Google Analytics - GA4 Functional Specification

This functional specification provides an overview of the key features and capabilities of Google Analytics.

The Google Analytics tool is continuously evolving, and additional features and enhancements may be added over time to further enhance its functionality and usefulness for businesses.

On This Page

• Built-in Automation
• Reporting
• Advertising Workspace
• Explorations
• Data Collection and Management
• Integrations

Built-in Automation

Predictive Capabilities - By applying Google’s machine learning models, Analytics can analyze your data and predict future actions people may take, like making a purchase or churning. You can then create audiences that are predicted to take these actions to drive conversions or retain more of your users.

Proactive Insights - Analytics will automatically detect and surface actionable insights from your data like important changes, new trends and other growth opportunities you should be aware of.

Privacy-Safe Modeling - Google’s machine learning models provide a more complete picture of the customer journey, enhancing your understanding of customer behavior and conversions based on your observed, first-party and consented data.

Answers to Your Questions - Ask questions in natural language using the search bar to quickly find the metric, report or insight you are looking for.

Reporting

Real-Time Reporting - Monitor activity on your site or app as it happens.

Acquisition Reports - See how users land on your site or app and understand the effectiveness of your marketing.

• User Acquisition - Discover how users reach your site or app through different paid and organic sources.
• Traffic Acquisition - See a session-based view of traffic and engagement on your site or app through different paid and organic traffic sources.

Engagement Reports - Better understand what content drives engagement and conversions on your site or app.

• Events Report - Get a detailed view of user actions, system events or errors.
• Conversion Report - See how all your marketing channels are working together to drive conversions.
• Pages and Screen Report - See which web pages and app screens users engage with the most.

Monetization Reports - See how much revenue your site or app generates whether it is from ecommerce, subscriptions or ads.

• Ecommerce - Analyze purchase activity including product and transaction information, average purchase revenue, average purchase revenue per user and other data.
• In-App Purchase - Improve your app monetization with insights about the highest performing products and subscriptions.
• Publisher Ads - See ad revenue that your app generates using Google Analytics for Firebase SDK.

Data Freshness (Analytics 360 Only) - Get continuous intraday data via Analytics 360’s interface and the API. Data usually appears within an hour after collection, so you can make faster decisions.

Sub-Properties (Analytics 360 Only) - Create separate views of your data for different countries or product lines.

Roll-Up Reporting (Analytics 360 Only) - Get a combined view of all data from your Analytics 360 properties to see global metrics, or create separate views of data across countries or product lines.

Advertising Workspace

Advertising Snapshot - Quickly address everyday advertising needs and unlock deeper insights into your campaign performance from Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Search Ads 360.

Attribution - Understand the value of your marketing with cross-platform attribution reporting to evaluate each touchpoint in your marketing funnel.

• Data-Driven Attribution - Use Google’s machine learning to understand the contribution of each touchpoint in your marketing funnel.
• Conversion Path Report - Understand your customers’ paths to conversion, and how different attribution models distribute credit on those paths.
• Model Comparison Report - Compare how different attribution models impact the valuation of your marketing channels.

Explorations

Free-Form Exploration - Conduct ad-hoc analysis by dragging and dropping multiple variables — the different segments, dimensions, and metrics you use to measure your business — onto a canvas to see instant visualizations of your data.

Funnel Exploration - Visualize the steps users take to complete tasks on your site or app, and see how you can optimize user experience and identify over- or under-performing audiences — with both open and closed funnel options.

Segment Overlap - See how different user segments relate to each other. Use this technique to identify new segments of users who meet complex criteria.

Path Exploration - Visualize your users’ paths to conversion as they interact with your website and app.

Cohort Exploration - Gain insight into the behavior and performance changes of users grouped by common attributes.

User Exploration - Select specific groups of users and drill down deeper to understand how those users engage with your site or app.

User Lifetime - Explore user behavior and value over their lifetime as a customer.

Backwards Pathing - Work backwards from a conversion or other key event and analyze the differences, trends, or patterns in the paths users took to get there.

Unsampled Explorations - Create unsampled explorations to access raw data, run more advanced analysis, and discover more granular insights. And in Analytics 360, run unsampled explorations for up to 50 billion events per day.

Data Collection and Management

Collection APIs - Analytics supports Javascript libraries, mobile app SDKs, and an open measurement protocol that allow you to import interaction data from any internet-connected third-party system.

Tag Management Support - Analytics is supported by all leading tag management systems and works seamlessly with Google Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360.

Admin API - Manage your Analytics configuration programmatically with our admin API.

Custom Definitions - Import customized data easily. Custom definitions, including custom dimensions and metrics, can measure a variety of structured or unstructured text or measurements.

Data Import - Securely import your first-party data and use it with your Analytics data for a more complete view of the customer journey.

Google BigQuery Export - An integration with Google BigQuery allows you to seamlessly export your Analytics data to BigQuery where you can conduct interactive analysis of up to trillions of rows of data, join multiple data sources, do advanced predictive modeling, and more.

Enhanced Limits (Analytics 360 Only) - Analytics 360 has higher limits for up to 125 custom dimensions, 400 audiences, and 50 conversion types.

Automatic Custom Tables (Analytics 360 Only) - Get fast, high cardinality tables for your most important data sets automatically with automatic custom tables.

Integrations

Google Ads - See your Ads data together with your website and app performance data in the Google Ads reports in Analytics. You can also import your Analytics conversions and audiences into your Google Ads account.

Display & Video 360 - See and analyze your Display & Video 360 data in Analytics. Export conversions created in Analytics and use them for automated bidding in Display & Video 360. Create audiences in Analytics and use them in Display & Video 360.

Search Ads 360 - See and analyze your Search Ads 360 data in Analytics. Export conversions created in Analytics and use them for automated bidding in Search Ads 360. Create audiences in Analytics and use them in Search Ads 360.

Google Cloud - With a built-in connection to BigQuery, Google Cloud’s enterprise data warehouse, you can easily join Analytics data with other datasets and unlock BigQuery’s powerful tools for identifying insights.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Integration - Data from Analytics is visible in the Marketing Cloud reporting UI for a more complete understanding of campaign performance. Your Marketing Cloud emails will be automatically tagged with UTM parameters so that you can use Analytics to understand how effective your emails are.

Google Ad Manager - Apply your Analytics insights to Google Ad Manager to optimize the user experience on your sites and apps, and improve monetization.

Google AdMob - Measure your AdMob app revenue.

Google Play - Track Google Play purchase and subscription revenue for your app.

Google Search Console - See Search Console data in Analytics and get insight into which Search queries drove users to your site, and how your organic Search performance translates to on-site action.