to users?
• Clicks: How often was an ad clicked by users?
• Costs: How expensive was a user’s click on an ad?

The values for impressions, clicks, and costs come from the respective advertising network. If you have linked the property directly to Google Ads, the data will be exchanged automatically. Campaign data is also automatically transferred to Google Display & Video 360 (DV360). For other networks, you can import data into GA4.

Clicks and Users

Clicks and costs are collected in your Google Ads account. Google may collect these values for all users when displaying them on your own offerings. (If users give their consent, even more data may be collected.) The clicks and costs therefore always refer to 100% of the users who clicked on an ad. The data collected with GA4 on the website for key events and revenue, on the other hand, are only collected after the users have sent confirmation of the consent query and with the consent of the user. What results are gaps between clicks in campaigns and sessions (or key events and revenue) on the website.

If the property collects revenue for sales or conversions, GA4 calculates the return on advertising spend (ROAS) for campaigns, ads, and more. This value is the revenue from conversions via this campaign minus the advertising costs for this campaign.

Advertising Segments

Under the Tools menu item, you’ll see the Advertising segments report, where you’ll find a list of the audiences that are exchanged between the Google Analytics property and the Google Ads account.

For each segment, the report shows how many users are currently members in the audience and can be used for campaigns in the search network, on YouTube, in the Google Play network, or in Gmail.

Attribution Model for Report Generation

The reports in the Acquisition section assign key events according to the data-driven model. You can change this basic setting in the property management under Attribution settings, as shown below. The new setting affects both the reports under Acquisition and the reports you create yourself in the Explorations section.

Which Attribution Model Should GA4 Use

You can choose any of the models mentioned above for your report creation, even if the data-driven model is the one recommended by Google. Regardless of these settings, the reports can be found under Advertising (i.e., the model comparison and the attribution paths), as you can explicitly compare different variants there.

The Last-Non-Direct-Click Model

In UA, the default model for conversion attribution in reports was the last non-direct click model, which corresponds to the last click model in GA4.

If your GA4 property is linked to a Google Ads account, you can also define the assignment of channels to conversions on this page.

Editing the Assignment of Conversions to Channels

This allows you to define how conversions are to be assigned in the data-driven model. The default setting for new properties is the Google paid channels option. When a conversion is measured, only Google paid channels (Ads and Shopping) receive a share of this conversion.

With the Paid and organic channels variant, on the other hand, each channel receives a share of a conversion. However, if you use these conversions in your Google Ads account, only the conversions assigned to Google Ads channels will be displayed there.

You can also change the lookback window in the settings, as shown in below. This window determines how big the time difference between touchpoints may be to consider a conversion path as coherent.

Defining the Lookback for Attribution

If your offering involves only short-term paths, for example, because your products and campaigns change frequently, you can consider making adjustments. In most cases, you’ll achieve a better overall view with longer time periods. You can check in advance in the Advertising section whether it makes sense to adjust the attribution settings for your offering.

Setting Up a Link with Google Ads

With Google Ads, Google gives advertisers the opportunity to place ads on search queries in the Google search. With a Google Ads account, you can also run display campaigns on the Google Display Network and ads on YouTube. Insights on impressions and clicks are collected in the Ads account for all these channels.

After clicking on an ad, users land on an online offer and can perform further actions there. Such activities can also be logged into the Google Ads account and linked to the campaigns. For tracking, you can either use a Google Ads tracking code or import conversions from GA4.

Linking Google Ads with GA4 opens up a number of options for data exchange, such as the following:

• Names of accounts, campaigns, and ad groups from Google Ads to GA4 (requires automatic tagging)
• Impressions, clicks, and costs of ads according to GA4 (requires automatic tagging)
• Key events and revenue from GA4 to Google Ads
• Audiences for remarketing from GA4 to Google Ads

Linking Google Analytics and Google Ads Accounts

To connect a GA4 and a Google Ads account, you first need access to both accounts with admin or editor rights. You can set up the link in the administration section under Google Ads links. Start the corresponding dialog box by clicking the Link button.

In the window that opens, as shown below, click Choose Google Ads accounts to see a list of all Google Ads accounts to which you have access and for which you have the necessary authorizations. You can link one or more accounts; up to 20 simultaneous links are possible.

Google Analytics Steps for Linking with Google Ads

Automatically Selecting Google Ads Advertisements for Campaigns

The next step asks for two important prerequisites for using the Google Ads link, as shown above. In the first item, you can activate or deactivate Personalized Advertising, which is the preselected option. With this option, all necessary information for users of your website is forwarded to the Google Ads network when the Google tag is called so that these users can later be addressed for remarketing.

What Is Remarketing in Google Ads?

The concept of remarketing refers to the renewed targeting of users who you already “know” from a previous visit to your website. You can personalize the ads for these users based on the content accessed and measured actions. For example, you can show users who have accessed product content on your website advertising for precisely these products again.

With the second setting, Enable Auto-Tagging, the URL parameter gclid is appended to links in Google ads. This parameter contains a long code number and enables GA4 to link the measured user with the clicked ad and the ad text. Although you also have the option of providing ads with UTM parameters, in the vast majority of cases, the gclid variant will be the more reliable. Thus, unless you have a specific reason to disable auto-tagging, you should leave this setting as is. After a final summary of the settings for verification, you can send the link. Then, the entry with the most important account data will appear in the list.

You can change the settings you have made at any time by clicking on the entry to go to the detailed settings.

Google Ads Reports in GA4

Once the link has been set up, GA4 starts exchanging data with Google Ads. If you have activated auto-tagging, the collected gclid parameters are resolved into campaign names and ad information. Incidentally, this process also works retroactively if auto-tagging was already switched on before linking (in the Google Ads account).

In the Acquisition overview, you’ll find a tile that now contains data about the Google Ads campaigns, as shown below. The link under the View Google Ads campaigns tile takes you to a report of the collected and exchanged Google Ads data. Strangely enough, this report cannot be found in the menu; you can only access it via the Acquisition overview.

Google Ads Data as a Tile in the Acquisition Overview

Detailed Report on Google Ads Only Accessible via an Overview

In the first column of the table, the Google Ads campaign is displayed as a dimension, but you can also switch to the Account, the Ad group, Keyword text, and the original Search query.

The other columns initially contain the known measured values of Users, Sessions, and Engaged sessions. You’ll then see the columns for Events, Key events, and Total revenue, which are also familiar from other reports.

This data can be used to analyze campaigns better than with key events or conversions alone. A large number of users that come via an ad are a good thing, but sales and revenue are even more meaningful. You could have a lot of visitors, but still no revenue in the end.

Importing GA4 Key Events as Conversions

You can import key events from a GA4 property into a Google Ads account. The prerequisite for this task is an existing link. In your Google Ads account, under Tools, navigate to Settings • Measurement • Conversions. Now, you click Create conversion action.

New Conversion Action in Your Google Ads Account

On the next page, click Import and then select Google Analytics 4 properties. For a website, click Web and confirm by clicking Next. Then, a list appears of all GA4 conversions found by Google Ads in linked accounts, as shown below. Select all desired conversions and confirm the selection by clicking Import and continue.

Importing Key Events from GA4 into Google Ads

After a final confirmation message, the conversions are imported.

Importing GA4 Audiences into a Google Ads Account

By importing audiences from GA4 into your Google Ads account, you can display targeted ads to these users. For this data exchange to work, you must have enabled the data collection via Google signals in the GA4 property. This function links the users of GA4 on your website with the Google advertising network and recognizes them across the board.

To set this up, go to Data settings • Data collection in the administration section. Start the process there via Getting started. On the next screen, you’ll then find further information, as shown in below. Now, you can activate the Google signals.

Back on the overview screen, let’s configure a few more options: For example, you can deactivate Detailed location and device recording or restrict them to individual countries. You can also deactivate personalized ads for individual regions.

Google Signals for Improving User Recognition

At the bottom of the page, you must click on the button under User Data Collection Acknowledgement. In this way, you ensure that you have obtained all necessary consents from your users for the collection of data.

In the Google Ads account, you can import audiences under Customer acquisition, which is also on the Conversions overview page. Click on Set up to start the process, as shown below.

Audience Requirement of at Least 1,000 Members

On the subsequent page, you can select the audiences of the linked accounts, as shown below. If there are enough users from the Google advertising network in the list (at least 1,000), the necessary requirement is met, and you can transfer the list.

Importing an Audience from GA4 into Google Ads

Once that has been done, the audience is available for you to use. In the Audience management section of Google Ads, you can view the scope of the groups in the respective advertising network.

Linking Google Search Console with GA4

Although Google Search Console is not a direct campaign or advertising tool, it nevertheless provides important insights into the performance of your website. Google provides organic search data for your website in the Google Search Console: How easily can it be found? Which terms did users use to find your offerings? Which pages are shown when and how in the search?

Thus, Search Console data is an indispensable part of any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Enriching Reports with Search Console Data

By means of a link, this data becomes available in your GA4 report, and Google Analytics can show a more complete picture of your users’ journeys.

Where Can I Find Search Console Reports?

However, the reports do not automatically appear in the GA4 menu after a successful link. Instead, you must add the reports via the library.

The report shown below captures the landing pages on which users arrive on the offering from the Google search.

The metrics of the first four columns come from Search Console:

• Clicks for organic searches in Google
• Impressions for organic searches in Google
• Click rates for organic searches in Google
• Average positions in organic searches in Google

This information is followed by data collected by GA4: Users, Engaged sessions, and other columns that you’re already familiar with from other reports, such as Conversions and Revenue. By compiling them in one table, you can see how many of the clicks landed as sessions on your website and whether these users have moved on to other content. Users without interactions probably expected something else or did not feel attracted by the page content you should take another look at whether you can optimize the content.

Data from GA4 Along with Data from Search Console

The Search queries report, which is also available, unfortunately does not link the data at the user level, as shown in Figure 4.65. The information about which search query a user originally searched for is not transferred to the GA4 session. For this reason, GA4 cannot show how users of a search query subsequently behaved. The report only contains the imported data on queries, clicks, and position from Search Console.

Search Queries from Search Console in GA4

Linking GA4 and Search Console

You can initiate the data exchange of a GA4 property with a Search Console account in the Administration section under Search Console links. On the corresponding setup screen, you must first select the Search Console to which you want to connect GA4, as shown in Figure 4.66.

Linking GA4 with Google Search Console

Select accounts displays all the entries to which your user has access. If you do not yet have a Search Console entry, you must first register your website. The additional information link in the introductory text explains how this works.

After specifying the correct Search Console, you must select a web stream from the current property. With a website only, you should only see one entry and only need to confirm it. (If you also run app data in the property, multiple entries will appear.)

If the process has completed successfully, the key data appears in the list on the link page, as shown below. The Link button is now grayed out, as you can only link one Search Console per property.

Only One Search Console Property per GA4 Property

The data exchange between GA4 and Search Console is also retroactive: All data from the console is available, and it does not have to collect data for a certain period of time first (like Google Analytics does).

In this post, you learned about the reports on acquisition, namely, sources and campaigns, through which users arrive on your website. Using UTM parameters, you can clearly identify your advertising measures and organize them in channels.

Audiences enable the use of website data in Google Ads campaigns and allow targeted analyses. Linking the GA4 property with Google Ads and Google Search Console provides further insights into your users and their engagement with your offering.

In the next post, you’ll learn how you can analyze stores and evaluate e-commerce campaigns using GA4.