GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics. Which represents it version 4. Previous version was UA (Universal Analytics).

At its core, Google Analytics 4 is focused on providing more data throughout the entire lifecycle of the customer journey. In other words, more data is available after a customer has been acquired, including their level of engagement, monetization, and retention. Formerly known as “App + Web”, Google Analytics 4 is a new property that came out of beta in October 2020. One of the main reasons for this upgrade that Google cites in their announcement is due to shifts in consumer behavior and significant changes to online privacy policies. These shifts, alongside research by Forrest Consulting, led Google to conclude that current analytics solutions didn’t provide a complete view of the customer journey, which is a largely cross-platform experience. As the Forrester survey highlights:

"More than half of those surveyed say simply managing the volume of data is a considerable challenge. Their data is siloed with different teams, and the analytics tools they’ve used in the past haven’t been able to keep up."

How Does Google Analytics 4 Work?

To solve this, the new Google Analytics offers a machine learning-based approach to both surfacing cross-platform insights and a privacy-centric approach:

"It has machine learning at its core to surface helpful insights automatically and gives you a complete understanding of your customers across devices and platforms. It’s privacy-centric by design, so you can rely on Analytics even as industry changes like restrictions on cookies and identifiers create gaps in your data." 

Although several AI-based insights have been available since 2016, a few examples of its new capabilities include:

1. Automatic alerts of trends in the data, such as increased demand for a specific product.

2. Anticipating customer actions by calculating churn probability.

3. Other predictive metrics, such as revenue estimates from audience groups.