What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a platform solution that enables sales and marketing professionals to track, measure, and analyze user behavior on websites in order to achieve better segmentation and targeting of existing and new customers.
What is GA4?
Google Analytics version 4 or GA4 as it is known is the most significant Google Analytics release to date.
What is the tracking ID?
The tracking ID or code is an identifier unique to each user session. Each time a user accesses a webpage, the tracking code, which is a small piece of Javascript code, collects anonymous information on the user interactivity with that webpage. It is identified by the "UA" preceeding the numbers in the ID.
The tracking ID is extremely valuable to businesses, educational institutions, and other such organizations to be able to track the number of users visiting their webpage vs users performing a transaction. This enables experience customization by using the information collected such as the browser being used, the language the browser is set to, the user's device specifications like the OS. It also helps businesses understand the success of the various online marketing efforts like email marketing campaigns, advertisements on websites, advertisements on social media, search engines, etc which enables them to make better marketing investments.
How to find the tracking ID on the Google analytics 4 platform?
Folks new to Google Analytics and running Google Analytics 4 properties, such as I, will not be able to find the tracking ID under the "Tracking Info" section for the "Admin" user or under "Property Settings". In Google Analytics version 4, any property will have a measurement ID in place of the tracking ID. The measurement ID is displayed in the format "G"-ID. It is not a part of its properties any longer and in order to access the tracking ID or measurement ID, the Universal Analytics (UA) property needs to be created.
My assumption for this post is that you have already created an Admin account on analytics.google.com.
1. Go to the Admin account and click on "Create Property"
2. Enter a name for the property followed by timezone configuration.
3. Click on "Show Advanced Options" and enable UA by turning the switch for "Create a Universal Analytics Property" ON. You will also be given an option to select if you only are interested in collecting data for both the Google Analytics 4 property and Universal Analytics property or solely for Universal Analytics. I am going to go ahead and select the option for collecting data for both GA4 and UA. The difference between the 2 properties is something that I will cover in another post.
4. To complete setting up analytics for your website, click on "Next" followed by "Create" and "Finish"
5. In order to locate the measurement ID, you will need to access the "Data Streams" option under "Property", as an Admin user.
You are now ready to use this tracking code on any page of your website to track user behavior.
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