GA4 is an analytics tool launched in October 2020 as the successor to Universal Analytics.
8 key differences
1. Event-based tracking
GA4 classifies all interactions as events, letting you track custom actions - link clicks, downloads, form submissions and purchases.
2. Attribution modelling
GA4 keeps only last-click and data-driven attribution.
3. Session calculation
GA4 measures session duration as the time between the first and last event.
4. Engagement rate
GA4 replaced bounce rate with engagement rate.
5. BigQuery integration
GA4 offers native BigQuery integration with an improved schema structure.
6. Machine-learning features
GA4 offers three predictive metrics: purchase probability, churn probability and predicted revenue.
7. Data privacy
GA4 uses first-party cookies and AI instead of storing IP addresses.
8. Data retention
GA4 retains data for 2 or 14 months. Early BigQuery migration preserves historical data.
Is GA4 better?
GA4's advantages include privacy compliance, AI-driven insights, cross-platform tracking and free BigQuery export.
Jānis Kursītis
CEO, JKonsult
"Universal Analytics was a habit. GA4 is the future - but it is also a lot more work at the start. Yes, you have to learn it from scratch."