When you click GA4 Setup Assistant, 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.
GA4 Setup Assistant
Follow the instructions below to create your Google Analytics 4 property. The instructions are the same regardless of whether your website pages have the Analytics tag or whether you use Google Tag Manager.
- 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 currently collects data for your website.
- In the Property column, click GA4 Setup Assistant. It is the first option in the Property column (directly above "Property Settings", which is second.)
- Click Get started under "I want 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 property.
Once this process is complete, you will see "You have successfully connected your properties" at the top of your Google Analytics 4 Property Setup Assistant page. Click See your GA4 property to be taken to Setup Assistant in your new Google Analytics 4 property.
If the GA4 Setup Assistant 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.
| Add a GA4 property | Add a GA4 property (using Google Tag Manager) |
If GA4 Setup Assistant 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 GA4 Setup Assistant 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.
In Google Tag Manager, create a Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration tag:
- Click Tags
New.
- Click Tag Configuration.
- Select Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration.
- Enter your Measurement ID.
- Optional: Add any parameters you'd like to configure in Fields to Set. Use recommended event parameter names for best results.
- Optional: Add any custom user properties that you'd like to configure in User Properties. Note: Analytics automatically logs some user properties. You can set up to 25 additional user properties per Google Analytics 4 property.
- Optional: Use Advanced Settings to set a Tag Firing Priority or use Tag Sequencing to help ensure that the Configuration tag fires before any other event tags that require it.
- Click Triggering and select appropriate triggers that would cause the tag to fire, e.g. "All Pages", so that the configuration tag fires on all pages of your website.
- Save the tag configuration and publish your container.
Now that you've added a Google Analytics 4 property
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 in your Google Analytics 4 property 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 GA4 Setup Assistant 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.
