How to Set Up Google Analytics 4 Step by Step

You know people visit your website. What you probably don’t know is which ads, posts and emails bring the visitors who actually call, book or buy. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can tell you, but only if it is set up properly. A rushed install with default settings collects page views and little else.

The good news is that a solid GA4 setup takes an afternoon, not a week. You need admin access to your website or website builder, a Google account and a clear list of the actions that matter to your business.

This walkthrough covers each step in order: creating the property, installing the tag, choosing key events, adjusting the settings most people miss, setting up consent and linking the other Google tools you use.

Before you open Analytics, gather 4 things.

• A business Google account that you control, not one belonging to a former employee or agency. You can add others as users later.
• Website admin access, or access to your website builder or Google Tag Manager.
• Your list of key actions, such as form submissions, phone clicks, bookings, purchases or newsletter signups.
• Your consent approach. If you show a cookie banner or serve visitors in Europe, know which consent management tool you use.

If you already have an Analytics account, you can add a new property to it instead of creating a new account. You need Editor access or above at the account level.

Step 1: Create your account and property

1. Go to Google Analytics and sign in.
2. Open Admin, click Create, then choose Account (if you don’t have one) or Property.
3. Enter a property name, such as your business name plus “website”.
4. Choose your reporting time zone and currency. Get these right now, because they affect how days and revenue are reported.
5. Pick your industry category, business size and how you plan to use Analytics, then click Create.

An account is the top level for your business. A property holds the data for one website or app. Most small businesses need 1 account and 1 property.

Step 2: Add a data stream and install the Google tag

A data stream is the source of data for a property. For a website, choose Web, enter your site’s URL and give the stream a name.

Google then prompts you to set up the Google tag. You have 4 options.

Use only one method. Google warns against adding more than one tag per page, because duplicate tags double-count visits.

To check it works, visit your site in another browser tab and open the Realtime report. Data can take up to 30 minutes to appear.

Step 3: Review enhanced measurement

Enhanced measurement tracks common interactions without extra code. In Admin, open Data streams, select your web stream and review the enhanced measurement toggle. It can collect:

• Page views (always on)
• Scrolls, recorded when a visitor reaches 90% of the page
• Outbound link clicks
• Site search
• Video engagement on embedded YouTube videos
• File downloads
• Form interactions, including form starts and submits

Leave the useful ones on. If your forms are built with tools that don’t send standard submit events, check that form submissions are recorded correctly before relying on them.

Step 4: Set up key events

Key events are the actions that matter most to your business. Google renamed “conversions” to “key events” in GA4 in 2024 to separate them from Google Ads conversions, which you now create by importing key events into a linked Ads account.

To mark an event as a key event:

1. In Admin, under Data display, open Events.
2. Find the event in the Recent events tab.
3. Click the star icon to mark it as a key event.

If the action you need isn’t tracked yet, create a new event from an existing one. For example, you can create a “thank_you_page” event when the page path contains /thank-you, then mark it as a key event. Standard properties can have up to 30 key events, which is plenty for most businesses.

Key takeaway: Pick 3 to 5 key events that represent real business outcomes. If everything is a key event, nothing is, and your reports become impossible to act on.

Step 5: Adjust the settings most people miss

These take a few minutes and make your data far more useful.

Data retention. In Admin, under Data collection and modification, open Data retention. Standard properties can keep user-level and event-level data for 2 months or 14 months. Choose 14 months if you want year-over-year comparisons in explorations and funnel reports. Standard aggregated reports aren’t affected by this setting.

Internal traffic filter. Visits from your own team skew results, especially on small sites. In your web stream’s tag settings, define internal traffic by your office IP address, then activate the internal traffic data filter.

Unwanted referrals. If customers leave your site to pay through a third-party payment page and return, list that domain as an unwanted referral so the sale isn’t credited to the payment provider.

Cross-domain measurement. If your booking or checkout runs on a different domain, configure the domains in the tag settings so one visit isn’t split into 2.

Google signals. This setting adds data from signed-in Google users for features such as cross-device reporting. Review it alongside your privacy policy before turning it on.

Step 6: Configure consent settings

Consent mode tells Google tags whether a visitor agreed to analytics and advertising cookies. It works with your existing cookie banner or consent management platform. It doesn’t create a banner for you.

Consent mode version 2, introduced in late 2023, added 2 settings, ad_user_data and ad_personalization, alongside the original ad_storage and analytics_storage. For visitors in the European Economic Area, Google requires advertisers to collect consent and pass these signals to keep using measurement, ad personalization and remarketing features, a requirement that took effect in March 2024.

There are 2 ways to implement it:

• Basic: Google tags stay blocked until a visitor consents. No data is sent if they decline.
• Advanced: Tags load first and send cookieless pings when consent is declined, which lets Analytics use modeling to fill gaps.

In the US, rules vary by state, and several states give consumers the right to opt out of targeted advertising. Review the state data privacy laws that apply to your customers, and update your privacy policy to mention Analytics. This is not legal advice.

Step 7: Link Google Ads and Search Console

Linking turns GA4 from a traffic counter into a marketing tool.

• Google Ads: In Admin, under Product links, link your Ads account. Then import your key events as conversions so campaigns can optimize toward real outcomes. Our guide to Google Ads for beginners covers campaign setup.
• Search Console: Linking it adds organic search queries and landing page data to Analytics. If you haven’t set it up, start with our Google Search Console guide.

Then tag the links in your emails, social posts and other campaigns with UTM parameters so GA4 can tell exactly which campaign sent each visitor.

Where to start once data is flowing

Give GA4 a week or 2 to collect data, then check these reports.

1. Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition to see which channels bring visitors and key events.
2. Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens to see which pages people use.
3. Reports > Engagement > Events to confirm your key events are firing.
4. Advertising > Attribution to compare channels once Ads is linked.

From there, set a monthly review. Pair GA4 data with sales from your POS or CRM to measure marketing ROI, and consider a simple business dashboard so the numbers that matter are in one place.

Conclusion

A good GA4 setup comes down to 7 steps: create the property, install one Google tag, review enhanced measurement, mark a few key events, fix data retention and filters, configure consent and link your other Google tools. Do it once and do it properly, and you’ll have data you can trust when you decide where to spend your next marketing dollar.

Sources

• Google Analytics Help: Add a property and set up a data stream — property creation, Google tag install options and Realtime verification
• Google Analytics Help: Enhanced measurement events — events collected automatically
• Google Analytics Help: Key events — marking key events and the 30 key event limit
• Google Analytics Help: Data retention — 2-month and 14-month retention options and what they affect
• Google Analytics Help: About consent mode — consent types and basic versus advanced implementation
• Google Tag Manager Help: Updates to consent mode for EEA traffic — consent mode v2 requirements for EEA users