What to Track in Google Analytics 4?

Switching from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 can feel like learning a whole new language. With a completely revamped interface and a different way of measuring things, it's easy to get lost and feel unsure about what you should even be looking at. This guide cuts through the confusion to show you exactly what to track in GA4 to get clear, actionable insights about your website’s performance.

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First, Understand the Big Shift: Events Are the New Stars

Before we jump into specific metrics, you need to grasp one fundamental change. Universal Analytics was built around sessions and pageviews. It treated a user's visit as a container, and everything that happened inside that visit was secondary. GA4 flips this model on its head.

In GA4, everything is an event.

A page view is an event. A scroll down the page is an event. Clicking a button is an event. Submitting a form or making a purchase is an event. This event-based model makes GA4 far more flexible and user-centric. It allows you to see the entire customer journey as a series of interactions, rather than just isolated visits. This gives you a much richer, more accurate picture of how users engage with your site across multiple sessions and devices.

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The Absolute Essentials: Core Metrics to Watch Weekly

These are the foundational metrics that every website owner, marketer, or business should keep an eye on. They provide a high-level snapshot of your site's health and growth.

Users & New Users

• What it is: "Users" represents the total number of unique people who visited your site during a specific date range. "New Users" isolates just the people who visited your site for the very first time.
• Why it matters: This is your core audience metric. Are you attracting a growing audience? Is your marketing bringing in new people, or are you primarily serving a returning user base? The answer shapes your content and acquisition strategies.
• Where to find it: Look in Reports > Acquisition > User acquisition. You'll see cards for Users and New Users right at the top.

Engaged Sessions & Engagement Rate

• What it is: Forget Bounce Rate, Engagement Rate is its much smarter replacement. An "Engaged Session" is a visit where the user either stayed for more than 10 seconds (you can adjust this), triggered a conversion event, or viewed at least two pages. The Engagement Rate is simply the percentage of total sessions that were engaged.
• Why it matters: This metric tells you if people are actually interacting with your site or just landing and leaving. A low engagement rate is a strong sign that your content isn't matching user intent, your page speed is too slow, or your user experience needs work.
• Where to find it: This is featured prominently in the Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report.

Views (Formerly Pageviews)

• What it is: "Views" is the new term for what we used to call "Pageviews." It's the total count of how many times your website pages or app screens were loaded.
• Why it matters: Views give you a quick barometer of which pieces of content are most popular. While not as insightful as engagement, it’s still a useful top-level metric for identifying your most-visited content.
• Where to find it: Head to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens to see a list of your pages ranked by views.

Conversions

• What it is: A conversion is any key user action you want to track. This is totally customizable and could be a purchase, a lead form submission, a newsletter signup, or a "request a demo" click.
• Why it matters: This is arguably the most important metric. Conversions are how you measure success. Traffic and engagement are great, but if they don't lead to business-critical actions, they aren't helping you reach your goals.
• Where to find it: You first need to configure these under an event in Admin > Data display > Events and toggle "Mark as conversion". Once set up, you can see conversion data in most reports, including Traffic acquisition and Engagement > Conversions.

Who Are Your Visitors? Demographics and Tech Insights

Knowing who is visiting your site is just as important as knowing how many. These attributes help you build a clearer picture of your target audience and ensure your site works well for them.

Demographic Details (Country, City, Age, etc.)

• What it is: These reports break down your audience by their geographic location, age range, gender, and language.
• Why it matters: This data is invaluable for marketing. Are you seeing traffic from a country you’re not targeting? Should your ad copy be tailored to a younger or older audience? Demographics help you answer these questions and refine your strategy. Note: You must enable Google Signals in your property settings to collect this data.
• Where to find it: Go to Reports > User > User attributes > Demographic details.

Tech Details (Device, Browser, etc.)

• What it is: This section shows you what technology people use to access your site, including their device category (desktop, mobile, tablet), web browser, and operating system.
• Why it matters: Imagine you discover that 80% of your users are on mobile, but your mobile site is slow and difficult to navigate. That’s a massive problem. Likewise, if you see an abnormally low conversion rate for users on a specific browser, it might point to a technical bug. This report ensures you’re providing a good technical experience for everyone.
• Where to find it: You can find this data under Reports > Tech > Tech details.

Where Is Your Traffic Coming From? Tracking Marketing Channels

You can't optimize what you don't measure. Analyzing your traffic sources is critical for understanding which marketing efforts are paying off and where you should focus your time and budget.

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Traffic Acquisition Report

• What it is: This is your mission control for marketing channels. It groups your incoming traffic into high-level categories like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, Organic Social, and Referral.
• Why it matters: This report directly shows you your marketing ROI. Are your SEO efforts driving engaged users? Is your investment in Google Ads leading to conversions? The Traffic Acquisition report not only shows you where traffic is coming from but also which sources deliver the most valuable users (based on engagement and conversions).
• Where to find it: Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Pay close attention to the "Session default channel group."

Using UTM Parameters for Granular Tracking

Outside of the main 'buckets' for traffic, you probably have other campaigns running too. How do you track a specific influencer link, an email in your weekly newsletter, or a certain post on LinkedIn? The answer is using UTMs.

UTM parameters are short text codes you add to your URLs to track campaign details. You can easily build these using Google's Campaign URL Builder.

By tagging your links with a campaign name, source, and medium (e.g., source=newsletter, medium=email, campaign=june-promo), you can see their exact performance in the GA4 Traffic Acquisition report. This is non-negotiable for anyone running multiple marketing initiatives.

What Are People Doing on Your Site? Content and Behavior Tracking

Once users arrive, what do they do? Where do they go? Which content resonates, and which pages cause them to leave? These reports help you optimize the user journey.

Pages and Screens Report

• What it is: Just as it sounds, this report lists your website's pages and shows you key metrics for each, including Views, Users, and Average Engagement Time.
• Why it matters: Use this to identify your superstar content - the blog posts, landing pages, or product pages that attract and hold user attention. On the flip side, you can also spot underperforming pages with low engagement times that may need to be updated, redesigned, or combined with other pages.
• Where to find it: Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.

Event Tracking

• What it is: In GA4, you can track almost any interaction as an event. GA4's "Enhanced Measurement" feature automatically tracks some events like scrolls, outbound clicks, site searches, and file downloads for you. For anything more specific, like clicks on a main call-to-action button or plays on an embedded video, you can set up a custom event.
• Why it matters: Tracking custom events gives you a deep, granular understanding of user behavior. Are people interacting with the key elements of your page? Where are they clicking? This data provides clues for improving your site's design and user flow to guide visitors toward your conversion goals.
• Where to find it: You can see a list of all events being logged at Reports > Engagement > Events.

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For E-commerce Sites: Tracking What Sells

If you're running an online store, GA4 has a dedicated set of reports designed to measure product performance and revenue.

Monetization and E-commerce Purchases Reports

• What it is: The Monetization > Overview report is your command center for revenue, purchases, and top-selling products. The E-commerce purchases report drills down deeper, letting you see detailed metrics for each product, such as how many times it was viewed versus how many times it was added to the cart and purchased.
• Why it matters: These reports provide a clear line of sight into what's driving your business. You can quickly see which products are your bestsellers and which might need a marketing boost. The ratio of product views to purchases can also highlight issues with pricing, product images, or descriptions.
• Where to find it: It's all under the Reports > Monetization tab.

Funnel Exploration in "Explore"

• What it is: The standard GA4 reports are great for an overview, but the real power for e-commerce lies in the "Explore" section. Here, you can build a customized purchase funnel visualization to see exactly where users drop off during the checkout process. A typical funnel might look like: View Product > Add to Cart > Begin Checkout > Purchase.
• Why it matters: A leaky checkout funnel kills revenue. This visualization pinpoints the friction. Is there a big drop-off when you ask users to create an account? Are shipping costs causing people to abandon their carts? The Funnel Exploration report helps you diagnose and fix these costly issues.
• Where to find it: Look in the main left-hand navigation for Explore, then select "Funnel exploration" from the template gallery.

Final Thoughts

GA4 is an incredibly powerful tool, and with that power comes a bit of complexity. The key is to avoid getting overwhelmed by focusing on the metrics that directly map to your business goals: who your audience is, where they come from, how they engage with your site, and whether they complete the actions that drive your business forward.

Wrestling with GA4's interface to get these answers is one thing, but stitching that data together with your ad platforms, CRM, and sales data is another challenge entirely. We built Graphed to make this seamless. Instead of hunting through reports, you can connect tools like GA4, Google Ads, and Salesforce in seconds. Then, you can simply ask questions in plain English like, "Show me a report of my top 5 traffic channels from GA4 by conversion rate this month" and get an interactive, real-time dashboard instantly. This frees you up to act on insights instead of just spending time finding them.