The previous version of Google Analytics, also known as Universal Analytics (UA), has been discontinued as of July 1, 2023. This meant that many marketers and website administrators had to quickly find a new solution for their website statistics. Fortunately, Google had a promising successor ready for this situation: Google Analytics 4, or GA4. In this article, we will explain the major differences between Universal Analytics (UA) and GA4.
What are the major differences?
GA4 was launched by Google in October 2020 and is fundamentally different. The new version not only operates in a different way technically but also changes the way Google looks at statistics. We observe that most marketers or website administrators need some time to get used to reading and interpreting the data within GA4.
1. New data model
Google has restructured the data model of GA4, allowing for more data collection and increased accuracy of the data. As a result, GA4 now collects data solely from events and no longer relies on page views. Previously, page views were the primary measurement in UA, but now they are just one part of all interactions a user has with your website.
Visitor information is now linked to a series of events based on their interactions during the visit. The type of event and subsequent interactions by the visitor contribute to an understanding of engagement on the website or app. This shift means that analyzing statistics will be different than before, and the data will be interpreted in a new way.
With this new event-based data model, Google ensures that many other events are now easier to measure. GA4 now provides out-of-the-box capabilities to measure the following events:
- Scrolling (90% of the page)
- Outbound links
- Site Search
- Video engagement (YouTube)
- File downloads
Up until now, we always manually created these events within Google Tag Manager or within the source code of the website. This is no longer necessary.
However, this new approach means that old and historical information from the existing UA implementation can no longer be carried over. The statistics will be rebuilt in GA4.