How to Turn On Data Collection in Google Analytics 4

Setting up a new Google Analytics 4 property is just the first step, to unlock its most powerful features, you need to turn on its core data collection settings. This article will guide you through enabling Google Signals, granular location data, and other essential settings to get the rich user insights you need. We'll cover the step-by-step process and explain why each setting is so important for audience building, ad retargeting, and deeper user analysis.

Why Getting GA4 Data Collection Right Matters

In the world of Google's Universal Analytics (the older version), many of these data settings were on by default. In GA4, Google takes a more privacy-centric approach, requiring you to proactively opt-in to collect certain types of user data. While the initial setup for GA4 is straightforward, missing these crucial data collection steps can leave you with significant gaps in your reporting.

When you fail to enable these settings, you give up access to critical information, including:

• Demographic Data: Understand your audience's age, gender, and interests. Without this, your reports on user attributes will remain empty, making it difficult to verify if you're reaching your target persona.
• Cross-Device Tracking: See a more unified view of a user's journey as they move from their phone to their laptop to their tablet. Without it, GA4 sees the same person on different devices as multiple unique users, fragmenting your data and skewing conversion attribution.
• Enhanced Remarketing Lists: Build smarter, more effective audiences for your Google Ads campaigns. Turning on these settings allows you to create highly specific lists based on user behavior and demographics, leading to a better return on ad spend (ROAS).

Think of it this way: a default GA4 setup gives you a basic sketch of your website traffic. Enabling these data collection features turns that sketch into a full-color, detailed portrait of your users, empowering you to make much smarter marketing decisions.

Activating Google Signals: The Key to Richer User Data

The single most important data collection setting to enable in GA4 is Google Signals. This feature is Google's system for associating website visit information with the Google accounts of users who are signed in and have turned on Ads Personalization. When you activate it, GA4 can collect more robust data for cross-device reporting and build sophisticated remarketing audiences.

Enabling Google Signals is what unlocks most of the anonymized and aggregated demographic and interest data. Here’s how to turn it on.

Step 1: Navigate to the Admin Panel

Start by logging into your Google Analytics account. Once you're on the dashboard, look for the gear icon labeled Admin in the bottom-left corner of your screen. Click on it to access the settings for your account and property.

Step 2: Go to Data Settings > Data Collection

In the Admin panel, you'll see two columns: Account and Property. Under the Property column, which represents your specific website or app, find the section called Data Settings. Click on the Data Collection option within this section.

Step 3: Get Started with Google Signals

You'll land on the Data Collection page. The first option at the top will be for Google Signals data collection. Click the blue Get started button.

A new panel will appear explaining what Google Signals does. It will highlight the benefits, such as enhanced cross-device tracking and access to remarketing features. Click Continue to proceed.

Step 4: Activate Google Signals

The next screen provides one final overview. Before you can activate it, Google requires you to acknowledge certain policies, as this feature involves collecting data for ads personalization. Once you're ready, click the blue Activate button.

That's it! Once activated, you should see that the toggle for "Enable Google Signals data collection" is on. Your GA4 property will now begin collecting this enhanced user data. Keep in mind it can take 24-48 hours before this new data starts to appear in your Demographics reports.

Enabling Granular Location and Device Data

Right below the Google Signals toggle, you'll find another setting for "Granular location and device data collection." This setting allows GA4 to collect more detailed, but still anonymized, information about a user's geography (city level) and device specifics (e.g., screen resolution).

By default, this setting is enabled for all regions. However, you can manage this on a per-region basis. For instance, if privacy regulations in a specific country require you to be less granular, you can disable it just for that region by clicking the gear icon.

For most businesses, leaving this on is highly beneficial for understanding things like:

• Which specific cities are driving the most traffic and conversions, helping you focus local SEO or ad spend.
• Which device models and screen resolutions are most common, allowing you to optimize your website design for the best user experience.

Double-check that this setting is enabled to ensure you're getting the most complete location and device information possible.

Controlling and Acknowledging User Data Settings

Also on the Data Collection page is a critical section for "User data collection acknowledgement." Google requires you to formally acknowledge your responsibility to adhere to its policies regarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Ads Personalization.

You’ll notice that you cannot modify certain advanced options until you’ve reviewed and accepted these terms. Follow these steps:

1. On the Data Collection page, find the “User data collection acknowledgement” section.
2. Click on I acknowledge. You'll be asked to review the policies.
3. Once you've reviewed the terms, confirm the acknowledgment.

Never send PII (like names or email addresses) to Google Analytics. This acknowledgment is your formal agreement that you understand this policy and have the necessary privacy policies and user consents in place on your own website, especially for regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Configuring Event Data Retention

Another crucial setting an operator should adjust right after setting up a property is the data retention period. This setting determines how long user-level data (like conversion paths and user behavior for individual users) is stored on Google’s servers before it's automatically deleted.

By default, GA4 sets this to a shockingly short 2 months. This means any deep user-level analysis you want to do on data from three months ago is impossible. For almost all businesses, you’ll want to extend this to the maximum period allowed.

How to Change Your Data Retention Period

1. Navigate back to Admin.
2. Under the Property column, click on Data Settings > Data Retention.
3. You will see a dropdown menu for Event data retention. Simply click on it and change the selection from "2 months" to "14 months".
4. Make sure the option to Reset user data on new activity is toggled ON. This means the 14-month window resets every time a user revisits your site.
5. Click Save.

Changing this setting does not apply retroactively, so the sooner you make this change, the better. This gives you over a year's worth of granular data to use in the Exploration reports, which is invaluable for year-over-year analysis.

How to Confirm Your Data is Being Collected

After you’ve enabled everything, you'll naturally want to confirm it’s all working. Here are a few simple ways to check:

1. Check the Realtime Report

The easiest first check is to visit your own website from a new device or incognito window. Then, in GA4, go to Reports > Realtime. You should see your own visit pop up within a minute. This confirms that basic data collection is functioning correctly.

2. Wait for Demographic Reports to Populate

As mentioned earlier, data from Google Signals can take up to 48 hours to appear. After that period, navigate to Reports > User > User attributes > Demographics details. If you start to see data for age, gender, and interests filtering in, you’ll know Google Signals is active and working.

<em>A quick note:</em> If your site has very low traffic, you may see a "no data available" message due to Google's data thresholds. Thresholding is applied to prevent the identification of individual users. You may need more traffic before these demographic reports fully populate.

3. Look for Remarketing Audience Availability

If you've linked your Google Ads account to GA4, navigate to the Admin panel and click on Audiences. Once Google Signals has been active for a bit, you should be able to create new audiences leveraging demographic and interest data. If those options are available, your data collection settings are good to go.

Final Thoughts

Properly configuring data collection in Google Analytics 4 is a critical one-time task that pays dividends for months and years to come. By enabling Google Signals, maximizing your data retention, and enabling granular device data, you transform GA4 from a simple traffic counter into a powerful user intelligence platform that equips you to make better marketing and business decisions.

Once you have all that rich data flowing from GA4 and your other marketing platforms, the next step is connecting the dots to see the complete picture. Instead of manually exporting reports and trying to stitch them together, we simplify all your marketing and sales analytics. By connecting sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Facebook Ads to Graphed, you can use simple, natural language to instantly build the exact dashboards you need, giving you real-time insights without the busywork.