What Is Google Analytics? A Smart Guide to GA4 in 2025

There is a saying: if you don’t track, you won’t grow. However, the thing about Google Analytics is that even if you track it, you might not know how to interpret the data because there are just too many things to look at. 

In this blog, we’ll walk you through every facet of Google Analytics—whether you’re a business owner trying to measure performance or a beginner looking to learn the ropes. And if you don’t have a site to work with yet, we’ve got you covered with Google’s free Merchandise Store demo account (& Flood it game’s GA Property), a no-risk learning setup so you can practice and learn in real time. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

• What is Google Analytics?
• How does Google Analytics work?
• What Can Google Analytics Do?
• Setting Up Google Analytics for the First Time
• How to Use Google Analytics
  • Key Terms to Know Before You Start Using Google Analytics
• Exploring Reports in Google Analytics
• Benefits and Limitations of Google Analytics
• Switching from Universal Analytics (Legacy) to GA4? Here’s What’s Changed
• Turning Insight Into Action: Your Analytics Journey Starts Here

What is Google Analytics?

With more people spending time and money online each year, businesses are leaning heavily into digital marketing to stay competitive. 

Google Analytics is a free tool by Google that helps website owners and marketers understand how visitors interact with their site. This tool collects data on metrics like page views, sessions, and user demographics, enabling businesses to track their performance, learn patterns, optimize their content, and improve their marketing decisions. 

For instance, let’s say you run a blog and want to know how many people are reading your posts. With the help of Google Analytics, you can see how many visitors your blog gets, which articles are the most popular, where your readers are coming from, what device they’re using, how long they’re sticking around, and even how many are clicking to subscribe to your newsletter. 

How does Google Analytics work? 

Think of Google Analytics as a quiet observer behind the scenes of your website. It runs through a small piece of JavaScript code—a lightweight script that lives on your site, no matter what platform you’re using. Blog, Shopify, portfolio, product page—it doesn’t matter. Once the code is there, it starts listening.

Each time someone visits your site, the code collects a trail of useful signals:

• How did that person arrive (Was it a Google search, A link on Instagram, an email?)
• What pages did they view?
• How long did they stick around
• What they clicked on
• And if they took any action, like subscribing, downloading, or making a purchase

All of this activity is sent back to your Google Analytics dashboard, where it’s transformed into clean, visual reports you can understand.

The best part? You don’t need to be a developer to use it. Tools like WordPress, Shopify, and Squarespace make it easy to add this tracking code with just a few clicks. Once it’s live, Google Analytics quietly gets to work, giving you real insight into your audience without asking for much in return.

It’s simple tech, but when used right, it can answer big questions.

What Can Google Analytics Do?

Sure, Google Analytics tells you how many people visited your site or which pages they clicked—but that’s just scratching the surface.

What makes GA4 powerful is how it helps you understand why things are happening. It shows you the full journey—from first touch to final conversion—and lets you break that journey down by audience type, device, traffic source, or campaign. It’s not just data for the sake of data. It’s insight you can act on.

It helps you connect the dots between visibility, engagement, and outcomes. For example:

• You can track the complete journey a visitor takes—from how they first discover your site to what paths they follow before making a purchase, reading a blog post, or exiting.
  
• If you’re running a campaign, you can compare how different channels perform. Did more conversions come from organic search or paid ads? Are Instagram visitors sticking around longer than those from email?
  
• GA4’s event-based model means every scroll, button click, or video play can be tracked. That means you can set up very specific goals—like tracking newsletter signups or PDF downloads—not just purchases.
  
• It also gives you insights about user intent and drop-offs. For example, you might see a high number of people adding items to their cart but not checking out, hinting at a UX issue or pricing hesitation.
  
• Using audience segmentation, you can filter your data by country, device, traffic source, or even user behavior, allowing you to make targeted decisions based on what’s working for each group.
  
• GA4 can even alert you to unexpected changes, like a sudden drop in traffic or unusual surge in a certain campaign, so you’re not just looking at reports, you’re reacting in real time.

Simply put, GA4 isn’t just about tracking—it’s about understanding. What’s working? What’s not? And what to do next.

Google Analytics Integration

You can also connect Google Analytics to other tools—like Google Ads, Search Console, Data Studio, or even Salesforce Marketing Cloud—to pull in more data and build a complete picture of how your marketing channels are working together. It becomes a central hub for everything performance-related, letting you build automated dashboards, share reports with teams, and shape your content and marketing strategies with real insight.

Setting Up Google Analytics for the First Time

Let’s be honest—when you hear “analytics setup,” your brain probably says this sounds technical. But here’s the truth: setting up Google Analytics is more approachable than it sounds. You’re adding a smart sensor to your website that quietly watches how people interact with your content, so you can make smarter decisions.

At the heart of it is something called a Measurement ID. Think of it like a digital handshake between your website and Google Analytics. It connects through the Google Tag, a small piece of JavaScript that sits on your site and sends real-time data back to GA4.

How to Locate Your Google Analytics Measurement ID (and Add It Manually)

Step 1: Log in to your Google Analytics account.
Step 2: Click on the Admin gear icon in the bottom-left corner.
Step 3: Under the Property column, select Data Streams.
Step 4: Click on your website’s stream (usually marked as “Web”).
Step 5: At the top-right, you’ll see your Measurement ID — it starts with G-XXXXXXX.

If you’re using Google Tag Manager, you can paste this ID into a new GA4 Configuration Tag, select “All Pages” as the trigger, and publish the changes. That’s it—your site is now ready to track user activity.

Now, depending on the platform you use, the way you install it can look slightly different:

If you’re running an online store like Shopify

You don’t need to touch a single line of code. Just head into your Shopify admin → Settings → Preferences, and you’ll find a box that says something like “Google Analytics.” Paste your GA4 Measurement ID there, and you’re good to go.

Shopify even supports Enhanced eCommerce tracking if you want to measure product impressions, cart activity, and checkout performance, without custom coding.add a passage on where to locate google tag id or measurement ID

For WordPress users

You’ve got two easy options:

1. Use a plugin – Tools like Site Kit by Google or Rank Math guide you step by step. Just sign in with your Google account, select your GA4 property, and the plugin does the rest.
   
2. Manual method – If you’re familiar with your theme editor, you can paste your GA4 tag right into the <head> section of your site.

Using Wix, Squarespace, or a custom builder?

Most builders have a dedicated “Add Analytics” or “Tracking ID” section in their settings. You’ll just need to copy your GA4 Measurement ID and paste it in the field provided. Still unsure? Google has platform-specific instructions for nearly every website builder.

Browse platform-specific setup steps →

How to Use Google Analytics

Learning how to use Google Analytics doesn’t require a live website with thousands of visitors. One of the best ways to explore the platform is through Google’s free demo accounts, which give you access to real business data in a fully functional GA4 environment.

These demo accounts are connected to two live properties:

• The Google Merchandise Store – an eCommerce website selling branded products
• The Flood-It Game – a mobile puzzle game with both app and web usage data

Both accounts offer hands-on access to everything from user acquisition reports to engagement, conversion, and retention insights. You can explore dashboards, create custom reports, and experiment with settings, without changing or risking anything.

This makes the demo accounts ideal for learners, marketers, business owners, or anyone looking to build confidence before applying GA4 to their site.

Viewing Your Google Analytics Data

Once your setup is complete and you’re inside the GA4 dashboard, the first screen you’ll land on is called Home. It’s designed to give you a high-level snapshot of what’s happening on your site or app right now. For this walkthrough, we’re using data from Google’s Flood-It demo property, which showcases real user activity from a live mobile game.

On the left side of your screen, you’ll see the main navigation bar. This is where you’ll eventually dive deeper into reports, explorations, real-time data, and advertising performance. But for now, your focus stays on what’s in front of you.

Front and center, you’ll find a set of visual cards like the ones shown below:

• On the left, you’ll see total active users, new users, and average engagement time. These numbers give you a feel for how many people are interacting with your app or site, and how long they’re staying.
  
• Just next to that, there’s a real-time user chart showing how many people are active in the last 30 minutes, broken down by country. In this example, you can see users from Bangladesh, India, the U.S., and Pakistan.
  
• On the far right, Google even provides automated recommendations, like user churn predictions. For instance, this card highlights users who are 1.2x more likely to stop engaging, giving you the option to build a custom audience or retarget them through campaigns.

Everything on this page is clickable. If you see something interesting—like a spike in real-time traffic or a drop in engagement—you can click through to view the full report. You can also adjust the date range using the dropdown at the bottom left of each card.

Key Terms to Know Before You Start Using Google Analytics

Before you jump into the data and dashboards inside GA4, it helps to understand a few common terms. Think of this as a simple cheat sheet—no technical background needed.

Account, Property, Data Stream

• Account is your overall access point (like your Google Analytics login).
• Property: A specific website or app you’re tracking (e.g., your blog, Shopify store, or Flood‑It game).
• Data Stream is how the data flows in—one stream for websites, another for mobile apps.

If you’re tracking both a website and an app, GA4 lets you combine them into one property so you can see the full picture.

1. Users

These are the people visiting your website or app. GA4 counts each visitor as a “user,” even if they come back multiple times. This is the number you’ll watch to understand how many individuals are interacting with your content.

2. Sessions

A session is a single visit. It starts when someone lands on your site and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. Think of it like a visit to a store—someone walks in, looks around, maybe adds something to their cart—that’s one session.

3. Pageviews

A pageview is counted every time someone loads a page on your site. If a user refreshes the page or visits it again, that counts as another pageview. This helps you know what content people are looking at.

4. Events

Events track what people do on your site—like scrolling down, clicking a button, watching a video, or submitting a form. GA4 tracks many of these automatically, without any setup.

5. Conversions

Not every event is equally important. A conversion is an action you define as valuable—like someone signing up, completing a purchase, signing up for your newsletter, or booking a call. You tell GA4 what counts, and it will track it for you.

6. Bounce Rate

The percentage of sessions where someone visited a page and left without doing anything else. GA4 doesn’t emphasize bounce rate as much as older versions, but it’s still useful to know.

7. Traffic Source

This tells you how people found your website. Did they come from Google Search? Instagram? An email newsletter? Knowing this helps you figure out where your efforts are paying off.

8. Engagement Rate

GA4 focuses less on bounce rate and more on engagement. Engagement rate shows how many users are actually interacting with your site, like staying for more than 10 seconds, clicking on links, or visiting multiple pages.

9. Landing Page

The first page a user sees when they visit your site. Tracking landing pages helps you understand which content is attracting visitors.

10. Exit Page

The last page a user sees before leaving your site. Useful for spotting where users tend to drop off.

11. Audience

An audience is a group of users who share something in common, like location, device, or behavior. You can create custom audiences to track how specific groups engage with your site.

12. Retention

Retention shows you how many users return to your site after their first visit. It’s a great way to measure how sticky your content or product is.

13. Attribution

Attribution is how GA4 decides which channel gets credit for a conversion. If someone clicks your ad and then buys something a day later, GA4 tries to give credit to the right step in that journey.

14. Medium

The type of channel that brought the user in. For example, “organic” (unpaid search), “cpc” (paid ad), or “referral” (a click from another website).

15. Source/Medium

You’ll find this in the first column on the left of your table. It tells you how the user found your app.

• Source is where they came from—like google, direct, or referral.
• Medium is how they got there, such as organic (unpaid search), cpc (paid ad), or referral.

So when you see something like google/organic, it means the user came from a Google search, not an ad.

16. Organic Traffic

Visitors who find your site through a search engine (like Google) without clicking on an ad. 

17. Referral Traffic

Visitors who land on your site by clicking a link from another website (not search engines or ads).

18. Direct Traffic

Traffic from users who typed your site’s URL directly into the browser or used a saved bookmark.

19. Channel

A broader grouping of traffic sources. Examples include Organic Search, Social, Email, Direct, Paid Search, etc. This helps you understand which marketing areas are working best.

20. Total Revenue (if eCommerce/app purchase tracking is set up)

This column shows how much money was generated from users in each traffic source.
It’s especially useful for apps or websites where in-app purchases or product sales are part of the flow.

Two Key Distinctions You Need to Know

Understanding these foundational differences will help you read your GA4 reports with confidence.

Metrics vs Dimensions in Google Analytics

One of the first things you’ll notice when exploring GA4 reports is that everything is built around two core elements: metrics and dimensions. They work together to tell the full story—but if you’re not clear on the difference, it’s easy to misread the data.

Think of it this way: dimensions give you the context, and metrics give you the measurement. Here’s a quick breakdown to make that distinction crystal clear.

User Acquisition Data vs User Behavior Data

Another common point of confusion in GA4 is understanding the difference between how users arrive on your site and what they do after they get there. That’s where acquisition and behavior data come in.

These two sides of the user journey serve very different purposes, but when you know how to read both, you get a complete picture of what’s working and what’s not. The table below breaks it down.

While GA4 focuses on what users do once they land on your site, it doesn’t show how they found you on Google Search in the first place.For that side of the story, this guide on GA4 vs Google Search Console offers a clear comparison.

Why This Matters

Once you’re familiar with these terms, GA4 becomes a lot easier to navigate. You’ll stop seeing random numbers and start spotting trends, behavior patterns, and opportunities to improve your marketing or content. 

Exploring Reports in Google Analytics

Once you’ve explored the Home dashboard, it’s time to move one level deeper into your data. Click on the “Reports” tab from the left-hand navigation, and you’ll enter the section where Google Analytics begins to unpack everything—from how people find your site to how they behave once they arrive, and whether they come back again.

If you’re using the Flood-It demo dataset, this area comes preloaded with user activity across web and app platforms. The layout is consistent with what you’d see on your own property, so it’s a perfect space to learn how the different report categories work.

The first thing you’ll land on is the Reports Snapshot. It’s a visual overview of your data: active users over time, new user growth, top traffic sources, real-time users, and even automated insights—like usage spikes or drop-offs. It doesn’t go deep but gives you enough to spot trends at a glance.

From here, the left-hand menu breaks reports into categories based on a user’s journey—from discovery to retention. Here’s how each section works:

Acquisition: Where Your Users Came From

The Acquisition report answers the first question every website owner or marketer asks: How are people finding me?

This section is divided into two parts: User Acquisition and Traffic Acquisition. While the first focuses on new users only, the second includes returning visitors too. Both give you clarity on which channels—search engines, social media, ads, email, or direct visits—are driving traffic.

For instance, if most new users are coming from organic search but staying longer when they come from Instagram, this report helps you spot those patterns.

This is your go-to space when you want to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts or campaign performance. To help you understand how this data appears in GA4, we’ve included visuals from Google’s Flood-It demo property that show user retention and traffic trends over time.

Engagement: What People Are Doing on Your Site

Once users land on your site or app, Engagement tells you what they actually do.

Here, you’ll see data about page views, screen views (for apps), events, and conversions. You can identify your most visited content, how long people are staying, what they’re clicking on, and where they drop off.

One of the strengths of GA4 is its event-based model. Instead of relying on static page metrics, it tracks real interactions, like scrolling, button clicks, and video plays. You can also mark key events as conversions, which will then be highlighted in this section.

The example below, taken from Google’s Flood-It demo account, highlights user activity over time, top countries, and automated insights that help turn behavior into opportunity.

Monetization: Tracking Value from Users

The Monetization report is where you track the actual value your users bring, whether it’s through purchases, subscriptions, or other transactions.

It gives you clear numbers on total revenue, number of purchasers, and first-time buyers. If you’re running an online store, this section helps you measure how well your products are converting and where the money’s coming from.

The visuals below are from Google’s Merchandise Store demo account, showcasing how GA4 presents revenue trends and purchasing behavior over time.

Retention: Are Users Coming Back?

The Retention report helps you understand how well your site or app keeps users coming back after their first visit.

It shows how many users return over time and breaks them into new and returning user segments. This can highlight where your experience is engaging and where people tend to drop off.

You’ll also see retention trends by cohort (users who started on the same day) and how long they continue to engage with your content.

We’ve included data from the Flood-It demo property, showing both overall retention curves and cohort-based engagement patterns.

User Attributes: Who Your Users Are

To understand your audience better, GA4 offers data on user demographics and tech usage.

The User Attributes section breaks down location (countries, cities), language, and device category (desktop, mobile, tablet). This helps you make informed decisions about content localization, design responsiveness, or campaign targeting.

For example, if you see that most users come from mobile devices in India, but conversions are low, it might be worth optimizing your mobile UX for that region.

Tech: How People Access Your Content

In this section, you’ll find insights about your users’ technology, like browsers, operating systems, app versions, and screen resolutions. While it may not seem immediately important, this can help diagnose performance issues.

Let’s say a spike in bounce rate corresponds with a particular browser version. This is where you’d identify that friction point.

Benefits and Limitations of Google Analytics

Like any powerful tool, Google Analytics (GA4) comes with both strengths and trade-offs. It’s designed for flexibility, long-term scalability, and deeper user insights—but it also asks for a bit more thought in setup and analysis.

Here’s what to keep in mind:

Benefits of Using Google Analytics

1. Tracks the Complete User Journey
Whether someone is on your website, app, or switching between both, GA4 ties all that data together in one unified view.

2. Smarter, Event-Based Tracking
Everything from scrolls to purchases is captured as an “event.” This gives you a clearer, more customizable picture of how users are interacting with your content.

3. Privacy-First by Design
GA4 was built with modern privacy expectations in mind. IP anonymization is built in, and features like consent mode help you stay compliant without losing key insights.

4. Predictive and Automated Insights
GA4 can alert you to sudden spikes, dips, or changes in user behavior—and even predict future trends, such as potential churn.

5. Custom Explorations and Funnels
You can build your detailed funnels, path explorations, and audience segments to analyze behavior exactly how you need.

Limitations to Be Aware Of

1. Takes Time to Get Comfortable
The interface and report structure differ from those of traditional analytics tools, and it may take some exploration before they feel intuitive.

2. Limited Historical Data Access
By default, GA4 stores data for up to 14 months, so long-term tracking requires exporting or using external tools like BigQuery.

3. Fewer Prebuilt Reports
Instead of dozens of preloaded dashboards, GA4 emphasizes custom views, which is great for flexibility, but means more setup upfront.

4. Advanced Setup May Need Support
While basic tracking works out of the box, websites with specific goals (like eCommerce or lead scoring) may need help from a developer or tag manager.

Switching from Universal Analytics (Legacy) to GA4? Here’s What’s Changed

If you’re familiar with Universal Analytics (UA), making the move to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can feel like learning a whole new system. Here’s a clear, insight-packed overview of the biggest changes to help ease the transition.

Data Model Shift

• UA used a session-based model, tracking visits (pageviews, hits, etc.) per session.
• GA4 uses an event-based model, treating every interaction—pageviews, clicks, video plays—as individual events. This gives you more nuanced data about user behavior across sessions and devices.

Metrics Update

• Users in GA4 are counted differently: UA tracked Total Users, whereas GA4 uses Active Users—those who engaged in a session.
• While GA4 initially removed bounce rate, it was reintroduced in mid-2022 due to user demand. In GA4, bounce rate now reflects the percentage of sessions that were not engaged, meaning the user didn’t stay at least 10 seconds, view a second page, or trigger a conversion event. It complements the Engagement Rate, which highlights sessions with meaningful interaction. Together, these metrics offer a more balanced view of user behavior.

Session Behavior & Segments

• In UA, sessions restarted at midnight or when campaign parameters changed.
• GA4 sessions continue across those boundaries and define timeouts via the session_start event, offering more stable session counting.

Tracking IDs vs. Measurement IDs

• UA used IDs starting with UA-XXXX, while GA4 uses G-XXXX IDs.
• GA4 also does away with the “Views” concept, replacing it with Data Streams that combine web and app data under one property.

Interface & Reporting Overhaul

• GA4 features redesigned report categories—like Engagement, Monetization, and Retention—replacing UA’s Realtime, Audience, Behavior, and Conversions tabs.
• A custom dashboard tool named Explore (formerly Analysis) lets you build bespoke reports through drag-and-drop analysis.

App + Web, Privacy-First, and Machine Learning

• GA4 tracks web and app data together, giving a unified view across platforms.
• Designed for a cookieless future, GA4 includes features like anonymized IPs and built-in, privacy-compliant tracking.
• GA4 also introduces machine learning insights, like churn prediction or anomaly detection, features not available in UA’s standard version.

If you’re switching from UA to GA4, you’re stepping into a more flexible, future-proof analytics world. GA4’s event-based approach, combined with web/app tracking and new metrics, offers deeper insight, but they do require a fresh mindset. Think of it not as an upgrade, but a complete rebuild of how we track, segment, and understand user behavior.

Turning Insight Into Action: Your Analytics Journey Starts Here

You don’t need to be a data scientist to make sense of Google Analytics—you just need the curiosity to explore and the clarity to ask better questions. GA4 isn’t about overwhelming dashboards or vanity metrics. It’s about seeing what matters: who’s showing up, what they’re doing, and how you can meet them halfway. Whether you’re running a business, a blog, or your very first campaign, this is your tool to make smarter, faster, and more intentional decisions.

So dive into the reports, test ideas, and trust the data to guide you. Because the moment you start listening to what your users are telling you, that’s when your growth begins.If you’re looking to go deeper—not just with GA4, but with the full digital marketing toolkit—Intellipaat’s Digital Marketing course is built to take you there. Designed by IIT-certified professionals and taught by mentors who’ve spent decades in analytics and marketing roles at top companies, it’s a space where industry experience meets hands-on learning. Because growth isn’t just about knowing the tools—it’s about learning how to use them like a pro.

What Is Google Analytics? A Smart Guide to GA4 in 2025 – FAQs