An event allows you to measure a distinct user interaction on a website or app. For example, loading a page, clicking a link, and completing a purchase are all interactions you can measure with events.
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Types of events
The following types of events are collected automatically:
- Automatically collected events are events that Google Analytics collects by default when you set up the Google tag or the Tag Manager snippet on your website or the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK in your app. Learn more
- Enhanced measurement events are events that Google Analytics collects from websites when enhanced measurement is enabled within Google Analytics. Learn more
The following types of events require some implementation in order to see them in Analytics:
- Recommended events are events that you implement, but that have predefined names and parameters. These events unlock existing and future reporting capabilities. Learn more
- Custom events are events that you define. Make sure you only create custom events when no other events work for your use case. Custom events don't show up in most standard reports so you need to set up custom reports or explorations for meaningful analysis. Learn more
How to see your events
You can see your events as they're triggered using the Event count by Event name card in the Realtime report and the Seconds stream (the middle column) in the DebugView report.
Once Analytics processes the event data, you can use the Events report in the Engagement topic and the Events report in Configure (in the left navigation) to see your event data.
You can also use explorations, BigQuery, and the Data API to see your event data.
Event grouping
Most of the events that users trigger on your website or app are not sent one at a time. Instead, most events are grouped together (or batched).
However, events are not batched in the following circumstances:
- Conversion events are transmitted immediately, although they may be part of a batch
- Containers loaded in debug mode never batch events to provide you with realtime data
- Events that are temporarily stored by your device are sent when a user leaves a page
- In browser environments that don't support the
sendBeaconAPI, all events are sent immediately
Note: When a user's device goes offline (for example, a user loses their internet connection while browsing your mobile app), Google Analytics stores event data on their device and then sends the data once their device is back online. Analytics ignores events that arrive more than 72 hours after the events are triggered.