Joe Robinson: Bald Guy, Marketer, Self-Improver.

This is another one I wrote for BFBC, but it’s up-to-date and well worth a look if GA4 is on your mind. Enjoy!

Everyone’s talking about Google Analytics 4; it’s the next big thing, but opinions are very mixed. So what’s the real story?

We looked up your most-Googled questions about GA4 and popped all the details down below 👇 

Is GA4 free? 

Yes. So we’re off to a great start! Like Universal Analytics, there is a higher-tier variant, GA4 360, which adds functionality (stuff like more event parameters, audiences, longer data retention). 

However, this is only for seriously large setups. If you’re running small-to-medium sized business you almost definitely won’t need GA4 360. 

What is the difference between GA4 and UA / How does GA4 work? 

Importantly, GA4 is a brand-new way of gathering and storing your website data. It records events in a different way than GAs 1, 2 and 3 (which were Universal Analytics and what came before it) which is why you can’t migrate your tracking setup or your historical data. 

Why such a drastic change from Google then? At the time, Google did us all a favour by layering GAs 1-3 on top of each other for minimal disruption, but the ever-growing downside was that it was built on a steadily more outdated architecture. In plain terms, GA3’s 20-year-old underpinnings weren’t built with smartphones, tablets, apps (and in-app purchases), cross-device tracking or GDPR in mind. 

For all those reasons (and especially the GDPR one), the older version of Google Analytics has run its course. GA4 isn’t as fully-featured yet and it needs a slightly different setup, but the upgrade is mandatory and it’ll be worth it once everyone is up to speed. Including Google. With all that said then… 

Should I upgrade to GA4? / Is GA4 ready to be used? 

I’ve bundled these together because while you should set a GA4 up right now, it’s definitely still missing some features. In the eyes of GDPR (sorry non-Europeans), GA3/UA isn’t strictly compliant so Google has to phase it out of existence completely. Their plan is to stop recording new GA3 data in July 2023, followed by deleting all of the old data in January 2024(ish). 

So if you want to have year-on-year comparisons for your Q4 numbers in 2023, you need GA4 up and running now. Once it’s working though, we’d recommend checking in once a month to see if you can do your optimisation and reporting from GA4 yet and making the switch once you can. 

Is GA4 GDPR compliant? / Does GA4 use cookies? 

Again, we’ve bundled two similar questions together but we’ll answer then in parts: GA4 is GDPR compliant, while GA3 isn’t because it doesn’t anonymise IP addresses and just shows the real IPs in your reports. GA4 anonymises these, filling a huge GDPR-shaped hole in the privacy policy. 

GA4 does use cookies, but it’s also designed to continue working after cookies have been deprecated using first-party data and features like Google Signals. How exactly Google will achieve that isn’t clear yet, but we’ll let you know when they decide.

Is GA4 worth it?

Hopefully by now you know this is a bit of a redundant question. If you’re already using GA3, this is a bit like asking “is breathing worth it”; it’s going to be hard to go without.

There’s a steep learning curve so we don’t recommend a hard swap (so keep your GA3 as long as possible!) but eventually GA4 will be well worth your time.

When does GA4 start?

If I’ve made my point properly, you’ll be starting as soon as possible! Depending on your situation you might want to keep using UA for your day-to-day measurement, but you should be sending as much data as possible to GA4 right now so you can make use of its features later.

With UA’s days being numbered, you might be in for some blank-looking reports if you let your GA setups drag on too long! If you’ve got a developer, give them a nudge pronto and if not, someone like BFBC might just be able to help. Send us a message!