In plain English
It's the visitor log and the shop-floor camera rolled into one, minus the faces: you see how many people came in, which door they used and which aisles they walked down.
Used in a sentence
“GA4 is set up with your calls, forms and bookings as key events, so you see which sources bring real leads.”
“We had Google Analytics installed for years, but nobody ever looked at it or knew what to look for.”
In detail
GA4 replaced the older Universal Analytics, which stopped collecting data in 2023. Instead of counting page views and sessions alone, it records events: page views, scrolls, clicks, form submissions and anything else you set up. The actions that matter most are marked as key events, Google's newer name for conversions.
It uses cookies to recognise returning visitors, so depending on where your visitors are, you may need a consent banner and a clear privacy policy. Set up well, it answers practical questions: which sources bring leads, which pages convert, and what changed after a campaign.
Why it matters for your business
Set up with the right events, GA4 shows where your leads really come from.
- See which sources bring leads
- Find the pages that convert
- Measure the effect of changes
Easy to mix up
Google Analytics isn't Search Console. Analytics measures what happens on your site; Search Console measures how you appear in Google before anyone clicks.
Related terms
Conversion, Bounce rate and UTM tag. Or browse the whole glossary.
