Google Analytics 4: a setup and reporting guide for businesses

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's free web analytics tool: it shows where visitors come from, what they do on your site and how many of them send an enquiry or buy. You can complete the basic setup in an afternoon: create an account, a property and a data stream, add the Google tag to your site, mark key events and extend data retention from 2 to 14 months.

In brief:

• Standard Google Analytics is free. The paid Analytics 360 only makes sense for companies with very large data volumes.
• The structure is account → property → data stream (website or app).
• Without key events you only see visits, not enquiries and sales.
• Switch data retention to 14 months right after setup, otherwise explorations only show the last 2 months.
• In the EU, analytics cookies need the visitor's prior consent.

What Google Analytics 4 and web analytics are

Web analytics means measuring and evaluating how people use your website: how many arrive, from which sources, which pages they read and whether they do what the site is there for. Google Analytics 4 is the current version of Google Analytics. Its predecessor, Universal Analytics, stopped processing data on July 1, 2023, and access to it ended in July 2024.

GA4 is built on events: every page view, click or form submission is an event. Before you start, write down two or three KPIs you will judge the website by, such as enquiries per month or online store revenue.

How much Google Analytics costs: free GA4 vs Analytics 360

Analytics 360 is the paid version; Google doesn't publish its price, and the licence is agreed with Google or a Google sales partner. The main differences according to Google Analytics Help (as of October 2026):

The standard version is enough for small and medium-sized businesses.

How to set up Google Analytics step by step

Google Analytics has three levels: the account (usually one company), the property (one website or app; an account can hold up to 2,000 properties) and the data stream, which feeds data from a specific website or app.

1. 1Create an account. Go to analytics.google.com and click Start measuring. If you already have an account, open Admin and choose Create → Account. Enter an account name and choose which data you share with Google.
2. 2Create a property. Enter a name (for example, “Company Ltd – website”), the reporting time zone and the currency. A time zone change only applies to future data, so set it correctly from the start.
3. 3Add business details and objectives. Select your industry, business size and what you want to use Analytics for (for example, generating leads). Google builds the default reports around your objectives.
4. 4Add a data stream. In Admin, open Data streams → Add stream → Web, then enter your website address and a stream name. Leave Enhanced measurement on: without any coding, it collects page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, form interactions, video engagement and file downloads.
5. 5Copy the measurement ID. In the stream details you'll find the Measurement ID starting with G-. You'll need it for the installation.

Installation: the Google tag on your site or via Google Tag Manager

For Analytics to receive data, the Google tag must be on every page of your site. You have three options:

• Built-in CMS integration: WordPress (the Site Kit or MonsterInsights plugins), WooCommerce, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and other platforms have a field for the measurement ID. Just paste it in.
• Manual installation: in the stream details, choose View tag instructions → Install manually and paste the copied code immediately after the opening head tag on every page. If you don't have access to the site's code, ask your developer.
• Google Tag Manager: worth it when you run several tools on your site (Google Ads, Meta and others) or want to change tracking without touching the code. See our Google Tag Manager guide.

Choose only one method, otherwise Analytics records every page view twice. After installation, open the Realtime report: the first visits should appear within 30 minutes.

Events and key events in Google Analytics

A key event is an event that measures an action important to your business: an enquiry, a purchase, a sign-up or a click on your phone number. Until March 2024, Google Analytics called them conversions. Google renamed them to distinguish them from conversions in Google Ads, which ads are optimised for.

To mark an event as a key event, go to Admin → Events and click the star icon. If the event hasn't been collected yet, create it with the Create button and switch on the key event toggle. A standard property can have 30 key events, and Google marks purchase as a key event automatically. A newly marked key event shows up in standard reports within 24 hours.

What to mark as a key event by type of website:

The form_submit event from enhanced measurement records any form submission, including newsletter sign-ups, so it is unreliable for enquiries. A hypothetical example (a fictional joinery): the form redirects to a /thank-you page, and viewing it is measured as a generate_lead event marked as a key event.

Which Google Analytics reports to watch

You'll find reports in the left-hand menu under Reports. Depending on your chosen objectives, you may see the Business objectives collection; an Editor can add the classic Life cycle collection with the reports below from the report Library.

Explore offers, among others, Free-form, Funnel exploration and Path exploration. The funnel shows at which step between landing on the site and sending an enquiry people drop off. A regular management report combining GA4 with other sources can be built in Looker Studio (now Data Studio).

Linking Google Analytics with Google Ads and Search Console

Google Ads

Set up the link in Admin → Product links → Google Ads links → Link. You need the Editor role on the Analytics property and Admin access to the Google Ads account. What you get:

• Google Ads campaign data in Analytics reports (within 48 hours of linking),
• import of GA4 key events into Google Ads as conversions for automated bidding,
• audiences for remarketing (requires Google signals or user-provided data collection),
• auto-tagging of ad clicks.

How to set up the campaign itself is covered in our Google Ads guide.

Google Search Console

Analytics adds to Search Console data what people from organic search do on your site. Create the link in Admin → Product links → Search Console links. You need the Editor role in Analytics and verified ownership of the site in Search Console. A web data stream can be linked to only one Search Console property.

Once linked, the Google Organic Search Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic reports become available; you need to publish their collection in the report Library. The data has a 48-hour delay and goes back at most 16 months. For what to check in the tool itself, see our Google Search Console guide.

Data retention in Google Analytics: change 2 months to 14

By default, a new property keeps detailed event data for only 2 months. Standard reports aren't affected, but explorations and funnel reports won't show anything older. The standard version allows a maximum of 14 months.

How to change it: in Admin, open Data retention in the property's data settings, set Event data retention to 14 months and save. You need the Editor role. The change applies after 24 hours, including to data that hasn't been deleted yet. Deleted data can't be recovered, so change the setting right after creating the property.

GDPR, cookie banners and Google Analytics

Google Analytics uses cookies that aren't strictly necessary for the website to work. Under EU rules on cookies, implemented in national laws, you may only use them with the visitor's prior consent. In Czechia this has applied since January 1, 2022, and in Slovakia since February 1, 2022. Without consent, Analytics must not run for that visitor.

In terms of data protection (GDPR), Google states that GA4 doesn't log or store IP addresses of users in the EU. It uses them only to derive approximate location and then discards them; data from devices in the EU is collected through servers in the EU.

In practice: your cookie banner must block Analytics until consent is given and pass the visitor's choice to Google via Consent Mode. Never send personal data such as email addresses or phone numbers in events or URLs; Google prohibits it. People who decline consent are missing from the data, so focus on trends.

The most common Google Analytics setup mistakes

• Data retention left at 2 months and no key events set up.
• Visits from staff in the data. Define internal traffic by IP address in the tag settings (Configure tag settings → Define internal traffic) and exclude it with a data filter. Keep the filter in the Testing state first, because an active filter changes data permanently.
• A payment gateway showing up as the source of purchases. Add its domain to Unwanted referrals in the tag settings.
• Analytics firing before consent is given, or a cookie banner that doesn't pass consent to Google.

When to hand Google Analytics over to a specialist

You can handle a simple website with a plugin installation yourself using this guide. Consider a specialist for an online store with ecommerce tracking, tracking across several domains or tools via Tag Manager, numbers in GA4, Google Ads and your store that don't match, or when you base your advertising budget on the data.

At Weboptim, we set up and audit tracking as part of our PPC campaign management and SEO services, because neither can be evaluated without reliable data. Not sure your Google Analytics is measuring correctly? Describe your situation to us.