Google Analytics 4 is better than Universal Analytics, at least that’s what some marketers have been saying in Search Engine Land.
While the new platform certainly has its fair share of haters, some advertisers seem to absolutely love it and have been praising the tool.
If you’re scratching your head wondering how on earth they could have come to this conclusion, below we’ve rounded up some of the feedback we’ve received from these unicorns. Let us know if their explanations might persuade you into a sudden change of heart.
1. GA4 is easier (when set up correctly)
Attacat CEO Tim Barlow says GA4 is a superior tool to UA because:
“Customization is easy.” “When set up properly, the GA4 is much easier for novice users to get up to speed.” “GA4 has a better data model: someone who reads a blog post for 30 minutes is a bounce in GA3. In GA4 they are the valued reader they are.” “GA4 is designed for more than just websites, while GA3 it’s not right for the multi-device/mixed online and offline world we live in now.” “Consent is now a big issue in Europe. Google seems to be the only company investing properly in this issue, at least in the world of free or affordable Analytics”. “Non-developers can achieve more with GA4 because GA3 always needed developers for any customization. With GA4 you still need a developer involved, but not as often.
2. It is more accurate
According to Drew Blumenthal, founder and CEO of Digital Drew SEM, GA4’s unpopularity is simply because people don’t have enough time to learn how it works rather than a reflection of the tool itself.
GA4 has a number of great features to offer the industry, once advertisers have a chance to understand how it works, he said:
“I personally think the interface is much more elegant than UA, but more importantly, it’s more accurate. “With the loss of data through privacy policies, you need GA4 to be more accurate of incoming traffic. “GA4 also combines app data, own data and cookie data, which will be much better in the long run. ”
3. GA4 is powerful, flexible and creative
Digital marketer Stacey Chance admits that trying to understand how to use GA4 to its fullest has definitely been a “learning curve”.
However, he noted that the use of events in the new tool is actually the same as in other analytics platforms such as Heap, making the process simpler than he originally realized, saying:
“Our team has found GA4’s features to be incredibly powerful and flexible.” “The more we use it, the more we’ll find creative and clever ways to take advantage of its features.”
4. It’s better than UA
The AS Marketing team admits that they found GA4 a little tricky to navigate at first, but because they took the time to understand how it works, they now think it’s a superior tool to its predecessor. They explain:
“Our team at my marketing agency has found GA4 to be better than Universal Analytics because it focuses on events over a massive conglomeration of complex, meaningless data.” “With so many companies doing digital marketing, focusing on engagement data and tracking it as events makes a lot more sense, that GA4 does a brilliant job.” “We also find custom dashboards easier to set up and understand. We’ve migrated all of our customers to GA4 and they’re all happy with the new setup.”
Andrew Glenn, digital experience analyst and SEO manager at Abbott, says he’s a big fan of GA4. In fact, he tells Search Engine Land that he “loves” the new tool.
Explaining why he thinks it’s such a great platform, he said:
“GA4 is perfectly aligned to better segment audiences, learn about them and use GMP to better serve what matters most to those audiences.”
6. GA4 is robust and offers more flexibility
Freelance Java EE developer Robert Nowak isn’t a big fan of GA4’s interface and believes some vendors may find it more difficult to use. However, overall, the new platform offers a lot of advantages that have finally won it over. He says:
“I love the new options for event tracking – they’re much more robust and offer a lot of flexibility. “GA4 for me is a big bag – you put all the data you can collect into it and then you have to figure out how to put pieces together to filter this bag. Theoretically, this is better because you can make your own GA4 with your own settings and the data you actually need instead of 100 reports you may never use in GA UA.
7. Take pipeline possibilities to a new level
Digital Marketing Strategist Doctor Richie Moczo and his team are now confident in using GA4 after taking the time to learn how to use the tool properly. He personally now prefers this tool to its predecessor because of the capabilities it offers:
“GA4 takes data pipeline possibilities to a new level with its free integration with Big Query. For example, with GA4 you are limited to 25 parameters per event, but if you want to exceed this limit, you can send your additional parameters to the great query.” At UA, this feature was only an option for Marketing 360 customers! “Don’t make up reasons to avoid using GA4. Some of UA’s most popular features were slow to be added to GA4, but newly added GA4 has been falling into place!
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Why we care
GA4 has received a lot of criticism from the digital marketing world after the AU sunset. But Google’s new tool isn’t going away anytime soon, so we’d better all get used to it.
With that in mind, maybe it’s time to let your guard down and embrace the many benefits GA4 has to offer, because it looks like there are a lot of them!
Why GA4 is causing problems for some vendors
While advertisers we spoke to previously are fans of the new analytics platform, they acknowledged that it’s easy to understand why some marketers might not like it.
In addition to people generally not responding well to changes, Attacat CEO Tim Barlow believes that GA4 was released before it was really ready. While he believes it’s a superior tool to UA, he says there are a number of issues with GA4, including:
“Some of the language used in the interface is horrible! For example, the default channel group of users per session over time – why not stick with ‘Session Source’?” “The default settings are deliberately generalized, as GA4 is designed to cover much more than just a website. This means, however, that the default reports are almost useless as they have too many irrelevant metrics.” “The lame attempt to promote AdSense by including ad metrics causes more confusion.” “Getting the real benefit requires a lot of setup / getting to grips with the tool’s capability and that’s not a journey that those who just want the real basics want to go through.” “Google released GA4 too early, so when people looked at it, it was missing so many features that it’s practically unusable. For example, it’s frustrating that you can only look at daily data instead of weekly or monthly data.”
Despite pointing out these issues, Barlow concludes that he’s confident Google will take action and improve its product. He adds: “Although I have faith that all these features will come in time.”
deep dive
For more information on how to migrate to GA4, read “Learn how to make the switchguide
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