How do I send UTM params or any campaign data to google analytics 4 using measurement protocol? Their GA4 documentation does not mention anything about this.
At the time of writing the Measurement Protocol (Google Analytics 4) is still in beta.
There are limitations in what it supports and what it will support in the future.
UTM parameters are text strings that you can append to URLs that allow you track those URLs when they get clicked on. UTM parameters make Universal analytics Google Analytics pick up on the data in the code and log it with the pageview. The resulting data is visible in Universal analytics Google Analytics, meaning you can track traffic in terms of where it came from and how it got to you.
At the time of writing there is no mention of UTM support in Google analytics GA4
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What is the difference between Google Analytics Reporting API, Google Analytics API, and Google Analytics Data API? What I need is to report on the data for a 3rd party site/account, but it sounds like all 3 of these APIs are for reporting on data. Could you advise? I've been looking through their docs and they all still sound the same.
Analytics hub is for big query.
Google analytics reporting api - Gives access to extract data from Universal analytics accounts
Google analytics api - is a little harder to nail down. It almost sounds like it gives access to extract data and and configure google analytics data. Which would imply that its management api for for universal analytics Google analytics admin api and possibly the reporting api as well.
Google analytics data api - used to extract data from Google analytics ga4 accounts
What I need is to report on the data for a 3rd party site/account
Im not sure what you mean by this. None of those are for sending data to google analytics. To send data to google analytics. you would use one of the collection options.
I have followed the guidelines described on Measurement Protocol (Google Analytics 4)
to send purchase events from server.
I have verified that logging of this event works on GA4. I even see source and medium values that come from Google Click ID (GCLID) from Google Ads for purchase conversion.
I have imported this conversion to Google Ads (waited for about a week).
I have many conversions logged to Google Analytics 4, but on Google Ads conversions page I get No recent conversions. Let me also add that other conversions from the client are shown, only this from the server.
How can I make it so that events send via Measurement Protocol (Google Analytics 4) API that are shown on GA4 and are show source/medium/campaign values from Google Ads to be shown on Google Ads as conversions?
Perhaps I should change attribution model on Google Ads?
Google Analytics documentation seems light on this topic, but historically businesses have been able to track social sharing interactions on their websites - 'Social Plugins' - via. both ga.js and analytics.js. See here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1316556?hl=en
For use case example, as a business, an analyst would like to understand how often website content is shared onto social networks by website visitors.
The problem I'm having is, I can't easily find what the gtag.js equivalent is of this functionality. The closest I can find is to send a gtag event called 'share' - but not sure if this will populate the Social Report under Acquisition in Google Analytics.
Could anyone please advise how to track Social Interactions via. gtag.js for Google Analytics?
//ga.js
_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', network, socialAction, opt_target, opt_pagePath]);
> https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSocial
//analytics.js
ga('send', 'social', [socialNetwork], [socialAction], [socialTarget], [fieldsObject]);
> https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/social-interactions
Note: I found this website which website - https://www.balkanweb.com/peshq-te-barabarte-pavaresisht-nga-madhesia/ - which does seem to use gtag event 'share' function but I am just not sure if it populates the Social reports in GA as I can't see any documentation to support that.
gtag('event','share',{method:'twitter',event_action:'tweet',content_id:targetUrl})
I made a test and I confirm that the share event mentioned does not end up in the social report but in the event report.
Since the gtag.js documentation does not mention social hits (the parameter can only be: CONFIG, SET or EVENT) I believe there is currently no way to send that type of interactions from the website with gtag.
Sadly there is no way to translate this social hit type from UA (Universal Analytics) to GA4 (Google Analytics 4) directly.
The Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 migration guide (by Google) mentions this in the Hit types section of the document comparing the two:
Universal Analytics hit types include page hits, event hits, ecommerce hits, and social interaction hits.
In contrast, Google Analytics 4 data is event-based, with the principle that any interaction can be captured as an event. As such, Universal Analytics property hit types translate to events in a Google Analytics 4 property.
Further down the document it also says:
[...] it’s better to rethink your data collection in terms of the Google Analytics 4 model rather than port your existing event structure to Google Analytics 4.
There is something quite basic that confuses me. I use Google ads conversion tracking with Google Tag Manager, and I don't understand how my google analytics know about these ads in the first place. I mean, the conversion tags I create in Google Tag Manager don't include the Google Analytics tracking code at all.
What am I missing?
Thanks
It knows based on the url structure of the incoming links.
This link gives a good overview.
UTM Codes: How to Track Campaign URLs in Google Analytics
This tool allows you to see how the different urls are built and decomposed in GA.
campaign-url-builder
Essentially the structure is integrated and google analytics logically decomposes and presents the data in a meaningful format based on URL.
Is it possible to get a visitor flow associated with a given ga:transactionId through the Google Analytics API?
There's limited availability in ga:landingPagePath, ga:secondPagePath, ga:exitPagePath and ga:pageDepth
but a more complete path would be desirable
Thanks!
You can access the flow with the ga:previousPagePath and ga:pagePath dimensions and the ga:visits metric. You can play around with the output in the Query Explorer. For what its worth, here are a few of other related questions:
Get Google Analytics "Visitors Flow" data from API
Accessing Google Analytics Reports using the API
How to extract engagement flow data using google analytics reporting api