Google Analytics 4: what to configure and what is noise
GA4 explained by what changed from Universal Analytics: events, conversions, the reports people actually use, and the setup mistakes that ruin your data.
Digital Marketing, Medical Marketing & AI Consultant · btodigital
Google Analytics 4 measures events, not pageviews. That is the change that breaks the brain of anyone coming from Universal Analytics, and nearly every other difference follows from it.
In Universal everything revolved around the session. In GA4 everything is an event: viewing a page is an event, clicking is an event, buying is an event. Once you internalise that, the rest falls into place.
What changed from Universal Analytics?
| Universal Analytics | GA4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Basic unit | Session | Event |
| Bounce rate | Single-page visit | Replaced by “engagement” |
| Setting goals | In the interface, limited | Mark any event as a conversion |
| Web and app | Separate properties | A single property |
| Reports | Many and fixed | Few fixed, the rest you build |
| Historical data | Lost on migration | Starts when you installed GA4 |
That last point hurts and has no fix: if you installed GA4 late, there is no way to recover what came before. The sooner it is in place the better, even if you do not yet know how to use it.
What must be configured, without exception?
This is the minimum. Without it, GA4 collects data and answers no useful question.
- The conversions that matter to your business. Not “viewed the contact page”, but “submitted the form” and “clicked WhatsApp”. They are two different events and both count.
- Exclude your own traffic. Your IP and your team’s. It sounds obvious and it is what most contaminates an SMB’s data.
- Exclude referral domains, particularly payment gateways. If you do not, your sales will be attributed to the gateway instead of the channel that produced them. It is the error I have had to correct most often.
- Link Search Console and Google Ads. Without that you are missing half the story.
- Extend data retention to 14 months. It defaults to 2 and almost nobody changes it.
With those five points you have a property that is worth something.
Which reports do people actually use?
Of everything it ships with, three get used in practice:
| Report | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Traffic acquisition | Where people come from and which channel brings the ones who convert |
| Pages and screens | Which content works and which does not |
| Funnel exploration | Exactly where people drop off before buying |
The third is the one almost nobody builds and the one that changes the most decisions. It is the difference between knowing you lose people and knowing at which step.
What gets configured wrong most often?
- Counting anything as a conversion. If you have twelve conversions marked, you have none. Keep two or three that represent real business.
- Not excluding the payment gateway. It breaks all attribution for an online shop.
- Measuring WhatsApp clicks and believing they are sales. That is intent, not a customer. Worth measuring, separately.
- Confusing users with people. The same human on phone and laptop is two users.
- Watching the real-time report as if it said something. It is for verifying that tracking works, and nothing else.
What about consent in Colombia?
Law 1581 requires prior, express and informed authorisation to process personal data. In practice, for a website that means an accessible data policy, a cookie notice that allows refusing non-essential cookies, and collecting no more than necessary.
GA4 has a consent mode that adjusts what it collects based on what the user accepts. It is worth configuring.
Is it worth exporting the data elsewhere?
If your business depends on measurement, yes. GA4 samples reports at high volume, and its interface is not comfortable for cross-referencing with your CRM.
The usual route is exporting to BigQuery, which GA4 supports natively and free up to a certain volume, and building the dashboard separately. One caveat: do not do it until the basic configuration is right. Exporting badly measured data only produces wrong dashboards faster.
Frequently asked questions
How does Google Analytics 4 work? It measures events instead of sessions. Every action, from viewing a page to clicking or buying, is an event with parameters. Any event can be marked as a conversion, and web and app live in one property.
Why does GA4 show different numbers from Google Ads or Meta? Because they count different things and attribute differently. Ads counts the conversion on the day of the click; GA4 counts it when it happens and distributes it across channels. They will never match exactly, and chasing that is wasted time.
What happened to bounce rate? GA4 reintroduced it, but with a different definition: it is the inverse of the percentage of engaged sessions. It is not comparable with the Universal Analytics figure.
How many conversions should I mark? Two or three that represent real business. Marking twelve makes none of them mean anything.
Can I recover my Universal Analytics data? No. Google shut the service down and historical data does not migrate. You only have what GA4 has collected since installation.
Is GA4 free? Yes for the vast majority of sites. There are volume limits and a paid enterprise version, but a Colombian SMB does not come close to those ceilings.
Do I need Google Tag Manager as well? Not mandatory, but it makes life much easier when you want to measure specific events without touching code every time.
Why do my sales appear to come from the payment gateway? Because that domain is missing from the referral exclusion list. It is the most common configuration error in Colombian shops and it makes your advertising look like it is not working.
