GA4

What it does

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google’s current analytics property for websites and mobile apps that records user interactions as events. Marketers, analysts and product teams use GA4 to track user journeys, validate instrumentation, and export raw event data for deeper analysis. Event-based measurement and data streams GA4 captures interactions (page_view, click, purchase and custom events) rather than relying on a session-centric model. You create separate data streams for Web and for iOS/Android apps to collect unified event-level data that supports cross-platform journey analysis and custom conversion tracking. Enhanced measurement and automatic events GA4 includes an Enhanced Measurement option that can auto-collect common web events such as scrolls, outbound link clicks, site search, file downloads and video engagement without extra code. Teams commonly enable enhanced measurement to get a baseline of useful events quickly and then add custom events for business-specific interactions. Explorations, Realtime and DebugView for analysis and validation The Explorations workspace provides ad-hoc analysis tools (funnels, pathing, cohorts) for deeper segmentation and root-cause investigation. Realtime reports show current activity, and DebugView helps validate event instrumentation during deployment and troubleshooting. BigQuery export and integrations GA4 can export raw, event-level data to BigQuery for custom SQL analysis, joining with other datasets, machine learning workflows or external dashboards. GA4 also integrates with Google marketing products such as Google Ads for audience and conversion workflows, enabling downstream activation of analytics data. Data retention and export considerations GA4 has documented retention settings for user- and event-level data used by some analysis features, and BigQuery export begins exporting from the time the link is created (historic GA4 events are not backfilled). Plan data exports and retention settings with those limits in mind.