Discover the latest updates to Google Analytics

Google Analytics’ new generation can help you achieve your measurement goals. Getting started with the latest Google Analytics experience can help you set your business up for success.

In this module, you’ll learn:

Google Analytics: benefits and features
How to stay up to date with a product that changes over time

How has Google Analytics changed?

Google Analytics 4 is the latest experience in Google Analytics. This new experience offers improved features and greater flexibility. No matter what level of analytics you’re using or how long you’ve been tracking with it, this infrastructure will unlock valuable insights for your website or app.

Note: Google Analytics 4 properties were briefly known as “App + Web properties.” The name was changed to reflect the fact that this property type is for all businesses, not just those that have both an app and a website.

What’s a Google Analytics property?

A property is where your company’s online data goes to get processed in Google Analytics.

In the past, there were only two kinds of properties: Universal Analytics for measuring websites, and Google Analytics for Firebase for measuring mobile app activity. But now, the Google Analytics 4 property can collect both types of data. This property was designed for all Analytics users: those who only have a website, those who only have an app, as well as those who have both and want to combine all their data in one place.

A Google Analytics account: This can include multiple properties and property types, but a property can belong to only one Analytics account.

Universal Analytics properties: Also known as UA properties, this is the term for the existing web-only Analytics property type.

Google Analytics 4 properties: Also known as GA4 properties, this Analytics property type can process data from both websites and apps. Plus it has many new features for all Analytics users.

Note that in the past, there was a separate property type, called Google Analytics for Firebase, which was only for apps, but now these properties have been upgraded to GA4 properties.

Benefits of using Google Analytics 4

Analytics for the next generation is designed to scale with your business and measure across devices and platforms. Adapting to a dynamic digital environment demands an adaptive measurement strategy. With machine learning, Analytics can also provide predictions to improve your marketing.

The experience was designed to meet your business’s needs as a future-oriented, privacy-first platform. Check out some of the benefits of the GA4 property type:

~Scales with Your Business

By measuring, unifying, and de-duplicate all the interactions people have with you across all devices and platforms, you can gain a true understanding of your customer journey.

~Adapts to a Changing Environment

By providing reliable, long-lasting measurement, it allows business outcomes over the long term and meets privacy expectations.

~Revials intelligent business insights

By harnessing the power of Google’s machine learning, it facilitates the discovery of insights and makes data analysis frictionless.

~Helps you Achieve your Marketing Goals

You can take action based on your data and insights to achieve measurable marketing results.

Integrated reporting

Increasingly, people expect to interact with businesses in the manner that best suits their needs — for example, researching a product on their phone and then purchasing it later on their computer. The ability to predict your customers’ needs and provide great experiences depends on understanding these user journeys. The new Analytics experience makes it easy to handle a variety of data streams.

Full reporting across devices

As they interact with your website, users often switch devices or profiles. Data from multiple devices can be de-duplicated using the latest Analytics experience. Consequently, Analytics can measure a single user journey across devices based on the best available identifiers. Signed-in users can be identified by using Google’s data or by bringing their own identifier, and Analytics will always use the best option for each situation.

Unified app and web reporting

The latest Analytics experience can add value to your business if you only have a website, or you only have an app. But if you have both, it can give you insight into cross-platform journeys.

This experience allows you to measure apps and websites together across all reports for the first time in Analytics.

Integrated analysis and reporting

Considering the variety of ways your business is interacting with people, you need tools that make sense of the different types of data that are being generated. Google Analytics’ latest features combine all your data streams seamlessly and intelligently to report key insights specific to your business.

The Analysis tool lets you go beyond predefined reports, giving you more flexibility when examining your data.

The Analysis tool lets you go beyond predefined reports, giving you more flexibility when examining your data.

Get started with Google Analytics 4 properties

Regardless of where you are in your Analytics journey, it’s best to get started with the latest property type to prepare your business for the future of measurement. Creating and configuring your new property today will:

Build historical data in the new property that will make future analysis and reporting more meaningful, capturing more trends and insights over a greater period of time
Enable you to access and take immediate advantage of the latest Analytics innovations as they become available, so you can get powerful new insights from your data

New to Google Analytics: You should get started with the latest property type right away! It’s the future of Analytics, so you’ll find all the new features here.

Already using Google Analytics for your Website? Set up a GA4 property alongside you existing Analytics properties. This will allow you to start collecting data and taking advantage of capabilities in the new property while keeping your current Analytics implementation intact.

If you set up and configure your new property now, you’ll be ready to benefit from the latest Analytics features as more innovation becomes available.

Already using Google Analytics for your app? You are ready to start taking advantage of the new features in Analytics! The Google Analytics for Firebase project you already use is now a GA4 property, so you don’t need to make any changes to your account.

If you set up and configure your new property now, you’ll be ready to benefit from the latest Analytics features as more innovation becomes available.

Tip

Get started right away with GA4 properties to stay up to date with a product that will change over time. While many features are already available to use today, the latest Analytics experience will be the home of many new and exciting features yet to come! To find the latest updates and features, visit the Google Analytics Official Blog or the Help Center.

Key takeaways:

The GA4 property type is the next generation of Google Analytics and is designed to scale with your business and measure across devices and platforms.
GA4 properties are built to handle data from both websites and apps.
The latest Analytics experience is fully operational today, but new features and innovations are still being added.

Discover the latest updates to Google Analytics