[GA4] Get started with Google Analytics 4 using Setup Assistant

Overview

Setup Assistant in Google Analytics 4 properties helps guide you through recommended features and settings to help you finish setting up your Google Analytics 4 property. For example, Setup Assistant helps you quickly access pages in Analytics to set up Google Analytics 4 conversions and import conversions from Universal Analytics.

This article is for

This article is for website and app owners who have already created a Google Analytics 4 property. If you only have a Universal Analytics property, learn how to use Setup Assistant in your Universal Analytics property.

Access the Setup Assistant

1. In Google Analytics, click Admin.
2. Make sure you are in the correct account and property.

3. Click Setup Assistant.

Instructions

Data collection

Collect website and app data

You can start to collect data by adding some measurement code to your website or app. The measurement code collects user data from your site or app.

For websites

Once you've created an account and property, follow these steps:

1. Add a web data stream to your Google Analytics 4 property.
2. Set up the measurement code on your website.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

For apps

Once you've created an account and property, follow these steps:

1. Add an app data stream to your Google Analytics 4 property.
2. Add the Firebase SDK to your app.
3. Add the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK to your app.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Property settings

Turn on Google signals

By turning on Google signals, you can collect additional data about users who have turned on ads personalization and who have signed in to their Google Accounts. Learn more about Google signals

To turn on Google signals, follow these steps:

1. In Setup Assistant, click the Actions menu to the right of the row.
2. Click Manage Google signals.
3. In Data collection, turn on Google signals data collection.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Set up conversions

A conversion is any user action that's valuable to your business; for example, a user purchasing from your store or subscribing to your newsletter.

By setting up conversions, you can report on the actions that matter most to your business, use the conversion data for bid optimization, and remarket to unconverted users. Learn more about conversions

Mark an event as a conversion

In Google Analytics, user interactions are measured using events. When you want to measure a conversion action, you mark an event that measures the user action as a conversion. Each time a user triggers the event, a conversion is recorded in Google Analytics and displayed in your reports.

To mark an existing event as a conversion, follow these steps:

1. In Google Analytics, go to Configure > Events on the left.
2. In the Existing events table, select the toggle under Mark as conversion.

If you recently created an event or haven't created the event yet, see Set up conversions for information about how to mark new events as conversions.

To learn how to import goals from a Universal Analytics property, see Goals migration tool.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Define audiences

Audiences are groups of your users who share attributes. You can share audiences with the advertising products you use, like Google Ads, so you can market to specific groups of users. To learn how to define an audience, see Create, edit, and archive audiences.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Manage users

As an administrator, you can add, remove, and modify users to your Google Analytics 4 property. You can also create, remove, and modify groups of users to simplify the process of aligning users, organizational structures, and permissions.

If you want to start adding users to a property, follow these steps:

1. In Setup Assistant, click the Actions menu to the right of the row.
2. Click Manage users.
3. In Property access management, click + and then Add users.
4. Enter the email address for the user's Google Account or Google Workspace account.
5. Select Notify new users by email to send a message to the user.
6. Select the permissions you want. Learn more about permissions
7. Click Add.

The Google email address you use to add a user and the password associated with that address become the Analytics login credentials for that user.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

To learn how to remove users and create user groups, see Add, edit, and delete Analytics users and user groups. To learn how to import users from a Universal Analytics property, see User migration tool.

Google Ads

Link to Google Ads

By linking your Google Ads account, you allow data to flow between Google Analytics and Google Ads. For example, you can see your Google Ads campaigns and Google Ads dimensions in Analytics, import Analytics conversions into your Google Ads account, and make your Analytics audiences available in Google Ads to use as remarketing lists. Learn more about linking to Ads

Link your Google Ads account

1. In Setup Assistant, click the Actions menu to the right of the row.
2. Click Manage Google Ads links.
3. Click Link.
4. Click Choose Google Ads accounts.
5. Select the Google Ads accounts you want to link.
6. Click Confirm.
7. Click Next.
8. (Recommended) Leave the default settings enabled and then click Next.
9. Review your settings and click Submit.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Bid on GA4 conversions

Once you set up conversions, you can export your conversion events to Google Ads to give Google Ads Smart Bidding access to data that helps optimize bids, potentially increasing conversions and lowering costs.

To learn how to bid on conversions, follow the steps in Import Analytics conversions into Google Ads.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Target ads to GA4 audiences

To make your audiences available in Google Ads for remarketing, link to Google Ads and keep the default option as Enable Personalized Advertising. If you disable personalized advertising, you can still export your audiences to Google Ads, but you can't use them for personalized ads.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

(Optional) Advanced setup

Import data

You can import cost, item, user, and offline event data from external sources and join the data with data in your Google Analytics property. For more information on how to import data into Google Analytics, see About Data Import.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Link to BigQuery

BigQuery is a cloud data warehouse that lets you run highly performant queries of large datasets.

You can export all of your raw events from Google Analytics 4 properties to BigQuery and then use an SQL-like syntax to query that data. In BigQuery, you can export your data to external storage or import external data for the purposes of combining it with your Analytics data.

For instructions on how to link to BigQuery, see Set up BigQuery Export.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Set up user IDs

The User-ID feature lets you associate your own identifiers with individual users so you can connect their behavior across different sessions and on various devices and platforms.

Analytics interprets each user ID as a separate user, so by associating a user ID with an individual user, you can get more accurate user counts and a more holistic story about a user's relationship with your business.

For instructions on how to set up the User-ID feature, see Send user IDs.

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.

Use measurement protocol

The Google Analytics measurement protocol for Google Analytics 4 allows developers to enhance web and app streams by sending events directly to Google Analytics servers via HTTP requests. This makes it easy to measure interactions that happen server-to-server and offline.

For instructions on how to set up and use measurement protocol, see Measurement Protocol (Google Analytics 4).

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete.