Google Analytics 4 works differently from the older Universal Analytics. Instead of sessions and page views as the main building blocks, GA4 records everything as an event. Understanding events is the key to getting useful reports.
What is an event?
An event is any recorded interaction, such as a page view, a click, a form submission or a purchase. Some events are collected automatically. Others are recommended by Google, and you can also create custom events for actions specific to your business.
What is a key event?
A key event is an event you mark as especially important to your business, such as a lead form submission or a purchase. In earlier versions of GA4 these were called conversions. Google now calls them key events in Analytics, although Google Ads still uses the word conversions for its own conversion actions.
Plan your tracking before you build it
- List the actions that show a visitor is valuable: enquiries, calls, bookings, purchases.
- Decide the event for each action and give it a clear, consistent name.
- Mark the important ones as key events.
- Decide which reports and channels you want to compare.
Where Google Tag Manager helps
Google Tag Manager lets you add and change tracking without editing your website code each time. It is commonly used to send events when someone clicks a button, submits a form or reaches a confirmation page.
Test before you trust it
- Use GA4 DebugView to watch events arrive in real time.
- Complete the actions yourself and confirm each one is recorded once.
- Check that your own visits are not distorting the data.
- Link GA4 with Google Ads if you want to use your key events there.
Getting help
A clean GA4 setup means you can trust your numbers when you decide where to spend time and money. If your current setup is missing, broken or confusing, we can install and configure GA4 and Tag Manager and build reports you can actually use.
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