Google Analytics Events, Hits, Sessions, and Users Explained: GA4 vs UA
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2022
- GA4 is built on an "event-based data model." This means all "hits" (interactions) are recorded and sent as events. In the prior version (UA), there were many different hit types including pageviews, user timing, events, and others.
What does this mean in terms of practical knowledge about how Google Analytics works? We explore those questions - and answers - in this video.
Have questions or comments? Leave them in the comments. I'm always up for learning more...and for new video ideas.
There's typically a new video every week or two about GA4 or Google Tag Manager or Looker Studio or sometimes Google Ads or SEO. If you want to follow along with what I'm learning (trying to learn) you can subscribe at the link below:
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🔗 Links to 📖📖📖 BLOGS: These are the most popular blogs on the Root and Branch site from TH-cam visitors
✭ Do These 10 Steps to Install AND Configure GA4 Properly: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ Events in GA4 and How it Compares to UA: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ev...
✭ GA4 Reports Explained: Standard Reports, Explorations, Custom Reports: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/go...
✭ A Practical Guide to Event Parameters: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ GA4 Problems (And What You Can Do About Them): www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga...
✭ Google Analytics 4 Link Click Tracking: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/go...
✭How to Install Google Tag Manager (GTM) on Wordpress: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ho...
✭And Some SEO! How to Edit robots.txt on Wordpress!
www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ed...
🔗 Links to 📹📹📹 VIDEO TUTORIALS: These are most popular GA4 instructional videos as measured by views or watch time
📺 How to Set Up GA4 in 5 Minutes With GTM: • Set Up GA4 (in 5 Minut...
📺 How to Properly Configure Your GA4 Property: • 10 Steps to Configure ...
📺 6 Key Differences Between GA4 and UA: • Google Analytics 4 (GA... 🔑🔑🔑🔑🔑🔑
📺 The Truth About GA4 Event Parameters: • The Truth About GA4 Ev...
📺 GA4 Hits, Events, Sessions, and Users Explained: • Google Analytics Event...
📺 How to set up GA4 FORM SUBMISSION tracking with a thank you page: • How to Set Up a GA4 Fo... 🙏
📺 How to set up BUTTON CLICK tracking with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • Set Up Page Timer Trac...
📺 How to set up PAGE TIMER tracking with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • Set Up Page Timer Trac... ⏲
📺 How to Set Up LINK CLICK Tracking with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • Button Click Tracking ... 🖯
📺 How to Set Up SCROLL DEPTH Tracking (25%, 50%, 75%, 90%) with GA4 and Google Tag Manager: • How to Set Up GA4 Link... 🖯
📺 How to Build a Link Click Tracking Report Using GA4 data and Looker Studio: • Google Data Studio GA4... 📊📊📊
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📺 All about the GA4 Certification: • Google Analytics 4 Cer... 🏆
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Thanks for coming by!
Extremely helpful ! Thank you. Explanation with visuals was thorough and concise.
So glad to hear you found it helpful! Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback.
Solid and easy to follow presntation
Thanks J’!
I’m glad you found it helpful and I’m grateful for the kind words.
Zack
Very good explanation!!! Thanks a lot
Thanks for the feedback, Paula. : )
Ps. Not sure if this part of GA4 already makes sense to you or not, but the idea of *event parameters* was the next big confusing thing to me after the general concept of hits and events and sessions made sense. Here's a link to something that might be useful, just in case you're at all similar to me in that regard.
www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-event-parameters/
Wish you all the best in your GA4 journey!
Zack
This was really helpful. Thanks!
So glad to hear it. Thanks for watching and for taking the time to share.
Have a great one!
Great work. I learnt a lot. Thanks
Thanks for the encouragement, Ukiwe! I'm glad to hear it was helpful. 🙂
Wishing you all the best on your GA4 journey!
Do you know why my page views are different on my hosting vs GA4? Why would there be such a big difference in GA4 only reporting a quarter of page views? Great videos btw thank you
Hi there. It's hard to say without looking at it more, and even then I might not be able to say with complete confidence.
What is the source that you're using to compare to your GA4 data? I might be able to poke around a bit more if you can share that. For now, this reddit thread might have some context that would be useful. www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/comments/155xmff/domain_provider_shows_way_more_visits_and_page/
And thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated!
Awesome explanation!
Thank you, Vishal. Very grateful to hear you found it helpful.
Good luck and Godspeed to you on your GA4 journey!
Hi, love all your tutorials, they are really useful. I think you pasted the wrong 'page-timer" link on the "How to set up BUTTON CLICK tracking" video in the description. :)
I sure did! Thank you, Chloe. Looks like I made the same mistake in *all* the video descriptions. : )
I'll be working on getting that straightened out. I appreciate the heads up and also the kind words. If you see anything else that looks funky, please feel free to let me know.
Ps. Here's the correct link to that button click tracking video: th-cam.com/video/JOFtjLpwBLE/w-d-xo.html
Lots of great information in this video! While you definitely mentioned some improvements, it seems like a lot to add and set up to get GA4 close to what Universal Analytics was, in terms of the amount of information. Why even learn GA4? Will Google soon have users only be able to access GA4? Will improvements be made to GA4?
I think you're right on the money that a lot of the "work" in GA4 is to try to get it close to UA.
If Google wasn't doing away with UA (the last day that prior version will process new hit data is in the end of June, 2023) I probably wouldn't be spending much time to learn GA4. I still like UA a lot more.
Sadly, we don't have too many options in that.
The good news is that new updates are constantly being made to GA4. Google actually logs a running list of those on this "What's New" page here: support.google.com/analytics/answer/9164320?hl=en
Thank you for your comprehensive comparison of the underlying tracking methodologies. Not everyone goes deep to the fundamentals. One question though about session tracking. Am I understanding it correctly that in UA, the 2 pageviews and 2 events and 1 scrolling are just known to have happened in the same session (probably with the help of timestamp and device id) but that session is not identified with a key/id. But in GA4, since we have the session_start event and the session id, all the events are again connected but this time to a known session and I can actually look it up which anonymized user has that session and what interactions he had in that session. So the data model is much more complex and informative as everything is tracked as events in a database with unique keys so that they are identifiable and data is more interconnected.
Koray, hello! Thanks for the kind words and the thoughtful question.
I think you're actually asking about something beyond the depths of my own knowledge, but I found this Google support article on GA4 session that *might* have some useful info for you.
support.google.com/analytics/answer/9191807?hl=en
Section below:
"Both the session ID and session number are associated with each event in a session automatically via gtag.js and the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK. However, the identifier is not included automatically in events from Measurement Protocol or Data Import.
Sometimes the session ID is not associated with the session_start event (e.g., when the event is filtered out from a subproperty). In these cases, Analytics still generates a session ID."
Best wishes to you!
Hey can you please explain under what circumstances does Ga4 show me more number sessions than number session_Start ....As for every session to be counted doesn't it needs be triggered by session start
Great question. Are your counts close?
I looked at a recent period on my site and saw 11,587 sessions (in traffic acquisition) and 11,417 session_start events. Not a 100% match as it seems like it should be, but not a glaring error.
From what I've read online, most people do see the session count to be higher than the session start event count. The reason, as I understand it, is that Google is counting slightly different thing here. I was reading a discussion on reddit (stackoverflow.com/questions/73302330/can-anyone-explain-how-session-start-event-count-in-ga4-is-different-from-sessio) with the answer paraphrased below.
When it comes to counting sessions, every hit with a unique session id will count in that way,
But when it comes to session starts, only the session_start event will count.
Now, the question is, how can there be a hit with a unique session id but without a session_start event? Here's what Google says in this support article (support.google.com/analytics/answer/9191807?hl=en)
"Sometimes the session ID is not associated with the session_start event (e.g., when the event is filtered out from a subproperty). In these cases, Analytics still generates a session ID."
It seems a bit fishy to me, but I'm not going to get overly concerned. By the way, you can create a pretty helpful custom dimension with the ga_session_number event parameter that is created along with session_start. Linking that resource here if you're interested: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/session-start-event-ga4/
@rooted-digital Thank you for such an informative video! Love the way you structured this complicated concept. If UA reported that website had traffic from a country or region, say UK, of 40% in a month, and GA4 reports it as 20% for the same month, why do you think that would be the case? And a 50% drop is usual?
Hi SL, thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you found this informative.
I have not personally seen such a big difference in traffic by geography. With that said, my experience has been that GA4 vs UA traffic differences are sometimes due to the fact that GA4 collects less data in certain situations than UA.
If I were in your spot, I’d check to see where the “missing” UK traffic shifted to in GA4. Does another country show significantly higher traffic in GA4 than it does in UA?
OR, is there a higher percentage of traffic in GA4 that is not affiliated with any country? This second one would be my guess, and could be due to the privacy hurdles being higher in GA4 (and therefore, some of the data granularity not seeming to be as good).
Let me know if this seems like it might explain any of it. I can also keep you posted if I hear of anything else as a possible theory.
Good luck!
Did you figure out why the drop? I’m having the same issues 🤦♂️
@@awakenthegreatnesswithin Hi there. Do you also have an issue with a specific geography that is showing lower traffic?
For example, is it roughly the same total traffic, but a certain geography or two is showing less? In that case, I'd look to see where the traffic has shifted to. Is another country higher now or is that traffic not affiliated with any country?
Or, is the total traffic count (sum of everything) now much lower in GA4 compared to UA?
@@awakenthegreatnesswithin Yea, I hear you. I'm sure you've checked the tracking code installation, but if not, that would be where I'd go first. I've seen things where the same code was installed multiple times and the data got all wonky since the code was firing a bunch and sporadically collecting the hits.
Best of luck to you!
@@rooted-digital it's not the tracking code but thanks. Have a good day.
Does the UA and GA4 display the same user count?
Replying here with the reference article that I hope will be helpful: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-users-defined/
@@rooted-digital thank u✌️
@@jasryrm6678 very welcome!