When you click Upgrade to GA4, you create a Google Analytics 4 property that collects data alongside your existing Universal Analytics property. Your Universal Analytics property is left unchanged and continues to collect data -- you can always access it via the property selector or Admin screen.
Upgrade to GA4
- In Google Analytics, click Admin.
- In the Account column, make sure that your desired account is selected. (If you only have one Google Analytics account, it will already be selected.)
- In the Property column, select the Universal Analytics property that you want to upgrade.
- In the Property column, click Upgrade to GA4. It is the first option in the Property column (directly above "Property Settings", which is second.)
- Click Get started under "I need to create a new Google Analytics 4 property".
- Click Create Property.
Analytics now creates your new Google Analytics 4 property, copying basic data such as the property name, URL, timezone, and currency from your Universal Analytics account. You are taken to Setup Assistant in your new Google Analytics 4 property.
If the Upgrade to GA4 wizard provided the option to "Enable data collection using your existing tagging" (and you left this option selected), your new Google Analytics 4 property should now be collecting data.
To verify that data is being collected, select Realtime from the report navigation. Browse your website. You should see activity in the Realtime report.
| Upgrade to GA4 | Upgrade to GA4 (using Google Tag Manager) |
If Upgrade to GA4 did not use your existing tagging
If you use a website builder/CMS (e.g. Wix, etc) or your website is tagged with analytics.js (instead of gtag.js), the Upgrade to GA4 wizard could not reuse your existing tagging. So, you'll need to add the Analytics tag yourself to begin seeing data in your new Google Analytics 4 property.
Add your tag to a website builder or CMS-hosted website (for example, WordPress, Shopify, etc.)- Click Admin.
- In the Property column, check that you have your new Google Analytics 4 property selected, then click Data Streams, then Web. Click the data stream.
- Under Tagging Instructions, click Add new on-page tag and look for "Global Site Tag (gtag.js)". Your Analytics page tag is the entire section of code that appears, beginning with:
<!-- Global Site Tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
and ending with
</script>
Copy and paste your entire Google Analytics page tag to your website using your CMS' custom HTML feature. Follow your CMS' instructions on how to do this below:
You can then use the Realtime report to verify that you're receiving data.
You'll need access to your web pages HTML. Ask your web developer to perform these steps if you're unable to do this yourself.
- Click Admin.
- In the Property column, check that you have your new Google Analytics 4 property selected, then click Data Streams, then Web. Click the data stream.
- Under Tagging Instructions, click Add new on-page tag and look for "Global Site Tag (gtag.js)". Your Analytics page tag is the entire section of code that appears, beginning with:
<!-- Global Site Tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
and ending with
</script> - Copy and paste your entire Analytics page tag immediately after the
<head>on each page of your website. (Don't remove the old analytics.js tag; it will continue to collect data for your Universal Analytics property. The gtag.js tag that you're adding will collect data for your new Google Analytics 4 property.)
You can then use the Realtime report to verify that you're receiving data.
Now that you've created a Google Analytics 4 property
After upgrading, data will flow into both your Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 properties. Your two properties are now "linked". Because they are linked, you can use Setup Assistant to migrate configurations from your Universal Analytics property to your Google Analytics 4 property.
Events are the building blocks of data in your Google Analytics 4 property. For example, when someone views one of your website pages, a page_view event is collected. The page_view event is one of several events automatically collected via enhanced measurement. If the Upgrade to GA4 wizard used your existing tagging, it automatically enabled enhanced measurement.
Google Analytics 4 properties don't have views, they have data streams. A data stream can be a web data stream, an iOS data stream, or an Android data stream.
Google Analytics 4 properties don't have goals. To track conversions, you mark an event type as a conversion. Every time that event occurs, a conversion is registered.
