Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4, or GA4 for short, is the successor to Universal Analytics, which stopped processing new data in 2023. Whereas the old version revolved around sessions and pageviews, GA4 is built on events: every click, scroll, download or completed form is an event you can measure. That gives you a more flexible picture of what visitors actually do on your website, but it also means you have to think more carefully about what you want to measure.

For a small business, GA4 is often the most important source for understanding whether your website is delivering results. It tells you not only how many people visit, but also where they come from and which steps they take before they get in touch or buy something.

What exactly do you measure with GA4?

By default, GA4 collects a set of basic events, such as pageviews, scrolls and outbound clicks. On top of that, you set up the actions that matter for your business yourself. The main reports revolve around:

• Acquisition: which channels visitors arrive through, such as organic traffic, paid ads, social media or referrals.
• Engagement: how long people are active and which pages they view. Here, the engagement rate largely replaces the classic bounce rate.
• Key events: the actions you mark as goals, such as a quote request or a purchase. These are your conversions.

GA4 and Search Console: two sides of the same story

GA4 shows what happens after someone lands on your site. What happens before that, in the search results themselves, you see in Google Search Console: impressions, clicks and the searches you appear for. If you link the two, you see the full journey from search to enquiry. Without that combination, you might know that a page attracts lots of visitors, but not for which search terms.

Recognising traffic from AI assistants

More and more people ask their questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. When an answer like that contains a link to your website and someone clicks through, that visit usually shows up in GA4 as referral traffic, with a source such as chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai. Not every visit is passed on as neatly, so some may also come in as direct traffic.

It's worth creating a separate channel group for those AI sources. That way you can see whether your AI visibility also translates into real visits. Bear in mind, though, that many AI answers don't lead to a click: someone can read your name in an answer without ever visiting your site. So GA4 only measures part of the effect.

How to set up GA4 in a meaningful way

Take a heat pump installer in Norfolk. His site attracts visitors every month, but he doesn't know which pages lead to enquiries. A few targeted settings change that:

1. Mark submitting the quote form and clicking the phone number as key events.
2. Link GA4 to Search Console to see search terms alongside behaviour.
3. Create a channel group for AI referrals.
4. Set up a proper cookie banner with consent mode, so you stay within privacy rules such as GDPR.
5. Check every month which landing pages generate the most enquiries.

A common mistake is installing GA4 and leaving it at that: without events set up, you mainly measure numbers, not results. If you'd rather see your figures clearly alongside your visibility in Google and AI search engines, a central cockpit with your key performance figures can make day-to-day monitoring a lot easier.