Hey there, measure geeks.
In this video we will learn how to configure your GA4 property.
So let's dive into it.
So you implemented your GA4 snippet
on your website and you can see some data flowing into your property.
Okay, you might be even measuring some
events, but you must always make sure that everything is set up correctly.
And this is step number one when you
create a new property because it's like a musical instrument or a machine.
In order to play the instrument and or
to operate the machine, you must make sure they are set up correctly first.
And the same with GA4 because we want
to get the best possible results, we want to get the accurate data.
And this is why the first thing you must
do is to ensure that everything is set up in the correct way.
Okay, so let's have a look at our GA4 account.
And you can see the account architecture.
On the left side we have everything related to the account settings,
whereas on the right side we have everything related to the property.
And here we have the account settings.
This is where you can find your account
name, the country of business, and you can also see some data sharing settings.
So let's say you want to provide access to some Google technicians.
Then you would have to mark this one.
Or if you want to give access to account
specialist, for example, sales representatives.
In this case you would have to select this one and you can save your changes.
Okay, then we also have account access management.
And this is fundamental because you must
understand who is managing your account, who has access to your properties.
And this is where you can do it.
And let's say you want to invite a team
of marketers to work on your project and this is where you can do it by adding
user groups, or let's say you want to add some individual users and this is where
you can also do it and you would have to assign a role to a user.
And the cool thing about GA4 is
that now you can also hide cost and revenue related metrics.
Let's say you have a new intern and you
don't want to show this data and you can simply hide it by marking those options.
Okay, I will not save that.
We also have filters here,
but we can ignore this one because it's related to Universalnalytics only.
We also have account change history
and this is exactly where you can check what changes were made.
And this is good to know and a rubbish bing.
So you can simply delete your account if you do not need it anymore.
And this was a quick overview of account settings.
And now let's move to the most exciting part.
And these are property settings.
Here we have the property name industry
category and it has an impact on your reports.
Let's say I want to have games and let me show you what will happen.
So now if I go to my reports,
GA4 will adjust the reporting interface to the industry you select.
So you can see here we have games, reporting and GA4 will also show you
suggested audiences related to the industry that you selected.
But let's go back and I want to have my other category back.
Let me change it.
I would say other,
another crucial thing you must always double check is the reporting time zone.
So usually this is the time zone of a place where your business is
headquartered, but you might have a different case.
But this also has a direct impact on the data shown in your reports.
And this is why you must double check that as well as currency.
Okay, so let's save this one and let's move to our property access management.
And this is why you should be very careful because some people by mistake might add
a user at an account level because we have account access and property access.
And this is why you should always double check.
If everything is managed in a correct way
and all users have their correct roles assigned, then we have data settings
and there is something called data collection.
And this is where you can activate Google signals and it is very important
to understand the impact it might have on your data.
Before enabling this feature, you must always make sure that you have
read the privacy policy, that you understand all the data
restrictions, data regulations in your location.
And another thing you should keep in mind
is that you are ready to face some thresholding.
And Charles Farina wrote a great tweet.
I guess there was a tweet, not an article explaining this issue.
So sometimes if you have some conversions and they don't have great numbers because
it might be a small customer, nalytics might be hiding them,
not showing them to you in order to kind of protect your users so that you cannot
identify those with the help of some demographical user features.
This is why you must make sure that you're ready to face this kind of issue.
Then we have something called data retention.
And this is another setting you should pay
attention to because when you create a new property, the data retention is by default
two months and you should change it to 14 months.
Again, if there are no restrictions.
If you discussed this with your legal
department, I would say, but this has an impact on your explorations.
This setting would not influence your
aggregated data anyhow, but everything that is associated
with cookies, user Identifiers or advertising
Identifiers will not be available after two months.
And let's say you want to make an analysis going back in time and unfortunately this
will not be possible beyond standard reports.
This is why you should also double check this one.
Let me save this one.
Another important setting is data filters.
They're kind of limited now in GA4
comparing to Universal Analytics and there is not much we could do here.
So you can see we have internal traffic.
So you don't want to have polluted reports
and you want to exclude yourself and your colleagues and this is how you can do it.
There is not much we can actually do.
You can also see filter states, we have testing active and inactive.
Why do we have testing?
Yes, because GA4 gives us the possibility to test the filter we
created as they are not retroactive and you can see that we have testing
active and inactive and this is pretty much it.
And also if you want to exclude your internal traffic, you must all define it.
So one more step to be made.
You should go to data streams and here we can find configure tag settings
show all and this is where you can define your internal traffic.
And let's have a look.
As an example, I have my home office
and then you provide the IP address and this is how Analytics would understand.
Okay, there is a parameter internal traffic type internal and I should exclude
this guy or a girl because I don't want to have polluted reports.
Okay, let's go back to our settings.
And another crucial thing is just to make
sure that you linked your GA4 property to other tools and the most common are
Google Ads, search Console, BigQuery and Merchant Center.
But it fully depends on your case and you
might be using different tools, but you just make sure that you connect
with everything and linking is pretty straightforward so you just simply click
link and then you will choose your Google account.
Okay, so those were some basic settings you should check, but I would also love
to cover some settings that can be customized in a way so something that you
can choose for your specific case and the first one is unwanted referrals.
So let's say you have an ecommerce store and let me just go to the demo account
because there is some data here and if you go to acquisition, traffic acquisition
and here we have Session source/medium and this is where you can see your referrals.
And let's say if you see something like
PayPal or Klarna here, this is not a good sign.
So you want to exclude those unwanted guests and this is where you can do we
should go to data streams and here you can configure tag settings
and this is where you can list unwanted referrals.
So you simply provide the conditions and you say I don't want to see them
in my reports because they pollut my data right.
So you should not see those payment
gateways, for example PayPal.com or Klarna.com okay, another thing I would love to show
that should be checked is the reporting identity.
And here you can see we have different ways to identify your users.
We have blended, observed and device based.
So in good old Universal Analytics we had
something called Client-id and this was basically device ID.
So you could also implement user ID
in Universal Analytics but you would also have to create a separate view for that so
you would not have the holistic picture of your user journey.
Now in GA4 we have crossdevice tracking and here you can see
in the blended type we have user ID as primary Identifier.
So if you have some logging functionality
or some way to identify your users if you have this feature implemented.
So GA4 would use this one.
If it's not available it would fall back
on Google Signals and would use that as an Identifier.
We already discussed it.
So you should always consider advantages or disadvantages of enabling this feature.
And if Google Signals are not available,
the Device ID or a former Client ID will be used.
And then we also have something called
Modeling Model Data and this is a data feature.
So you know that Google has been heavily investing in machine learning and we're
really curious to see how this will be developing.
And we also have something called Attribution Settings.
This is also a new cool thing available in GA4.
Now you can also select an Attribution
model just so that we are all on the same page.
What is an attribution model?
Let's say you're running multiple ads and the user clicks on one ad,
then second ad, then third ad and then converts makes a purchase for example.
But how can you identify which ad click contributed to that conversion?
And there are different ways to do it.
So you can select last click for example,
and all the credit would go to the last click add by default.
Here we can see the data driven model but you can play with it.
And the cool thing is that it will apply to both historical and future data.
So feel free to discover whereas you should be very careful with the look back
window settings because they are not retroactive.
So this will only apply going forward.
And here you can see we have
the acquisition conversion events, 30 days recommended on all other
conversion events, 90 days recommended and you can also play with it.
What is the look back window?
So a user clicks on your ad and then it might take some time for that user
to convert, especially if this is some very expensive product.
Makes sense, this person needs some time, but later this can be counted as
a conversion and you select this time period for user to convert.
So you can leave the settings as you want or you can play with those.
So these are the main settings you should check when you create your new property.
To sum up, the main GA4 property settings in a nutshell are account naming,
user management, data retention, Google Signals, filters and account linking.
And you can also customize some settings such as attribution modal listing,
unwanted referrals and your reporting identity.
If you like this video, please give us a thumbs up and you can check other GA4
videos right here and happy measuring, guys.
See you next time.