3 TIPS to Improve Your Google Analytics 4 Property

By Peter SutarikUncategorized

In this short article I would like to give you three simple and actionable tips, that you can implement today and improve your Google Analytics 4 setup (trust me, you’ll be happy you set this up a few months down the road). Let’s get started!

Rather watch a video? We’ve got you👇

Link Your GA4 Property with BigQuery Account

  • By linking your GA4 property to BigQuery, you will get access to the event-level data that is collected and stored in BigQuery.
  • This link is only active from the date that you actually create a link. So, it’s important to create it as soon as possible.
  • The costs are really low for storage, so even if you are not going to use it right away, it’s a good idea to have that data available for future use.

Increase Your Data Retention Period

  • Data retention is a time period in which you will still have access to granular event and user-level data. If that time period expires, you will lose access to some event level or user-level data.
  • Two months is quite a short time period. You definitely want to increase this to 14 months in GA4 free properties. In paid 360 properties, you have an option of up to 50 months.
  • You can set this up in few seconds by going into the Admin section of your GA4 property under data settings and then increasing it from two months to 14 months (make sure you reflect this change in your privacy policy).

Review the Default Channel Groupings

  • If you are using default channel groupings in your GA4 property, you pretty much rely on the rule set that is defined by Google on how different combinations of Source / Medium and campaign fall into that channel group (more on that here).
  • You might find a lot of traffic falling into Unassigned even though it should be categorized as a Paid search or Paid social etc.
  • You don’t have an option to edit the Default channel grouping, but you have two options: review your campaign naming convention and make sure it’s aligned with Google’s recommendations (linked above), or create your own Custom channel grouping where you can modify how the logic works.