Google Analytics 4 Q2 2023 Updates

Introduction

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the next-generation event-based Analytics tool that differs from Universal Analytics and is heavily under development and constantly releasing new updates and functionality on a weekly and monthly basis.

Google Analytics 4 Updates

Here we have compiled essential GA4 updates that happened in the previous quarter for the year 2023, which can be useful for your business use case:

April

GA4 now allows modifying and creating events using regular expression

Now with the given update, you can use Regular expression to define the matching conditions while creating or modifying your events in GA4 specifically for Web Stream.

There are several advantages to using regex while creating an event in GA4. Here are a few:

• Precision: Regex helps in creating more precise and pattern-specific case–insensitive matching conditions, to ensure that your events are tracked accurately and avoid data pollution.
• Flexibility: Provides flexibility in terms of adapting to changing conditions and helps in tracking a wider variety of user behaviors. Like creating regex to match terms used by users in the search query which can be a combination of alphanumeric type or a particular length of terms.
• Efficiency: Regex allows you to create conditions under a single event through which you can track multiple and similar characteristic events in one go.

GA4 Allows How your Conversion events are counted

Conversion Counting methods as the name describes, allow you to decide how for a particular property, you want the conversions to be counted.
There are two methods:

1. Once per event: This means that Google Analytics 4 properties count an event as a conversion every time it occurs on the website. It is used for tracking the frequency of events and can be used for calculating the event conversion rate. Like the number of times a product was viewed in a session.
2. Once per Session: When the once per session method is used, it tends to bucket multiple conversion events into a single event for that particular session. Once per session method was how Universal analytics was used to calculate goals.

   

If you want to know which Conversion counting method is selected, you can follow the setups below:

You need the Editor role on the property to change the counting method for a conversion event.

Admin > Under the Property menu, click Conversions > Conversion Events table, click the 3-dot icon  > Click Change counting method > Select your preferred counting method > Click Save.
You can change this setting at any time for any of your conversion actions.

Google Ads now Support Non-paid Channel Attribution Models

If you have connected your GA4 property with a Google Ads account, you can import your marked Conversion event into your Google Ads accounts and use those conversions for the bidding process in Google Ads.

Earlier, if the Last Click for that particular conversion was not from Google Ads, you cannot import those conversions into your Google Ads accounts.

But with this new update, if you have selected the Data-drive attribution model (Paid and organic channels) in the GA4 property and conversion is not from Google Ads, but contributes to it, you can still be able to import those conversions to Google Ads.

May

How to add Custom Funnel to your Standard reports

Funnel visualization is an essential tool for understanding our customer behaviors in different phases of the customer journey, to nurture leads and measure results of marketing campaigns.

GA4 provides you the functionality to create custom-open and Closed Funnels by defining funnel paths in your Exploration section within the console.

Then you can use those custom-created funnels in the Explore section as a template to add them to your standard reporting section by simply saving them into the reporting library.

GA4 now provides Pre-defined User Journey Reports

A user journey report tracks the steps that a user takes on your website or app, from the moment they first arrive to the moment they take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

It can be used to identify areas where users are dropping off so that you can improve your website or app to make it easier for users to complete their goals.
GA4 provides a standard User Journey report in your reporting section under the Monetization tab.

The new report shows how many users drop off between each step in your purchase funnel, from starting a new session to completing a purchase.

Create more defined Audience in GA4 with New Dimensions and Metrics

GA4 released a list of new Dimensions and Metrics that you can use to define the Audience in Audience Builder.

The following dimensions and metrics are new in the audience builder:

June

Get Tailored reports focused towards your Business Objective

Earlier when creating a new property in GA4, it used to provide Life Cycle Collection as Default collection in your standard reporting section.
With the latest update, instead of providing a Life Cycle collection as Default, GA4 provides a Tailored Collection of reports based on the Business objectives defined/selected by you during the property creation phase, in order to ensure that you find information that is relevant and aligned with your business goals.

Note: GA4 will still provide the Life cycle collection by default instead of the Business objectives collection in these 3 scenarios –

• You created the property before March 27, 2023
• You didn’t specify business information during the setup
• You migrated from a Universal Analytics property using Setup Assistant

However, you can manually access the Business Objective collection from the Reporting Library.

GA4 now provides recommendation Cards for Search Console integration

Google Analytics 4 now provides a recommendation card within the Home section of the GA4 property to quickly connect with an unlinked Search Console account.

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps website owners and webmasters monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their site’s presence in Google Search results. It offers a variety of tools and reports that can help you understand how Google sees your site, identify and fix indexing problems, and improve your site’s ranking in search results.

Connecting your search console account with GA4 provides you access to new Search Console dimensions and metrics along with search queries and Google Organic traffic search reports.

Integrate your GA4 with ad sense account

GA4 update now allows you to connect your Google AdSense Account with the GA4 property of the same website, allowing GA4 to collect and generate AdSense-related reports.

Don’t get yourself confused with Google Ads and AdSense.

Google AdSense is a program that allows website publishers to earn money by displaying ads on their websites. Advertisers bid on keywords that are relevant to your website content, and Google displays ads that are relevant to those keywords on your website. When a user clicks on an ad, you earn a commission.

Once you connect your AdSense account with GA4, it automatically creates a standard report for AdSense under the Monetization reporting section with the name Publisher Ads.

Here are the Setups to connect your GA4 to your AdSense account:

1. Go to your Google AdSense Account
2. Under Accounts Setting > Access & Authorization
3. Google Analytics Integration

Note: Ensure that your same Website is connected to your Google AdSense account for which you have a GA4 property.

New Audience export feature with GA4 API

With Google Analytics Data API v1, you can now export your user IDs and device IDs of the users that are grouped under your Audience categories created in the Google Analytics 4 property.

Audiences in Google Analytics 4 allow you to segment your users in the ways that are important to your business. With audiences, you can group users of your site and/or application based on shared attributes.

Earlier this information was only sent to Google Ads or Firebase accounts directly, upon integration with GA4.

Time to Migrate from UA to GA4

With the deadline for UA crossing (July 1st 2023), Google has already advised its users to migrate to GA4 from Universal Analytics in order to avoid data loss and ensure accurate data processing and reporting. Though Google has also provided comprehensive documentation that acts as a guide on How to migrate from Universal analytics to GA4, still it can be a daunting task.

Thus, it’s highly advisable to seek guidance and support from professionals in terms of setting up and implementing analytics tools for your digital platform and online business, as GA4 is not merely an update of Universal analytics, but a completely different platform as we have already discussed above.
How an analytic tool fetch, process, and generate data solely depends upon how it was set up firsthand. Research identified that inaccurate data has a direct impact on the bottom line of 88% of companies, with an average company losing 12% of its revenue.

Softcrylic is a Google Certified partner, with 20+ years of experience in the field of MarTech and has been supporting large and small enterprises in setting up and guiding accurate data collection models and generating meaningful and goal-oriented insights from their analytics tools.

Get the best out of your GA4 platform, talk to our consultant today.