What is Google Analytics? How Does It Work? What Is It Used For?

Do you want to know about Google Analytics and how to use it? You’ve come to the right page.

Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform from Google that helps website owners understand how people find and use their websites. It collects data about website traffic, page views, user interactions, engagement and important actions, such as purchases or form submissions.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the current version of Google Analytics. It uses an event-based measurement model to record interactions across websites and apps.

You can use its reports to analyze traffic sources, identify popular pages, measure marketing performance and understand how visitors interact with your content.

In this guide, you’ll learn what Google Analytics is, how it works, how to set it up, which metrics to monitor and how to use GA4 reports to improve your website’s performance.

What is Google Analytics?

Every activity on the internet leaves a mark in today’s digital world. That includes interactions on your website.

Google Analytics is a tool generously offered by Google to use that mark to your advantage. It’s an analytics tool that tracks everything that happens on your website. How does this help, you ask?

Google Analytics allows you to keep track of your website like never before. But, before we tell you more, you must understand what web analytics is. That’s because Google Analytics revolves around that topic.

Web analytics might sound like a small term, but its presence is huge for website owners. Web analytics is basically a technology that keeps track of who does what on your website and gives you that information.

If you have ads on social media for your website, people will visit your website at some point. And if you have an analytics tool installed on your site, then it’ll track the visitors and their interaction when they come to your website. It’ll also measure how many of your products or services get what level of attention.

From the measured data that will be available to you, you can work on what needs improvement, what’s not getting much attention, and even set up your future products to gain more attention.

Now, what Google Analytics does is pretty much the same but better. It’s the most popular and best web and app analytics tool on the market that collects information about user activity and organizes it into reports.

It helps your website soar higher with advanced tracking that measures and helps improve your digital presence. On top of that, it’s free. Plus, Google Analytics 360 provides paid enterprise features.

Imagine having the best analytics service available for free.

It’s so good that 29.3 million websites use Google Analytics to boost their digital presence. Google Analytics also has over 348 million websites tracked in its database. Now, let’s see why it’s so important and why so many websites use this specific tool.

Why is Google Analytics Important? What Can You Do with the Data Available?

We can’t stress enough how important web analytics is for your website. Be it a business website or a blog, with analytics you’re always one step ahead. Now, if you’re wondering why we love Google Analytics so much and what a game-changer it is, hear us out.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Nothing great comes free”. Google Analytics proves this wrong. And this is one of the main reasons why we absolutely love Google Analytics. You don’t get charged a dime for this tool.

You might ask, “Why is it so important for me?” There are a number of reasons why it’s important for your website. The first one is that it collects data from your website automatically. That is, once you install it on your website.

This means that you can focus on your website instead of worrying about your traffic. You can also ask it to put all that data in a spreadsheet if you want to look at it later. By default, you can view your daily report from the Google Analytics tab.

If you thought that would make your life easier, Google Analytics also generates custom reports. This way, you can look at the data you want to and ask Google Analytics to make a customized report with your preferences.

Like most Google services, Google Analytics is minimalist and has an easy-to-use dashboard. Moreover, you can monitor your website’s traffic from wherever you are. Simply download the app from Google Play Store and monitor your website on the go.

Now, what can you do with the available data? Here’s what you can do:

• Google Analytics is easily integrated with Google Ads. And if you have Google ads on your website, this helps you immensely boost your website because you’ll have even more data to work with.
• This analytics tool has amazing advanced features as well. One of those features is the “Site Search” feature. It basically gives you insight into what visitors on your website want from your website. If you can, you should look into adding those products or services on your website.
• Next is the bounce rate. The bounce rate is how fast people click away from your website after visiting only one page. So, if your website’s bounce rate is high, it means you should look into making that specific page more attractive.
• It could also be because your website isn’t easy to navigate for your visitors or they didn’t find what they came for. Bounce rate is one of the most important metrics you should be measuring. We’ll get into more of that during the course of this article.
• Google Analytics also shows your visitors’ age, gender, location, and device if they have logged into their Google account. This gives you an idea of what type of people you should be targeting the most and in which region. Some meaningful insight indeed.
• You can also view where those visitors came from. If you have a strong social media presence, you should be looking into this. This way, you can promote your website where it’s necessary instead of promoting it everywhere, every time.

With all this data, you now have an idea of what kind of content your audience wants to see. This is one of the most important parts of increasing your digital presence. Giving people what they’re looking for. Of course, like everything else, Google Analytics isn’t the perfect tool yet but it’s definitely the best and our points above prove it even more.

How Does Google Analytics Work?

Google Analytics is an analytics tool provided by Google for free to website owners like us. It’s the dominant tool as no other analytics tool offers as many metrics and customizations as Google Analytics. So, how does this analytics giant really work?

Google Analytics 4 uses an event-based measurement model to collect information about interactions on websites and apps. It organizes this information into reports that help website owners understand traffic, engagement and user activity.

The process has three main stages. Let’s see how all three of these work in detail.

1. Collecting data

When you install the Google tag or configure a supported integration, GA4 can collect information about interactions on your website. These interactions are recorded as events. Examples include:

• page_view when a user views a page.
• scroll when a user reaches the configured scroll threshold, provided enhanced measurement is enabled.
• click when a user clicks an eligible outbound link, provided enhanced measurement is enabled.
• form_submit when the corresponding event is implemented or collected through a suitable configuration.
• purchase when ecommerce tracking sends the required purchase event.

GA4 automatically collects certain events, while enhanced measurement collects selected interactions when enabled. Other actions require custom tracking or additional configuration.

The data collected depends on the website implementation, consent choices, available identifiers and measurement settings.

2. Processing acquired data

GA4 processes incoming events and associates relevant information with dimensions and metrics. Dimensions describe characteristics, such as page title, country, source or event name. Metrics measure quantities, such as users, sessions, event counts and revenue.

For example, GA4 can group sessions by their traffic source and compare how users from organic search interact with users from paid campaigns.

Processing, reporting identity and attribution settings affect how the data appears in reports. Some reporting features may use modelling or aggregated data when applicable.

3. Generating reports

GA4 organises processed data into reports and explorations. You can review traffic acquisition, page performance, engagement, ecommerce activity and key events.

For example, if a landing page attracts many users but generates few enquiries, you can compare its acquisition sources, engagement metrics and key event performance. You can then investigate whether the page content, calls to action or enquiry process needs improvement.

Google Analytics provides measurement data, not automatic explanations for every user action. Use the reports to identify patterns and guide further analysis.

How to Use Google Analytics? (Set-Up)

Google Analytics may sound like a pretty difficult tool to set up and use for first-timers. If you’re using Google Analytics for the first time, this is where we’ll show you how to set it up on your website regardless of your website type. This won’t take a lot of time so let’s get started.

To make the setup process even easier, let’s go through it one step at a time.

Step 1: Create a Google Analytics 4 Property

Google Analytics is completely free. To create an account, go to https://analytics.google.com and sign in with your Google account. If you have an account linked to your browser, it’ll sign you in automatically.

Then, click the ‘Start Measuring‘ button. Now, enter your account name to display on GA. Next, configure the Account Data Sharing Settings. Lastly, hit ‘Next.’

After that, create a property. For that, enter the name, time zone, and currency. Then, click ‘Next.’

Following that, describe your business. Select the industry and business size. Similarly, select the business objectives. This involves generating leads, driving sales, understanding web/app traffic, user engagement analytics, or others.

Lastly, click the ‘Create‘ button. This involves accepting Google Analytics Terms of Service Agreement.

Once you accept the agreement, you’ve to choose how to collect data. This involves the web or any app. You can configure data stream based on your choice, or skip the process for now. Here, we’ll go with ‘Web.’

For the web data stream, enter the website URL and stream name, then review the enhanced measurement settings.

Moving forward, GA4 will provide a Google tag or installation instructions for the web stream. You need to install the tag correctly before Analytics can collect website activity.

If you already have a GA4 property for the website, check the existing setup before creating another property or installing another tag. Duplicate implementations can lead to duplicate events and inaccurate reporting.

Google Tag is some lines of code written in JavaScript. This is the code we were talking about before. That’s right! The code that helps you track interactions on your website.

You don’t have to worry about what the code says, just copy all of it for now. Let’s go to the second step.

Step 2: Install the Google Analytics Plugin to WordPress

This step can be somewhat difficult because it depends on your type of website. But fear not, we’ve made it as easy as possible for you.

Let’s start with WordPress websites as they are the easiest to install with a Google Analytics plugin. Check out our complete guide on how to set up Google Analytics on WordPress using a plugin.

We recommend MonsterInsights, but you can go with any WordPress analytics plugin. Otherwise, use a suitable Google tag integration or Google Tag Manager. While using a plugin, verify that it installs the tag correctly.

The process differs for other website builder platforms, including Shopify and Wix. Just follow the platform’s current Google Analytics integration instructions. Available settings and installation methods vary by platform.

We should also mention self-created websites. If you’ve coded your own website, congratulations! You’ve skipped almost every hassle. All you’ll need to do is paste the tracking code inside your <head>…</head> section on every page.

That’s it. Really easy and convenient. Let’s jump into the last step right away, shall we?

Step 3: Make Sure That Google Analytics is Working

After installing GA4, open the Realtime report to check whether your website activity appears. Visit your website and interact with its pages to test tracking. You can use DebugView to verify events in more detail.

Standard reports may take 24–48 hours to process data. Check again later to confirm that your data appears correctly.

Once tracking works, you can start exploring the most important Google Analytics metrics to measure your website’s performance.

Most Important Metrics in Google Analytics

Metrics are the measurements by which you can find out what’s going on in your website. Google Analytics provides you a lot of metrics to keep track of your website. Metrics are a good way of converting your visitors to your customers.

“How?”, you ask? Well, simply put, metrics are data on your website interactions. When a new visitor comes to your website and performs an action, it’s recorded. That can help you identify what you need to do to convert that visitor into your customer.

There are a lot of metrics in Google Analytics from new visitors to exit pages, you can collect data on almost everything going on in your website. Here are some of the original metrics:

i. New Visitor Conversion

New visitor conversion means the number of visitors that came to your website after their first visit. Meaning that they converted to your website. Of course, your website will have a lot of visitors, but we need to track what made them come back.

Google Analytics uses a dimension called “User Type” to find out new site visitors and returning visitors. Dimensions and metrics are totally different. While metrics are measurements of data, dimensions are labels that define the data.

When a visitor visits your website for the first time, the dimension “User Type” is set to “New Visitor”. All other visits from that particular IP address will be marked as “Returning Visitor”. The entire report will show what the visitor interacted with on your website, how long they stayed, and everything in between.

So, you can use this report to make more people click on your website. How? Well, it’ll show in which areas of your website you’re doing poorly and help you fix that. It’ll also show what your returning visitors keep coming back for. Identifying and fixing these things will attract new visitors for sure.

Also, we would highly recommend you set up marketing campaigns, which are very important to attract new visitors to your website. And that means more visitor conversions. Which in turn, gives you money. You can view this in your report under the “New vs Returning” section that looks like this.

ii. Incoming Traffic Sources

What we mean by this is where your website visitors come from. People will visit your website from one of three sources. One of them is from your website URL. These are called your direct visitors.

You can attract direct visitors through the products you sell or your content. You can advertise your website on TV showing your potential customers what you have. We recommend you sponsor some YouTube videos for this if it’s in your budget.

Another is the type of visitors that come through searches. For example, when someone searches content related to your website and clicks on your website. These types of visitors are called search visitors.

Your visitors need to search up your content or product and click on your website to become direct visitors. We recommend you select your keywords very carefully to rank up higher in Google searches for this.

The last type of visitors are those that come from advertisements. They’re called referred visitors. To get more referred visitors, the best way is to set up marketing campaigns on different websites. We highly advise you to set up marketing campaigns. The set-up process and more details are in the sections below where we’ll talk about marketing campaigns specifically.

All these visitors are your total website traffic. Now, why would we suggest you keep an eye on this metric? That’s because you can find out where your visitors are coming from and improve on other areas.

For example, if you’re lacking referred visitors, you need to work on putting up more advertisements for your website. The traffic sources metric is very important to increase your website’s online presence. It helps you gain visitors that can turn into potential customers. You can always view your traffic sources in the “Site Content” option under the “Behavior” option in your Google Analytics dashboard.

iii. Interactions

Interactions are those actions that your visitors take on your website. And this is a crucial metric to keep an eye on. Google Analytics’ main goal is to turn your website visitors into your customers or daily visitors. To do that, you need to look out for what actions people take on your website.

Google Analytics makes this much easier for you by sorting out what action was performed how many times, all counted separately. So, you can know exactly what your visitors did on your website and look to improve areas where your visitors didn’t interact a lot.

For example, if your visitors click on an “Add to Cart” button but the same number of people don’t click on “Checkout”, you should look into maintaining simplicity on that page. Simple pages tend to have more actions done on them because they’re easy to navigate.

You can view this data inside “Conversions” under “Realtime Reports” section. It looks like this.

iv. Return Visitor Conversion

A return visitor is someone who came to your website for the second time. Usually, they’ll go to the same page that attracted them. Google Analytics shows that return visitors are more likely to spend more time on your website than new visitors. So now you know what attracts people to your website.

The big question is whether they became one of your customers or daily visitors after the return visit. This is return visitor conversion.

Since Google Analytics’ main goal is to convert your return visitors to your customers or daily visitors, it keeps track of everything that return visitors do. Remember when we said Google Analytics uses a dimension called “Returning Visitor”? That dimension comes into play now.

When many return visitors consistently perform an action on your website, Google Analytics will show that to you and you can judge whether to make that part even better or improve other parts of your website.

We recommend you take a look at return visitor conversion as much as possible and ask yourself “Was this change on my website good enough to convert my visitors?”

If the answer is no, you should look into changing objects on your website. One way to convert returning visitors is by providing exclusive deals to daily visitors or long-time customers.

v. Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is when people visit your website and instantly click away. More specifically, how many people do this is called the bounce rate. This is a bad factor for your website. But you need to keep this monitored as well.

Usually, bounce rates increase as a result of either your website not being easy to navigate or your content being congested. Bounce rates are a good way of determining how well your website is doing in terms of attracting visitors.

Ideally, you’d want your website’s bounce rate to be between 26% to 70%. Any higher than a 70% bounce rate means you’re not doing a good job getting visitors. Which in turn doesn’t convert them into your customers so you can’t make more money.

Also, keep in mind that higher bounce rates aren’t always a bad thing. If you have a website that revolves around people viewing it, like a content website, then yes, a higher bounce rate is pretty bad. But if you have an online store, higher bounce rates aren’t that bad at all.

You can view your website’s bounce rate on “Landing Pages” under the “Site Content” option. With this data, you can greatly increase your website’s online presence as you’ll now know what is making your visitors click away. For example, if visitors are clicking away from one of your products or content, maybe it’s too pricey or the content isn’t easily readable.

vi. Exit Pages

This is where you identify where the bounce is happening. Exit pages are those pages on your website where your visitors are clicking away. If your visitors are clicking away from your home page, that’s a serious problem you need to address.

Exiting from your home page means that it isn’t what your visitors expected it to be. So maybe making it a little more attractive or minimalistic might help.

Maybe the content wasn’t very readable, or it was difficult to navigate past that piece of content. This is very crucial for your website’s development as it’ll help you make your website even better.

Regardless of the page, your visitors exiting your website in itself is a bad thing. You want your visitors to be constantly engaging on your website. But this metric is very helpful in keeping them on your website.

Ideally, you’d want the exit page to be the checkout page or your subscription to the newsletter page. Since Google tracks everything for you, you now have the data to make changes to drive your visitors towards your desired exit pages. You can view your exit pages report under “Site Content” in “Exit Pages”.

vii. Average Session Duration

Average session duration means the time your visitor spends on your website. Higher average session duration is better. But, if you have low average session durations, you should look into fixing your website.

You’d of course want to have a high session duration because higher session durations mean that more interactions happen on your website which in turn can earn you money.

However, an ideal session duration for a website is just 2 to 3 minutes. That’s because the average session duration is calculated by dividing the total duration of all sessions (in seconds) by the number of sessions that took place. So, don’t freak out if you see your website having average 2-minute sessions only.

While 2 minutes might not seem a lot but that’s enough for your visitor to read your content and start engaging on your website. This is also why longer average session durations will bring you more interactions.

You can combine bounce rate, exit pages, and average session duration to determine what exactly is taking your visitors away from your website. Or, what attracts them to your website. Then, you can improve both of them.

You can find your website’s average session duration under “Overview” in the “Audience” section.

The table below points out some recent metrics you can find:

That was all for the most important metrics you need to constantly monitor in order to make your website better. Next up, let’s look into the types of reports that Google Analytics offers.

Reports in Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides several reports that help you understand website traffic, user behaviour, engagement and conversions. Each report focuses on a different aspect of website performance.

Overall, these reports help you identify traffic sources, popular pages, audience characteristics and opportunities for improvement. Let’s look at the main reports available in GA4 and how you can use them.

Let’s talk about the standard reports in order.

1. Report Snapshot

The Reports snapshot provides an overview of your website’s performance. It brings together key metrics from different GA4 reports, helping you monitor website activity without opening each report individually.

Depending on your property’s configuration, the snapshot may include total users, new users, sessions, engagement rate, event count, key events and revenue.

You can use this report to:

• Monitor changes in website traffic over a selected period.
• Check user engagement and important events.
• Review traffic acquisition and revenue trends.
• Identify metrics that need further investigation.

For example, if your website receives more users than the previous month but records fewer key events, you can open the relevant acquisition and engagement reports to investigate the change.

2. Realtime Report

The Realtime report shows activity from users who have visited your website during the last 30 minutes. It helps you monitor recent activity and check whether your website is collecting data.

The report provides information about active users, their approximate locations, traffic sources, viewed pages and screens, and events triggered during their visits.

You can use the Realtime report to:

• Check whether Google Analytics is receiving data after installation.
• Monitor visitors arriving from a newly published campaign.
• See which pages users view during recent visits.
• Verify whether important events trigger when users interact with your website.

For example, after publishing a new blog post and sharing it on social media, you can check the Realtime report to see whether visitors are arriving from that campaign.

Keep in mind that the Realtime report focuses on recent activity. Use other GA4 reports to analyse longer periods and identify traffic trends.

3. Acquisition Reports

Acquisition reports explain how users find your website and which channels bring traffic to your pages. They help you evaluate the performance of organic search, paid advertising, referrals, social media, email campaigns and direct traffic.

GA4 provides two main acquisition reports.

User Acquisition

The User Acquisition report shows how users first arrived at your website. It uses the first-user source, medium and campaign dimensions to help you understand where new users originally discovered your website.

For example, the report may show that a user first discovered your website through Google organic search. If that user returns later through a paid advertisement, their original user acquisition source remains organic search.

You can use this report to:

• Identify channels that attract new users.
• Compare new-user acquisition across marketing campaigns.
• Understand which sources introduce users to your website.
• Evaluate the long-term value of different acquisition channels.

Traffic Acquisition

The Traffic Acquisition report focuses on sessions rather than a user’s first visit. It shows which sources, mediums and campaigns bring visits to your website.

For example, a returning user may visit your website through an email campaign, while another session may begin through organic search. Traffic Acquisition helps you compare these visits by channel.

You can use this report to:

• Measure traffic from organic search and paid campaigns.
• Compare sessions from different referral sources.
• Evaluate campaign performance using UTM parameters.
• Identify channels that generate engaged sessions and key events.

For SEO, these reports help you assess organic search traffic and compare its performance with other acquisition channels.

4. Engagement Reports

Engagement reports show how users interact with your website after arriving. They help you understand which pages attract attention, which actions users take and how effectively your content supports your website goals.

GA4 includes several engagement reports.

Events Report

The Events report records interactions that GA4 collects or that you configure through event tracking. Examples include page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, file downloads, form submissions and purchases, depending on your tracking setup.

You can use this report to:

• Identify common user interactions.
• Monitor clicks and other tracked actions.
• Check whether important events are being recorded.
• Measure interactions related to your business objectives.

For example, a service business could track form submissions to understand how frequently website visitors express interest in its services.

Pages and Screens Report

The Pages and screens report shows which web pages users view and which screens app users access. For websites, it can provide metrics such as views, users, views per active user, average engagement time and event counts.

You can use this report to:

• Identify pages that attract the most views.
• Compare engagement across blog posts and service pages.
• Find pages that attract traffic but receive limited engagement.
• Assess how users interact with important landing pages.

For example, if a blog post receives substantial organic traffic but generates few enquiries, you could review its content, internal links and calls to action.

Landing Page Report

The Landing page report shows the first page users visit during a session. It helps you assess how effectively individual landing pages attract and engage visitors.

You can use this report to:

• Compare landing pages by sessions and engagement.
• Identify pages that attract organic search traffic.
• Measure key events associated with landing pages.
• Find opportunities to improve content and calls to action.

Engagement Metrics

GA4 uses engagement metrics to help you understand how actively users interact with your website. These include engagement rate, engaged sessions and average engagement time.

An engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, includes a key event, or has at least two page or screen views.

Engagement rate represents the percentage of sessions that qualify as engaged sessions. Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged sessions.

These metrics help you evaluate user interaction, but they should be interpreted alongside the website’s purpose and business objectives.

5. Monetisation Reports

Monetisation reports help you measure revenue generated through your website or app. They are particularly useful for ecommerce businesses and websites that track purchases or other revenue-related activity.

Depending on your setup, these reports may include ecommerce purchases, product performance, purchase revenue, items purchased and other monetisation metrics.

You can use Monetisation reports to:

• Track ecommerce revenue and purchases.
• Identify products that generate the most sales.
• Compare purchase activity across marketing channels.
• Evaluate revenue trends over time.
• Understand how users interact with products before purchasing.

For example, an online store can analyse which products generate the most revenue and compare purchasing activity across organic search, paid advertising and email campaigns.

Accurate ecommerce reporting requires the relevant events and parameters to be implemented correctly. Simply installing GA4 does not guarantee that every purchase or product interaction will be tracked.

6. Retention Reports

Retention reports help you understand whether users return to your website after their first visit. They provide information about user retention and engagement over time.

These reports are useful for websites that aim to build repeat visits, such as blogs, membership websites, online stores and subscription services.

You can use Retention reports to:

• Compare new and returning user activity.
• Understand how frequently users return.
• Monitor user retention over time.
• Assess whether content or marketing campaigns encourage repeat visits.

For example, a blog may use retention data to understand whether readers return after their first visit. An ecommerce website may review repeat-user activity to assess whether customers continue visiting after their initial purchase.

Retention metrics do not explain why users return or leave. You may need to combine them with acquisition, engagement and key event data to understand changes in user behaviour.

7. User Attributes Reports

User attributes reports provide information about the characteristics of your website audience. Depending on available data and reporting configuration, they may include country, city, language, age, gender and interests.

These reports help you understand which audience groups visit your website and how their activity differs.

You can use User attributes reports to:

• Review traffic by country and city.
• Understand the languages used by your audience.
• Compare engagement across available demographic groups.
• Identify audience segments that contribute to important events.

For example, if most of your website traffic comes from Australia but a significant share of enquiries comes from another country, you could investigate differences in traffic sources, landing pages and user engagement.

Demographic and interest data are subject to Google’s data collection, privacy and eligibility requirements. GA4 does not provide complete demographic information for every visitor, so avoid treating these reports as a full picture of your audience.

8. Tech Reports

Tech reports explain how users access and interact with your website across different devices and technologies. They may include device categories, browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions and platform information.

You can use these reports to:

• Compare website activity on desktop, mobile and tablet devices.
• Identify browsers and operating systems used by your audience.
• Investigate differences in engagement across devices.
• Find potential technical issues affecting specific user groups.

For example, if mobile users have a lower engagement rate than desktop users, you could check the mobile layout, page speed, navigation and form usability.

Tech reports help you identify patterns that deserve further investigation. A difference in engagement does not automatically mean that a technical problem exists.

9. Search Console Reports in Google Analytics

Google Analytics can display selected Google Search Console reports when you link an eligible Search Console property to your GA4 property and meet the relevant reporting requirements.

These reports complement GA4’s acquisition and engagement data by providing information about your website’s performance in Google Search.

Search Console data includes metrics such as clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average search position. GA4, in contrast, measures activity on your website after users arrive.

You can use the combined data to:

• Review Google Search clicks and impressions.
• Compare search performance with website engagement.
• Identify landing pages that receive search traffic.
• Investigate opportunities to improve content and user experience.

For example, a page with many search impressions but a low click-through rate may need a more relevant title or meta description. A page with strong search traffic but limited engagement may need a closer review of its content and user experience.

Remember that linking Search Console does not make all search queries or Search Console metrics available inside every GA4 report. Use Search Console directly when you need a more detailed SEO analysis.

Note: GA4 report names, navigation and available metrics may vary depending on your property, reporting configuration, permissions and collected data. Some reports require additional setup before they appear.

Google Analytics Major Features and Settings

Google Analytics being the best analytics tool on the internet has a lot of features and settings that you can customize. But some are more important to have than the others.

In this section, we’ve made a list of some major features and settings that you should have enabled on Google Analytics.

• Ecommerce Tracking
• Goals
• Campaigns
• AdWords
• Internal Traffic Excluding Filters

i. Ecommerce Tracking

This applies only if you have an e-commerce website. One of the main things Google Analytics focuses on is e-commerce on your website. You should do that too. What e-commerce tracking does is that it helps you find out where your most profitable visitors are coming from.

Ecommerce tracking can be enabled on most reports generated by Google Analytics. If you haven’t already, you should switch every report possible to e-commerce tracking. Here’s how you can enable it.

First, go to your Google Analytics account. On the very top right, you should be able to see an “Admin” button. Clicking it will take you to a page that has the “Profile Settings” button in it. Click on that button. Then, under e-commerce settings, turn on “Enable Ecommerce” and “Enable Advanced Ecommerce Reporting”. Lastly, click the “Save” button. A page with these steps completed should look something like this.

In a nutshell, GA4 ecommerce tracking uses events such as view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout and purchase. Implement the relevant events on your store and send the required product, transaction, value and currency parameters. Then verify the data in GA4 reports and DebugView.

And that’s it. You’re ready to have e-commerce tracking on your website.

ii. Goals

Goals are how Google Analytics tracks conversions. Conversions are how you can make money from your website. To set a goal, you need to tag items you want to track as a goal.

We recommend you tag the most important items as goals first. For example, how many people checked out from your website should be one goal you should definitely tag on your website.

Since it’s up to you to decide what item to tag as a goal, let us guide you through how to set a goal. Follow the simple steps mentioned below.

First, go to your Google Analytics account dashboard. On the top right, you should see a blue “Admin” button. On clicking the “Admin” button, you should see a button named “Goals”. Click on it and then click on “+ Goal” to set up a goal for your website.

iii. Campaigns

By campaigns, we specifically mean your marketing campaigns. If you’ve set up marketing campaigns just as we advised you to, you need to track them as well. Those campaigns let you know where you’re doing well and what you should focus on improving.

Google Analytics can track any editable URL. That includes your marketing campaigns on different websites. Marketing campaigns could be from email marketing to marketing through ads. And we’ll tell you how to track your marketing campaigns.

Firstly, go to Google Campaign URL Builder Tool. You should see a screen that looks like this.

Simply fill out your website’s URL under the “Website URL” bar. Then, proceed to fill out details as indicated in the text boxes. After you’re done, click on the “Generate URL” button.

Now that link is what you need to give to advertisers. That’s your marketing campaign link. Whenever people visit your website through that link, your marketing campaign gets tracked on Google Analytics. Easy as that.

Notably, use UTM parameters to identify traffic from email, social media and other marketing campaigns. Add relevant parameters such as utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to your campaign URLs. Use consistent naming conventions to keep reports accurate.

iv. AdWords

AdWords is another popular tool provided by Google to help you advertise your website or content. We highly recommend you use it if you have a marketing budget. Also, Google Analytics can easily track your AdWords performance.

But first, you need to link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account. To do that, you can simply follow the steps below.

First login to your AdWords account. Click on “Tools and Analytics” on your dashboard and then on “Google Analytics”.

You’ll be prompted with a screen asking whether you want to create a new Google Analytics account. Just click on the “Already have one” option. Then pick the account you have Google Analytics on and you’re ready to go.

Now, everyone that comes to your website through AdWords will be tracked separately. This way, you can view how well your regular marketing campaigns are doing in comparison to how much your AdWords is getting clicks.

Pro-tip; AdWords works based on keywords just like Google rankings so try to find those sweet keywords to get visitors to click on your website.

Overall, link your GA4 property to Google Ads to analyse campaign performance. Review key event imports, conversion settings and attribution before using Analytics data for campaign optimisation.

v. Internal Traffic Excluding Filters

You’ll be visiting your own website very often. This means that with Google Analytics’ visitor tracking, you’ll be tracked as a direct visitor. Which we don’t want. So, we need to exclude internal traffic.

Having internal traffic measured will be a catastrophe in the long term. You’ll have reports where you have a lot of visits, yet no sales and you’ll be left wondering what went wrong. Not excluding internal traffic. That’s what went wrong.

But worry not because we’re here to guide you on how to exclude yourself as a visitor. Just follow the steps mentioned below.

Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and click on the “Admin” tab. Navigate to “All Filters” and then on “New Filter”. Now, give your filter a name, just about anything will do. Then select the dropdown box and hit “Exclude”. Then you’ll need to click on “From the IP addresses that are equal to” button and input your IP address.

It should look something like this.

If you have trouble finding your IP address, just search “what is my ip address” on Google and you’ll get your IP address.

That’s it for features and settings you need to use in Google Analytics. In the section below, we’ll help you set objectives in Google Analytics.

How to Set Objectives with Google Analytics

We already know how great of a tool Google Analytics is. But did you know that you can set some objectives through Google Analytics that can help you make your website even better? Let us guide you through it.

Objectives or “Goals” as it’s called on the Google Analytics dashboard is a way for you to know how objects on your website are doing. Which button is being clicked the most? Which page has been visited the most? Basically, this is almost 50% of all data you need to make your website better.

Let’s start with the types of goals. Fundamentally, there are only two types of goals. 

1. Business goals
2. Google Analytics goals.

Business goals are those objects that you set up on your website, so your visitors actually act on them. For example, if you have an e-commerce website, you want users to click the purchase button more than anything else. That’s because it gives you money.

Google Analytics goals on the other hand are the second step to business goals. Google Analytics goals track what has been clicked how many times. For example, if you have a newsletter, how many people have subscribed to your newsletter? You can tell by taking a look at Google Analytics goals.

By setting goals, you can identify what’s wrong on your website. Which page has the lowest interactions and where are people clicking away from your website? This is huge data for any website as you can immensely improve on your website with this amount of data.

So, how do you set up goals or objectives in Google Analytics? Let us guide you through.

Firstly, go to your admin tab after you’ve signed in. There, you can see a column called “View”. There you can click on “Goals”. Then click on “New Goals”. Keep in mind that you can only set up 20 goals per view.

In Google Analytics, you get three ways to set up goals. You can either use a goal template or create a custom goal or create a smart goal. We recommend you create a custom goal for your website. After you’re done click on “New Goals”, go ahead, and select “Custom Goals” out of the three options. Then, specify what type of goal you want.

For this, you need to know what you want to track. That should be based on your business goals. What do you want your visitors to click on? If it’s a purchase button, set up a goal to track successful checkouts. If you give out newsletters, track successful subscribers. It all depends on you.

For now, we’ll just go ahead and click on “Verify Goal” to complete the setup. Now, you’ll be able to see how well you’ve done in the last 7 days. You can go on your website and click on anything you’ve tracked to see if it’s working.

And there you have it. You’ve successfully set up goals or objectives on your Google Analytics account. Next up, we’ll teach you about some of the most important metrics in Google Analytics that you need to keep in mind.

FAQs on Google Analytics

Conclusion

In this article, we talked about one of the best analytics tools on the internet, Google Analytics. We also guided you through the set-up process and talked about major things you should keep in mind while using Google Analytics. Also, we helped you get the best settings available on Google Analytics to improve your website.

Hope you had as much fun as we did throughout the course of this article. We would love to hear your thoughts on this article so feel free to comment on any queries or suggestions below.

Also, do check out our other articles on popular types of websites you can build and the best website builder platforms.

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