What Does Google Analytics 4 Track?

Curious about what Google Analytics 4 actually tracks on your website or app? The new event-based model is a significant departure from Universal Analytics, focusing on user interactions rather than just sessions and pageviews. This article breaks down exactly what GA4 measures, from automatic events and enhanced measurements to the custom data you can collect to understand your user journey better.

The Big Shift: Moving from Sessions and Pageviews to Events

The single most important concept to grasp in GA4 is this: almost every interaction is now considered an "event." While Universal Analytics (UA) was built around the idea of sessions (a user's visit) and hits (like pageviews or transactions within that visit), GA4 flips this on its head.

Think of it this way:

• Universal Analytics was like a store owner counting how many people entered the front door and how many rooms they walked into. You knew they came, you knew they left, and you knew which pages they visited.
• Google Analytics 4 is like a store owner tracking every single action a customer takes. They see someone enter (session_start), look at a product (view_item), add it to their basket (add_to_cart), use a coupon (apply_coupon), and walk out with a purchase (purchase).

This event-based model is far more flexible and gives you a much richer, more detailed picture of how users engage with your site or app. Instead of just knowing where users went, you now know what they did.

Breaking Down the Different Types of Events

GA4 organizes these events into a few key categories. Understanding them is the first step to mastering your data.

Automatically Collected Events

These are the foundational events that GA4 tracks the moment you install the tracking code. You don't have to do anything to enable them, they work out of the box. They form the basis of many standard reports and include essential interactions such as:

• first_visit: Captures the very first time a user visits your website or app.
• session_start: Fires whenever a user begins a new session.
• page_view: Records each time a page loads (previously a core "hit" in UA).
• user_engagement: Fires periodically while your app screen is in the foreground or your webpage is in focus, helping GA4 calculate engaged sessions.

These events collect basic data automatically, saving you from having to configure foundational tracking from scratch.

Enhanced Measurement Events

Here's where GA4 starts to get really powerful with minimal effort. Enhanced Measurement is a setting in your GA4 data stream that, when enabled (it's on by default), automatically tracks several common and valuable interactions that used to require custom code or Google Tag Manager configuration.

You can manage these with a series of simple toggles right in the GA4 admin panel. The enhanced events include:

• Scrolls (scroll): Tracks when a user scrolls at least 90% of the way down a page. This helps you know which content is actually being read.
• Outbound Clicks (click): Records when a user clicks a link that takes them away from your domain. Perfect for tracking clicks on partner sites or affiliate links.
• Site Search (view_search_results): Captures the terms users are searching for on your website's internal search function.
• Video Engagement (video_start, video_progress, video_complete): For embedded YouTube videos, this automatically tracks when users start a video, watch 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% of it, and finish it.
• File Downloads (file_download): Automatically records an event when a user clicks a link to a common file type (like a .pdf, .docx, or .csv).
• Form Interactions (form_start, form_submit): Tracks when a user first interacts with a form and when they submit it.

Enhanced Measurement makes it incredibly easy to gather rich behavioral data without writing a single line of code.

Recommended Events

Google provides a list of "recommended events" that carry predefined names and parameters. These are not tracked automatically, but Google suggests using their standardized naming conventions when you set up tracking for specific actions. This helps GA4 better understand your data and unlocks more functionality in standard and future reports.

For example, if you have an e-commerce store, Google recommends using events like:

• add_to_cart
• begin_checkout
• purchase
• view_item

For a lead generation site, you might use generate_lead. Sticking to these conventions helps maintain clean, organized, and comprehensible analytics.

Custom Events

What if you need to track something that doesn't fit into the other categories? That's where custom events come in. You can name these events whatever you want (within certain limits) and send them with custom information.

For example, you might want to track:

• When a user clicks a specific call-to-action button: cta_click
• When a writer submits a draft: draft_submitted
• When a user completes a multi-step tutorial: tutorial_complete

Setting these up typically requires using Google Tag Manager or some custom code on your website. They offer unlimited flexibility to track the interactions unique to your business.

Going Deeper: Understanding Event Parameters

Tracking an event is only half the story. The real analytical power comes from parameters, which are the extra pieces of data that provide context to your events.

Every event, whether automatic or custom, comes with parameters. For example, the automatic page_view event includes parameters like:

• page_location: The full URL of the page being viewed.
• page_title: The title of the page.
• page_referrer: The URL of the previous page.

When you create a custom event, you can send custom parameters along with it. Let's return to our cta_click example. You could include parameters like:

• cta_text: "Sign Up for Free"
• cta_location: "homepage_hero_banner"
• cta_color: "blue"

This allows you to analyze not just that a CTA was clicked, but which one and where it was located. To use these custom parameters in your GA4 reports (like in the Exploration reports), you must register them as "Custom Dimensions" in the GA4 admin panel. It’s an easy but crucial step to unlock their full value.

Tracking People, Not Just Clicks: Users and Sessions

While events are foundational, GA4 still tracks users and sessions - it just calculates them differently.

• Users: GA4 uses multiple methods to identify a user across devices: a user-provided User-ID (if you have a login system), Google Signals (data from users logged into their Google accounts), and finally, a client ID or device ID stored in a cookie.
• User Properties: These are attributes you can assign to your users to describe them. Think of them as user-level details rather than event-level details. For example, you could set user properties like customer_tier, plan_type, or last_login_date. This helps you segment your user base for deeper analysis.
• Sessions: A session starts when the session_start event fires. It times out after 30 minutes of inactivity by default.
• Engaged Sessions: GA4 has effectively replaced Bounce Rate with "Engaged Sessions," a much more useful metric. A session is counted as "engaged" if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least two pageviews. It’s a better indicator of whether a visitor has found value on your site.

Measuring Your Goals: How GA4 Tracks Conversions

Measuring what matters most has become incredibly simple in GA4. Any event you track can be turned into a conversion with the flip of a switch.

Here’s how it works:

1. You track a meaningful event, like a form_submit from Enhanced Measurement or a custom event like a demo_request.
2. You navigate to the "Conversions" section in the GA4 Admin.
3. You find your event name in the list and toggle the switch to mark it as a conversion.

That's it. From that point forward, every time that event occurs, GA4 will count it as a conversion. This straightforward system lets you quickly define your KPIs and track them without the more complex goal-setting process required in Universal Analytics.

Final Thoughts

Google Analytics 4 fundamentally changes what we track by focusing on a flexible, event-based model rather than rigid sessions. It captures everything from automatic pageviews to detailed enhanced measurements and custom business-specific interactions, enriching it all with contextual parameters to give you a complete picture of the entire user journey.

Although GA4 captures a wealth of data, turning it into actionable insights still requires navigating its reports and explorations, which can be time-consuming. We built Graphed because we believe anyone should be able to get answers from their data instantly. After a simple, one-click connection to your GA4 account, you can use natural language to ask questions like, "Which landing pages drove the most conversions last month?" or "Show me a chart of user engagement by traffic source," and get a live, interactive dashboard built for you in seconds. It bridges the gap between the powerful data GA4 tracks and the clear insights you need.