How to Get Started with Google Analytics

Trying to understand your website's performance without data is like driving with a blacked-out windshield. Google Analytics is the tool that clears the view, showing you who visits your site, how they got there, and what they do once they arrive. This guide will walk you through setting up your Google Analytics 4 account, installing the tracking code, and understanding the basic reports you need to start making smarter decisions.

What is Google Analytics (and Why Do You Need It)?

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic. In plain English, it collects anonymous data about your website visitors and organizes it into digestible reports. While it can get incredibly complex, its core purpose is simple: to help you understand your audience and improve your website's performance.

Every business with a website, from a local bakery to a global SaaS company, can benefit from it. Here's why it's so essential:

• Understand your audience: Learn demographic details about your visitors, like their age, location, and the devices they use to browse your site.
• See where your traffic comes from: Discover which channels are bringing people to your site, such as Google searches, social media, email newsletters, or direct visits.
• Know your most popular content: Find out which pages and blog posts get the most attention, helping you create more of what your audience loves.
• Track goal completions: Measure how many visitors complete important actions, like filling out a contact form, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase.
• Make data-driven decisions: Instead of guessing what's working, you can use real data to guide your marketing strategy, website design, and content creation.

A quick note: In 2023, Google retired its long-standing "Universal Analytics" (UA) and replaced it with "Google Analytics 4". This guide is entirely focused on GA4, which uses a more modern, event-based tracking model. All new accounts will automatically be GA4 properties, so you're in the right place!

Step-by-Step: Setting Up Your Google Analytics 4 Account

Getting your account set up is a straightforward process. You'll need a Google account to start. If you use Gmail, Google Drive, or YouTube, you already have one.

Step 1: Get Started on the Google Analytics Website

Navigate to the Google Analytics website and click the "Start measuring" button. You’ll be prompted to sign in with your Google account credentials.

Step 2: Create Your Account

The first step is naming your Account. Think of your Account as the top-level folder for your business. If your business has multiple websites, you can house them all under one Account. Enter your business name and review the data-sharing settings, which you can adjust based on your privacy preferences. Click "Next."

Step 3: Create a Property

Next, you'll create a "Property." A Property represents an individual website or application. You can have multiple Properties under one Account.

• Property name: Enter the name of your website (e.g., "Molly's Bake Shop Website").
• Reporting time zone: Select the time zone your business operates in. This ensures your daily reports align with your business day.
• Currency: Choose the currency your business uses. This is especially important for e-commerce tracking.

Step 4: Your Business Details

Google will ask for some general information about your business, like your industry category and size. This helps them provide benchmarking data and tailor your experience. Select the options that best fit your business and click "Next."

Step 5: Choose Your Business Objectives

Here, you'll tell Google what you want to achieve with Analytics. You can select multiple objectives, such as "Generate leads," "Drive online sales," or "Examine user behavior." This step helps Google customize the reports it shows you by default, making the interface more relevant to your goals right away.

Step 6: Set Up Your Data Stream

A "Data Stream" is the source of the data flowing into your Property. Since we're setting this up for a website, choose "Web."

You’ll be asked to provide two things:

1. Website URL: Enter your website’s domain (e.g., mollysbakeshop.com).
2. Stream Name: This will be pre-filled with your domain but you can change it if you like.

Make sure "Enhanced measurement" is turned on. This feature automatically tracks common interactions like page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, and site searches without you having to configure them manually. Click "Create stream," and congratulations, your GA4 property is created!

Installing the GA4 Tracking Tag on Your Website

Now that your property is set up, Google Analytics will give you a unique snippet of code, called the "Google tag." This tag must be placed on your website so it can start collecting data. On the stream details page, you will see a unique "Measurement ID" that looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX and an option to "View tag instructions".

There are a few ways to get this installed, but we’ll cover the two most common methods.

Option 1: Adding the Tracking Code Manually (The Quick Way)

This method involves copying the provided JavaScript code and pasting it directly into your website's HTML. In GA4, go to the "Install manually" tab, and you'll see a code block that looks like this:

<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXXXXX"></script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [],
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments),}
  gtag('js', new Date()),

  gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX'),
</script>

This entire block of code needs to be placed on every page of your website, right after the opening <head> tag. How you do this depends on your website platform:

• WordPress: Many themes have a section in the settings (often under "Theme Options" or "Customize") where you can add header scripts. A popular alternative is to use a simple plugin like "Insert Headers and Footers" to paste the code in one place.
• Shopify or Squarespace: Most modern website builders have a dedicated field for your Google Analytics ID. Instead of pasting the whole code, you’ll just need to copy your "Measurement ID" (G-XXXXXXXXXX) and paste it into the appropriate field in your website’s admin panel (look for "Analytics" or "Integrations").

Option 2: Using Google Tag Manager (The Recommended Way)

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is actually the cleaner, more future-proof way to handle analytics. Tag Manager is a separate tool that lets you manage all of your tracking codes (your GA tag, Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Ads tag, etc.) from one dashboard. Rather than cluttering your website's code with a dozen different script snippets, you simply install the GTM script once, and manage all the other tags from inside the GTM interface.

A full GTM guide is an article in itself, but the basic steps are:

1. Go to Google Tag Manager and create an account and container for your website.
2. Install the GTM container script on your website (similar to the manual installation of the Google Tag).
3. Inside GTM, create a new tag and choose the "Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration" type.
4. Paste your GA4 Measurement ID (G-XXXXXXXXXX) into the Tag Configuration.
5. Set the trigger to fire on "All Pages."
6. Save and submit your changes to make them live.

Using GTM from the start makes it much simpler to add more advanced tracking in the future without needing to touch your website’s code again.

Verifying Your Setup & Making Sense of the Dashboard

How to Check if Google Analytics is Working

Once you've installed the tag, you want to be sure it's working correctly. The easiest way to verify is to use the Realtime report.

In your Google Analytics account, navigate to Reports > Realtime. Now, open your own website in a different browser tab or on your phone (using cellular data, not your office Wi-Fi, which you might exclude later). You should see at least one active user appear on the Realtime report. If you see yourself, you know the connection is established and data is flowing.

Note: Standard reports in GA4 can take 24-48 hours to fully populate with data. Do not be startled if they look empty at first.

A Quick Tour of Key GA4 Reports

Navigating Google Analytics initially can feel disorienting, but most of your questions can be answered using a few key reports found under the "Reports" (chart icon) tab.

• Reports Snapshot: This is your dashboard homepage. It gives a summarized bird’s-eye view of your traffic, user engagement, and event counts.
• Traffic acquisition: Located under the "Acquisition" drop-down, this is one of the most important reports. It shows you exactly how people are finding your website, grouping your traffic into channels like Organic Search (from Google), Direct (typed URL), Organic Social (from social media), and Referral (from links on other websites).
• Pages and screens: Under the "Engagement" drop-down, this report shows you your most popular pages, ranked by views and users. This tells you what content resonates most with your audience.
• Events: Also under "Engagement," this report lists all the interactions (or "events") GA4 has recorded on your site. By default, you'll find events like pageviews, scrolls, and clicks here. This is the report you use when configuring goals as conversions in GA4.

Two Crucial Next Steps

Basic setup is done, but there are a few things to configure now to ensure you get high-quality, actionable data moving forward.

1. Excluding Your Internal Traffic

Your team, developers, and you yourself will likely visit your website frequently. To avoid skewing your data with your own activity, you should set up a filter to exclude this internal traffic.

Navigate to Admin (gear icon) > Data Streams and click your web stream. Next, click Configure tag settings > Show all > Define internal traffic. Here, you'll create a rule to exclude traffic from your company's IP address. Click "Create" and give your rule a name (e.g., "Office IP Address"), then enter your public IP address (you can find it by Googling "what is my IP address").

2. Linking Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is another free tool from Google which focuses specifically on your website's performance in Google search. By linking GSC with GA4, you unlock valuable data. You can see exactly which search queries drive traffic to your site directly within your Analytics account.

To do this, go back to Admin, look under "Property," and scroll down to find "Product Links." Click "Search Console links" and follow the steps to link both accounts to each other. It’ll provide invaluable insight into your SEO efforts.

Final Thoughts

By following these steps, you have successfully set up Google Analytics, installed its tracking code, and configured key settings to ensure accurate data. You now have a tool not just for monitoring web traffic but for understanding your audience and making data-driven decisions to grow your business.

Once your Google Analytics data starts pouring in, it can feel overwhelming to find specific insights or connect them to other marketing platforms like Facebook Ads or Shopify. This is where having all your data in one place becomes so important. Instead of learning complex BI tools, we built Graphed so you can start building dashboards immediately. With Graphed, you simply connect data sources like Google Analytics and use simple English to ask questions like "Which blog post generated the most leads?" or "Compare my SEO traffic with my paid ads performance." We translate your questions into clear visual dashboards that update in real-time, giving you back the time to focus on what matters: growing your business.