[GA4] Configure your GA4 property using Setup Assistant

If you have completed your GA4 migration, but you see one or both the following notices, follow the instructions below to stop seeing them.

• "This property’s setup is not complete. Settings may be completed for you based on your original Universal Analytics (UA) property, unless you opt out in the connected UA property."
• "Some settings from your original Universal Analytics (UA) property may be automatically added to this Google Analytics 4 property. To opt out from adding these settings automatically, go to the Setup Assistant in the connected UA property.

1. Click Admin.
2. In the Property column, click Setup Assistant
   
3. If you see the message: “This is your GA4 property. Your connected Universal Analytics property remains unchanged", click Open connected property.
4. A countdown timer appears with the message "Almost there - finish migrating to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)". Click No thanks.
5. Switch off the “Automatically set up a basic Google Analytics 4 property” toggle.
   
6. Click Go to your GA4 property to go back to your GA4 property.
7. Mark all the tasks completed to stop seeing “This property is not fully set up. You can complete the recommended setup checklist in the Setup Assistant.”
   1. For each task, click the arrow at far right.
      
   2. Select Mark as complete.
      

The next time you access this GA4 property, the notices will no longer appear. (The notices will not immediately disappear once you complete these steps.)

Settings

All users can access the Setup Assistant, but you need the Editor role on the property to make any changes.

If you're migrating from a Universal Analytics property, you'll also see additional migration tools under the > menu for some settings. You can also click the status in any row to compare your Universal Analytics status to your Google Analytics 4 status. Note, however, that Setup Assistant does not backfill your new Google Analytics 4 property with your Universal Analytics historical data. Your new GA4 property only collects data going forward.

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.

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.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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

Turn on Google Signals

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.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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. When you want to measure a conversion, you mark an event that measures the user action as a conversion.

Mark an event as a conversion

1. In Setup Assistant, click the Actions menu to the right of the row.
2. Click Manage conversions.
3. In the top left, click Events.
4. 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 Mark a new event as a conversion for information about how to mark new events as conversions.

Migrate goals from Universal Analytics

To learn how to recreate eligible goals from your connected Universal Analytics property as conversion events in your Google Analytics 4 property, see the goals migration tool.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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.

Migrate audiences from Universal Analytics

Use the GA4 Migrator for Google Analytics Google Sheets add-on to migrate audiences from a Universal Analytics property to a Google Analytics 4 property. Learn more

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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.

Migrate Google Ads links from Universal Analytics

To learn how to import your Google Ads links from your Universal Analytics property to your connected Google Analytics 4 property, see the Google Ads links migration tool.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

Bid on GA4 conversions

Once you set up conversions, you can export your conversion events to Google Ads to report on campaign performance and fuel manual or Smart bidding decisions to help optimize your campaigns.

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

Migrate from Universal Analytics: switch bidding in Google Ads

If you're bidding on Universal Analytics conversions in Google Ads, you'll need to make some updates in your Google Ads account. Follow these steps to stop bidding on Universal Analytics conversions and start bidding on Google Analytics 4 conversions:

1. In Setup Assistant, go to the Bid on GA4 conversions row and hover your mouse over the status column. You'll see how many Universal Analytics conversions you're bidding on in Google Ads, compared to how many Google Analytics 4 conversions.
2. Go to your linked Google Ads account(s).
   If multiple accounts are linked, you'll need to repeat the following steps for each. You can view a list of linked Google Ads accounts inside Google Analytics.
3. In the top right, click Tools and settings, and then select Conversions from the Measurement section.
4. Look at the Conversion source column and find any conversions set to Website (Google Analytics (UA)).
5. For each of these conversions, make sure you've created an equivalent GA4 conversion, and imported it into Google Ads.
6. In your Google Analytics account, compare the volumes of the UA conversion to its equivalent GA4 one. Note that you shouldn't expect the Google Analytics 4 conversion volumes to exactly match Universal Analytics conversion volumes because there are many factors that prevent the numbers from matching.

   To ensure you have enough data for an accurate comparison, you may want to wait for up to two weeks after implementing your Google Analytics 4 conversions to compare them to your Universal Analytics conversions.

7. After you've validated your conversions, go to your Google Ads account and switch the UA conversion's action optimization to Secondary action (observe only). In the same working session, switch the GA4 conversion's action optimization to Primary action:
   1. In your Google Ads account, go to Tools and Settings > Measurement > Conversions.
   2. Find the goal that includes the conversion action you'd like to edit.
   3. Click Edit goal.
   4. Next to the conversion action that you’d like to update, click the drop-down and select either Secondary action (observe only) or Primary action.
   5. Click Save changes.
8. If the Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 conversion counts differ significantly, you can consider changes to your Analytics configuration so that the conversions report as expected.

Larger advertisers should use the Google Ads API and Google Analytics API or Google Ads Editor to make changes at scale.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

Target ads to GA4 audiences

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

Migrate from Universal Analytics: switch audiences in Google Ads

If you're using Universal Analytics audiences in Google Ads, you'll need to make some updates in your Google Ads account. Follow these steps to stop using Universal Analytics audiences and start using on Google Analytics 4 audiences:

1. In Setup Assistant, go to the Target ads to GA4 audiences row and hover your mouse over the status column. You'll see how many Universal Analytics audiences you're using in Google Ads, compared to how many Google Analytics 4 audiences.
2. Go to your linked Google Ads account(s).
   If multiple accounts are linked, you'll need to repeat the following steps for each. You can view a list of linked Google Ads accounts inside Google Analytics.
3. In the top right, click Tools and settings, and then select Audience Manager from the Shared Library section.
4. Hover your mouse over each audience and look for those saying Visitors of a page with Google Analytics tags. If you have a lot of audiences, add a filter with the Source set to Google Analytics (UA) to identify UA audiences.
5. For each such audience, make sure you've created an equivalent GA4 audience (either manually or using the audience migration tool) and configured your Analytics property to send audiences to Google Ads.
6. Validate that the GA4 audience size looks right to you.

   To ensure you have enough data for an accurate comparison, you may want to wait for up to two weeks after setting up your Google Analytics 4 audiences to compare them to your Universal Analytics audiences.

7. Once the you're ready to switch to a GA4 audience, apply it to any campaigns/ad groups where the equivalent UA audience was applied.

Larger advertisers should use the Google Ads API and Google Analytics API or Google Ads Editor to make changes at scale.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

(Optional) Advanced setup

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. Learn more about managing users and user groups

Add users to a property

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

Migrate users from Universal Analytics

To learn how to import users from a Universal Analytics property, see the user migration tool.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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.

Your imported data from Universal Analytics cannot be ported over to GA4 because the GA4 and Universal Analytics data models do not match. You'll need to set up data import for GA4 from the beginning.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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.

What's next

Once you complete the steps, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.

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).

Your measurement protocol data from Universal Analytics cannot be ported over to GA4. You'll need to set up measurement protocol for GA4 from the beginning.

What's next

When there's no more work to do, click the Actions menu to mark the row as complete. When you mark the row as complete, all users of the property will see the same status.