I have just started using the new Google Analytics 4 and find so many features from the previous versions of Google Analytics are missing. One of the main features that I can see in GA4 that looks promising is the automatically included event tracking.
The issue I am having though is when I then try to drill down into the 'click' data to view the link URLs that have been clicked there is only the 'events in the last 30 minutes' and no way of viewing the data from the last week for example.
Am I just completely missing something? Does the data have to be accessed in a different way (data studio perhaps)? or is it only possible to view the previous 30 minutes of data before its gone forever?
You have to use the new reports (not only the real time):
Check here for some details about new reporting and navigation in Google Analytics 4: https://www.kristaseiden.com/new-reporting-navigation-in-appweb/
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I have successfully created a GTM trigger and tag using the click_text parameter. When I preview and when I published the change both were successful in showing up on my Google Analytics 4 debug and real time tabs. I cannot seem to find a recorded total for this new tag trigger in either GTM or GA4 anywhere. Does this exist in either of these, or do I need to create an event in GA4 unrelated to what I set up in GTM. I have read most of Google's provided documentation on this specific step and it stops flat at this step of things.
Thank you in advance.
If you see your event in real time data report in GA, you're good. The data is in that property. It, however, is not yet available for aggregation, so you won't be able to count them or use them in other reports.
You should wait up to two days for the data to be in the non-real time reports. Vast majority of the data will be available for aggregation in one day, however. Some starts showing up in hours. GA 360 (paid version of GA) shortens the two days to four hours until all data is there.
I'd also suggest using Adswerve plugin for GA debugging: it will print all DataLayer changes as well as everything that is being sent to GA in the console. It's much more comfortable than using real time hits report and it will show you all dimensions that are being sent to GA.
I have setup a new Google Analytics 4 property and have enabled enhanced tracking, which records all downloads automatically. When using Google Data Studio, I can see 'file_download' events (so it's definitely working) and use this data to build my report.
I need to create a report that shows which files were downloaded each month for a specific page only. It's really easy to get the total number of downloads which occurred on that page, however, I can't for the life of me find any way to report what the destination URL or file name was.
According to the Analytics support pages, the event has a number of useful parameters (file_extension, file_name, link_classes, link_domain, link_id, link_text, link_url), however, I can't see any related options for these in the Data Studio reports.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. At this point, I'm almost tempted to disable the automatic tracking and do it all manually via Tag Manager again.
It is possible create reports with the useful parameters. However, you need to register the parameters in Google Analytics first.
To register the customer dimensions, navigate to "All events", click "Manage Custom Definitions", and add custom dimensions for each parameter. This article goes through the details of registering custom dimensions: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10075209?hl=en. In this example, I've registered three dimensions (one for each parameter):
Once the dimensions are registered, Google Analytics will record the dimensions going forward. You should be able to create reports on these dimensions in Data Studio the next day. Here's the example reports:
All the while, I've been using the old classic ga.js (e.g. _gaq.push()) to generate monthly traffic report for my clients. Now, I decided to migrate over to the latest gtag.js in order to replace my custom variables with the new custom dimensions (or probably custom metrics as well). But one problem here:
How do I handle the Month Transition for the accuracy of report data?
When I think of parallel run of old and new tracking codes (at least 1 week before the coming month), I found this on Google Analytics Help:
You can, for example, install multiple instances of the Universal
Analytics tag (analytics.js) on your web pages but only one instance
of the Classic Analytics code (ga.js). Multiple instances of ga.js
might result in inaccurate data collection, processing, or reporting.
You can, however, install one or more instances of analytics.js on web
pages that also have a single instance of ga.js.
Therefore, I would like confirm this with some experts here: Is it SAFE to go ahead with one instance of ga.js and one instance of gtag.js on the same page? Note that if I don't implement old and new GA codes at the same time, let's say 1 week before the coming month, my custom variables will lose 1 week data; meanwhile, if I use the new report, my custom dimensions will lose 3 weeks data. Also, I just can't simply implement the new code on May 1, 2019 00:00 AM -- What if my new implementation doesn't work? I need several days to monitor it as well.
So this is important to me. I wonder if anyone of you here has experienced this and can assure me that this is safe to go ahead. Thank you so much!
IMPORTANT UPDATE, May 3, 2019: After using the below method for parallel-run for 1 week, the old tracking code doesn't seem to continue collecting traffic data even though I never change its configurations whatsoever. Apply it at your own risk.
Ok guys, after my full day experiment, it's confirmed that the classical ga.js (_gaq.push()) and gtag.js can be concurrently run on the same page and same site for the sake of resolving the migration issue as mentioned in my question above. The trick here is: Create a new property with new tracking ID for your new tracking code (gtag.js) with similar view settings and custom reports. Below are the steps:
For the new gtag.js:
Create a new GA property for the same website with new tracking code/ID.
Verify and complete your View Settings for the new property if necessary.
Define your Custom Dimensions accordingly.
Create your custom reports if necessary.
Get your new tracking code under your new Property -> Tracking Info -> Tracking Code.
Paste your new tracking code just right before your old tracking code (preferably in a different <script> tag).
Add your custom dimension code accordingly.
For the old ga.js:
Do nothing and keep it as it is.
After the cut-off date is over, just remove or comment out the old <script> tag of your old GA tracking code.
Open both your old and new GA reports with their respective property view and monitor the traffic result. If still no data on the new report, comment out the <script> tag of your new tracking code and troubleshoot again (or else it may affect even your old tracking code as well), make sure your custom dimension code has no errors, otherwise it should work with different tracking code managing different property ID (no conflict). If you need the same solution, hope this helps!
Environment: injected Google Analytics tracking in my SharePoint Online site - all good.
Now I have been clicking pages for more than an hour and wanted to check results. I see that tracking is working (see screenshot) - at that moment there was one active user (me) and have >30 page views in a 30min time window.
Problem: reports (user and page view count) seem to be empty, but I assume that there should be at least one user and multiple page view information. Is that correct or I am misusing Google Analytics?
Update:
Pressed "Refresh Report" and Google fetched new data. Unfortunately, nothing changed and data still is empty.
This report was generated on 12/04/2019 at 16:17:25
The time of when the report was generated is not reflective of how "fresh" the data is. For the free version of GA, there is no SLA and it can take upwards of 2 days, but generally under 24 hours. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7084038?hl=en
Seeing the user in realtime doesn't mean the data for the reports are updated. You need to be patient and wait.
If you're seeing data in the real time reports then the standard reports should populate. This can take time though in my experience the latency is usually less than 1 hour. Are you looking at the standard reports in an entirely unfiltered view - might be worth checking to see if any filters are impacting your data though they should effect the real time reports as well.
I have this GA-tracked application that is not counting all my events and goal conversions. Events are correctly displayed in the Real-Time chart, but the reports apparently discard some of them. My goal completion counts are being incorrectly reported, too - for example, in a given day my user registration goal displayed less than 20 goal completions but I had almost 100 new users.
I am using Universal Analytics and my pageview count is still low compared to the GA threshold.
Any thoughts?
I also found few bugs and especially some events not firing properly. Hence, I move to old code again. Even in old code,” doubleclick.js” code not working for some Event Tracking. After I replace the code with old” ga.js” file all the event functions start to work without any modifications to the source code. Please stick with the old code for next few months.
Just check Avinash website (http://www.kaushik.net) , as we all know he is the digital marketing evangelist for Google. He is still using the old ga.js code. This tells that this new Universal Analytics code have some hidden bugs and they are testing the code with user experience. Hence this is not the time to fully depend on Universal Analytics. Sooner they will come up with updates and then it will be ok to move to Universal Analytics.