{"id":54816,"date":"2022-03-31T12:28:17","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T06:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/?p=54816"},"modified":"2022-03-17T12:33:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T07:03:47","slug":"ga4-vs-universal-analytics-what-is-the-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/ga4-vs-universal-analytics-what-is-the-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"GA4 vs Universal Analytics: What is the Difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the arrival of Google Analytics 4, there is a new ecosystem in the world of Google Analytics. With the current Google Analytics Universal Analytics firmly established as the most used Analytics platform, it is a challenge for most businesses with existing Universal Analytics setup and also new businesses who want to implement a new analytics platform.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Data Model<\/b><\/p>\n

GA3 uses a data model where user activities are tied to pageviews and sessions. The analytics code fires a pageview cookie that contains other information pieces tied together like browser, Ip location, other demographics like age, gender and\u00a0 user type etc. This pageview hit is the basic building block for calculating other metrics in analytics. These pageviews and sessions are tied to page urls that rely on page loads to send pageview calls.<\/span><\/p>\n

GA4 employs a different data model using events and parameters. All hits including pageviews and sessions are tracked as events. These events, unlike in the case of\u00a0 Universal Analytics, are not dependent only on pageview calls. They instead can trigger on interactions like clicks, play and pause. Each of these event calls are tied to multiple \u201cParameters\u201d that send information like timestamp, browser, IP location etc. <\/span>This mechanism is specifically useful for unified tracking of Web and Mobile applications.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike Universal Analytics, in GA4 one can pass multiple parameters for a single event. In Universal Analytics, there exists a restriction of Category, Action and Label to pass event variables.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn more about Data Models<\/a><\/p>\n

2. Event Categories<\/b><\/p>\n

GA4 has distinct event categories. Not to be confused by the Event Category field within Universal Analytics. The GA4 events are categorized as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Automatically collected<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Enhanced measurement<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Recommended<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Custom<\/span>\n
      \n
    1. Automatically collected:<\/b> These are events that are triggered automatically as soon as a GA property is created along with a Data Stream.\u00a0 Example:<\/span>\n
        \n
      1. first_visit \u2013 the first visit to a website or Android instant app<\/span><\/li>\n
      2. session_start \u2013 the time when a visitor opens a web page or app<\/span><\/li>\n
      3. user_engagement \u2013 when a session lasts longer than 10 seconds or had 1 or more conversions or had 2 or more page view<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
      4. Enhanced measurement: <\/b>These are automatic events similar to \u201cAutomatically Collected\u201d events. The only difference is that these are optional. You need to enable these optional events under the \u201cEnhanced Measurement\u201d option.<\/span><\/li>\n
      5. Recommended<\/b>: As the name suggests, these are events that Google recommends specific to your business. These are not automatically configured but require custom implementation. Eg: ad_impressions when a user sees an ad on your app. Or add_to_cart in case you have an ecommerce platform.<\/span><\/li>\n
      6. Custom<\/b>: These are custom events that fall in none of the above categories. These are events that are very specific to your needs and can be defined completely as per your convenience. Eg: tracking a particular button click for \u201cRegistration\u201d or a specific step in a form submission.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Learn more about Event Categories<\/a><\/p>\n

        3. Data Streams<\/b><\/p>\n

        In GA4, each entity that needs to be tracked needs to have a specific data stream. For example, if you have a website and 2 different mobile applications running parallelly. They all need to have distinct \u201cData Streams\u201d. In this case, there will be three data streams each for the web and two mobile applications. Do not confuse this with Views in Universal Analytics. There are some basic rules that can be applied to each Data Stream but once applied, you cannot toggle between views with different filters as you are able to do in Universal Analytics. For example:<\/span><\/p>\n