Overview

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) uses event-based model to track user interactions and system behaviors across websites and apps. Events in GA4 offer detailed insights into how users engage with your site or application through event tracking.

Types of Events

GA4 categorizes events into several types, each serving different purposes for data collection and analysis.

Automatically Collected Events:

• Automatically collected events are predefined by GA4 and are collected by default when GA4 is set up on your website or app. These events do not require additional configuration and include interactions such as page views and session starts.

Enhanced Measurement Events:

• Enhanced measurement events are a subset of automatically collected events that provide more detailed tracking of user interactions. These events are collected when enhanced measurement is enabled during GA4 setup (e.g., scroll tracking, outbound link clicks, video engagement).

Recommended Events:

• Recommended events are predefined events with specific names and parameters suggested by Google. Implementing these events helps unlock both current and future reporting capabilities. Recommended events provide standardized metrics that facilitate comparisons and deeper analysis.

Custom Events:

• Custom events are user-defined and tailored to specific tracking needs that are not met by the predefined events. These events allow for flexibility in tracking interactions but do not appear in standard reports by default. Custom reports are needed to analyze these events.

How It Works

When a user interacts with your website or app, such as by clicking a link, GA4 captures and processes the event data through the following steps:

• Event Triggering: The user performs an action (e.g., clicking a link) that triggers an event.
• Event Collection: GA4 receives the event and captures the event details and parameters in real-time.
• Event Processing: GA4 processes the event data and prepares it for analysis.
• Data Surfacing: Processed data becomes available in various GA4 reports, including dimensions and metrics for in-depth analysis.

Viewing Events in Real Time

To verify that events are being collected and processed correctly, use the following tools:

Realtime Report:

• The Realtime report displays event counts and details for the last 30 minutes. The "Event count by Event name" card provides a quick view of each event's frequency. Clicking on an event name reveals the associated event parameters.

DebugView Report:

• The DebugView report shows all events triggered by a single user in real time. This report is useful for verifying correct event and parameter setup. To use DebugView, ensure debug mode is enabled.

Key Events

Key events are important to understanding and measuring the success of your business objectives. These events represent significant actions that directly impact your business goals. You can designate an event as a key event to track and analyze its performance.

Marking an Event as a Key Event:

• Identify Event: Determine which event aligns with your business objectives.
• Mark as Key Event: In GA4, designate the event as a key event.
• Analyze Performance: Monitor how users perform this action and evaluate marketing effectiveness across various channels.

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Note: When a user's device goes offline (for example, a user loses internet access while browsing your app), Analytics stores event data on their device and then sends the data once their device is back online. Analytics ignores events that arrive more than 72 hours after the events were triggered.