Difference between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics :
Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics
Hola Amingos !
Have you heard that News ! Will Google Analytics won’t work from July 2023 ?
Then how come marketers and data analyst will able to track the business interpretation of their website or application
Like this questions will be raised in your mind ,right !
Don’t worry! Google is just upgrading it’s Analytics database with some intriguing cool insights to help every user across the world.
Hi it’s me Karthik, your friendly neighborhood marketer, I am here to help my comrates out there, so without wasting time , Let’s dive into the pool of Google Analytics…..
Google Analytics is a powerful tool used by marketers across the realm to track their audience behaviour and interaction with their product’s website. Now Google wants to elevate its technology to the next level to cope with this fast-paced techy world, they named it Google Analytics 4. Existing Google Analytics Universal Analytics plays a major role in the current marketing field and it’s renowned as one of the most powerful marketing tools for gathering insights about their business to improve them to achieve success. Analytics heatmap helps every marketer to make better decisions.
So what’s the difference between UA vs GA4:
What’s the need for UA Google Analytics new replacement?
Being a marketer you all may hear that the current existing Google Analytics will no longer gonna help you to track and collect data from July 2023.
So you are trapped, Only way for your survival is nothing but you have to switch to GA 4!
Cheers,
It’s really easy to use Google Analytics 4 than the Universal One
But a lot of questions may arise in your mind like why? What? Where to track? Why is this required? And how is it gonna help my business?
Okay!
I can able to hear those queries! Let me draft every answer to your questions that may help you to use the amazing GA4. Before this, we all need to know about the real history of the Google Analytics platform. I am pretty sure we all may hear about the history of search engines and the internet but what is this new history?
Let’s dive into the history of Google Analytics:
History Behind the Google Analytics:
Hey SEO geeks out there, I am going to explain Urchin’s timeline from 2005 to the present 2023 Google Analytics 4.
2005: Google acquires an analytical platform known as Urchin. Google tries to integrate those data-holding platforms with their search engine to help out the website holders to get interaction info about their websites.
2006: Google made some alterations to the platform by changing its user interface and experience and coined the name Google Analytics.
2012: Now Google Analytics was replaced by Universal Analytics, other some additional insights were added for its universal purpose. Now with Universal Analytics, it will help you to track cross-platform tracking, and device-specific tracking, and create custom dimensions metrics. Google has taken this initiative because of the increasing usage of necessary applications and web browsers among people. Additionally, the advent of many new technologies made people obsessed with digitalization across the web. So Google thought their new update may help their user to optimise their brand for it.
2018: Europe proceeds with data privacy and security laws termed as (GDPR) General Data Protection Regulation. These laws protect every citizen across the web to index their website, nevertheless of the nation the site is already hosted in.
October 2020: Due to the increase of crises around privacy and security policies via the Cyber network, Google planned to roll out Google Analytics 4. GA4 has various in-built features and mechanisms to allow more accessible control over your visualised data. So Google has announced a statement regarding its new development of GA4 and asked its user to get ready to unearth the potential of GA4 was built for privacy.
March 2022: Google announces a statement that from July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics will stop gathering new tracking data and to continue the service every person will have to switch to GA4.
UA vs GA4: Data gathering & privacy
So now everyone wants to know the differences between UA and GA4 with respect to user information and data sources.
Privacy
- No IP addresses. Yeah, you read this right, With GA4, you can’t be traced out or even collected the IP address of the respective user. Whereas the existing universal analytics will allow you to see the IP address of your visitors. This is the one main update to secure the privacy of user data.
- Deletion of Data was much easier than before, it will enable the admins to delete information at the request of any user.
- The new Data retention options permit you to decide how longer GA4 can keep user-specific information. The default time will be around two months, however, it will enable you the access to extend it to up to 14 months. After your desired period those user-specific data will be auto-deleted.
- Google enables you the options to turn off your location-specific data and ad customization data by nation.
Data Streams for the new omnichannel terrain:
GA4 IS addressing the new user journey via the usage of Data Streams.
Data Streams are the source that collects data and shares it with your Google Analytics property. In GA4, you will be given access to maintain multiple data streams per property which means it will allow you to track the user interaction of both your website and application in the same platform.
UA vs GA4: Data imports & reports Export:
Comparatively, there won’t be any big difference between the data available in Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4. With GA4 you can get your desired data more precisely. But the same information that you got from your existing UA will be shown in a more precise manner.
The major difference you will face around the Reports tab is “Engagement”, and “Monetization” as well as the inclusion of “Retention.”
- Behaviour was replaced by Engagement, relax guys don’t need to worry it almost covers the same thing that we found in Behavior more accurately with additional reports on conversions (previously termed as “Goals”).
- Monetization, on the additional insight added over this GA4, we can take a brief look at this feature later on this blog.
Every business owner wants to preserve and keep up their customer for at least the next 10 years. So to help every business, Google has introduced a new retention option to track the Life Cycle report.
Traffic vs User:
We all may be aware, a valid user is someone who visits your site. If he visits our page two to three times, they are considered the same old user. Traffic is something on the other side that refers to the overall sessions.
In GA4, user acquisition and traffic acquisition have been divided into two separate reports.
This leads to the resulting documentation in different acquisition dimensions for both users and traffic sessions, so be aware of which one you wanna create when generating reports.
Engagement vs Behavior:
GA4 replaced Behavior metrics with “Engagement” metrics. These recent metrics are based on “Engaged Sessions,”.Google has termed it as Session, a unique user who explored your website for more than 10 seconds is considered as per session, defined as a conversion event, or page views.
The metrics include:
- Engaged sessions
- Engagement rate
- Engaged sessions per user
- Average engagement time
In UA, behaviour metrics were incorporated in almost every report. These metrics included bounce rate, pages/session, and average duration of every session duration.
You are confused, where is the bounce rate? Right!
Look for the “Engagement Rate” metric in the table on the right-hand side. This represents the percentage of sessions in which users engaged with your site, and therefore the bounce rate can be calculated by subtracting the engagement rate from 100%.
According to the July update Bounce rate has been included but the bounce rate was replaced with a new ‘Engagement Rate’ metric, along with conversion rate and UTM parameters!
Monetization:
Monetization reports have carried over and replaced the existing “Conversions” reports. The major thing to monitor here is that monetization in 2021 is totally different from monetization in 2012.
Frankly speaking, there was a time when monetization was specified only for E-Commerce. Today though, monetization could possess ad revenue, in-build app sales, or e-commerce.
In GA4, monetization enables your to report all streams of revenue generated into account.
On the other hand, if you don’t track any sort of direct monetary value on your website, then this entire monetization section of GA4 is useless.
As a Universal Analytics user, For me, it sounds weird so I’m gonna say it is a disappointment because, in the UA, conversion reports weren’t just focused on money. Most of them are considered for non-monetary conversions and the attribution after those conversions.
Event-based data vs Session-based data:
UA Analytics gathered session-based data. Every session was made up of a different type of user interaction and hit types. These types of hits include page hits, social interaction hits, e-commerce hits, etc.
But, GA4 is working on the event-based platform, signifying everything is viewed as an event. New User page visit? Event, Pageview? Event. So there was no session in GA4.
This change is significant because it delivers more information on how users use our product and properties. On the other hand, when you compare the data sets of both UA & GA, you are going to get a little confused about that. They won’t play well together.
And that’s why I suggest you start from zero when changing from UA to GA4.
Event & Conversion creation:
GA4 has its parameters, enhanced measurement, and an in-build platform to create event creation.
When you are all set to set up your Data Stream you will have the choice to turn on enhanced measurement which gathers page views, outbound clicks, CTR, sign-ups, downloads, video engagement, and scrolls. If you already turned on enhanced measurement then you don’t have to worry, all of these events will be accumulated automatically!
If there is any specific event that you’d wish to collect but that fails under enhanced measurement means then you are able to set up using the parameters and conditions. Parameters are nothing but a piece of information shared along with the events that provide the main context of the user or user action.
Once you have collected an event, you will have the main option to label it as a conversion by simply selecting a toggle button — no more “Goal” setup!
Improved functionality in Google Analytics 4:
At the time of initial setup, you wanna confirm you tackle all of the options that are available to you in the “property” settings. Google has already covered most of them, but for confirmation, I personally recommend you to check them.
Product Links:
The final option under the property settings is Product Linking. It’s similar to the used Product connected with Google products, perhaps via Search Console or Google Ads. Basically, building data connections between different Google Products will assist you to get more accurate data. Product linkage is done by the same manner what we used to follow in your universal analytics.
Additionally , GA4 allows you to link your Google Merchant, Google Opitimzer, and Big Query for free!
Available Personalization:
Maybe the most underrated insight of GA4 is its ability to personalise the platform to fulfil your requirements.
Of course, You can able to customise your GA4 panel but being a UA user you can’t enjoy the liberty that you have got from Universal Analytics.
With the help of the library, you can get other personalization options like changing the name of collections and topics in the secondary navigation.
Explorations:
Create your customised dashboard reports by using the Explorations in GA4. With exploration, you can customise your personalised dashboard and funnel from the user interface of Data Studio.
GA4’s Machine learning capabilities:
We have already experienced the advent of Artificial intelligence in the present digital world. We could find some machine learning tools with our existing Universal Analytics. Those features were rolled out in the 2018 update to enable people to discover trends in their data. As time moved on, machine learning got more cultivated and permitted users to “ask questions” in the search bar as a way of quickly encountering data.
GA4’s algorithm is fully supporting the machine learning features to help every user to make their process easy.
Anomaly Detection:
The Anomaly detection mechanism is extremely useful for pinpointing the statistical differences in your data at a peek. Anomaly detection is a useful feature in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that helps you identify unusual changes or patterns in your data. For anomaly detection, our GA4 must have adequate historical data and information to build predictive models. This leads to the next new featured tool known as predictive analytics!
Predictive analytics:
Earlier, if you wanna access predictive analytics means, you’d have to get a subscription for another paid tool, but, hereafter no worries! GA4 presented predictive analytics for Life Time Values, churn probability, Coherent Analysis, ARPU metric likely top spendthrifts, likely acquisitions, purchase probability, and more. Predictive analytics is a feature in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that uses machine learning to analyse your data and provide predictions about future outcomes. .
Attribution:
Google has been researching its tools for a few years. With the advent of UA, it rolled out its multi-channel funnel tools. In December 2019, it rolled out its Attribution Project tool that enables users to access a group of tools covering attribution and its conversion.
GA4, allows you to spectate a section in the primary navigation called “Advertising,” Selection of that button will help you to find all the Attribution Schemes. This contains conversion paths, the model comparison tool, time to conversion, and touchpoints to conversion.
Happy Learning:
I have just started to understand this dynamic GA4 and it’s much like every other Google product which upgrades every day! As per the famous proverb, “ Art is long but life is short”, We have a lot to learn more about it. I am still in the age of learning. There is so much to learn and discover in GA4, and this working process may vary for everyone!
I would suggest you get out and play around in GA4. It may be uncomfortable at first but I assure you will fall in love with its accuracy and user-friendly features.
