Why is Google Analytics 4 So Bad?

If you work in marketing or run an online business, you’ve definitely heard the name Google Analytics 4, or GA4. It’s the mandatory replacement for the classic Universal Analytics (UA) we all used for years, and it represents a massive change in how we measure website and app performance. This article will break down exactly what GA4 is, how it differs from its predecessor, and what you need to know to get comfortable with it.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

What Is Google Analytics 4? A Quick Overview

Google Analytics 4 is the latest and now only version of Google's free analytics platform. Its primary job is still the same: to help you understand how users are finding and interacting with your website and mobile apps. However, the way it collects and organizes that data is completely different from what we were used to with Universal Analytics.

The biggest change is the shift from a session-based model to an event-based model. Instead of grouping all of a user's actions into a "session," GA4 treats every single interaction - a page view, a button click, a form submission, a video play - as a distinct event. This change was designed to provide a more flexible and unified view of the user journey, especially as they move between your website and your app.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

GA4 vs. Universal Analytics: The Key Differences

Moving from Universal Analytics to GA4 felt like learning a new language for many marketers. The interface, the metrics, and the underlying philosophy are fundamentally different. Here are the most important distinctions you'll encounter.

The Event-Based Data Model

This is the most important concept to grasp. It’s the foundation for everything else in GA4.

• Universal Analytics (UA): Session-Centric. UA was built around the idea of a session, which is a group of user interactions within a given time frame (typically 30 minutes of inactivity). Metrics like Pageviews, Bounce Rate, and Pages/Session were all based on this container structure. It was like thinking of a website visit as a single chapter in a book.
• Google Analytics 4: Event-Centric. In GA4, everything is an event. There are no different "hit types" like pageview, social, or transaction hits. A page view is an event called page_view. A click is an event called click. A purchase is an event called purchase. This flat structure makes tracking more flexible and standardized across web and app platforms. It's less like a book chapter and more like a detailed timeline of every action a user takes.

Combined Web + App Tracking

One of the biggest limitations of Universal Analytics was its inability to easily track users across different devices and platforms. A customer might discover you on their mobile app but make a purchase later on your desktop website, and UA would often see these as two unrelated users.

GA4 solves this by design. Within a single GA4 property, you can set up multiple "data streams" - one for your website, one for your iOS app, and one for your Android app. GA4 then uses multiple identifiers (like user ID, cookies, and Google signals) to stitch together a single user journey, giving you a far more accurate picture of customer behavior.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Out-of-the-Box Tracking with Enhanced Measurement

Getting useful data out of Universal Analytics often required quite a bit of setup, using custom code or Google Tag Manager to track things like file downloads, video plays, or clicks on external links.

GA4 makes this much simpler with a feature called Enhanced Measurement. When you set up a web data stream, GA4 can automatically track a handful of important user interactions without you needing to write any additional code. These include:

• Scrolls: When a user scrolls 90% of the way down a page.
• Outbound clicks: When a user clicks a link that directs them away from your domain.
• Site search: What users are typing into your website’s search bar.
• Video engagement: Plays, progress, and completes for embedded YouTube videos.
• File downloads: Clicks on links to common file types like PDFs, documents, or spreadsheets.

You can enable or disable these with a simple toggle switch, instantly enriching your data with valuable behavioral insights that previously required a manual setup.

A Complete Overhaul of Reporting and Metrics

Perhaps the most jarring change for long-time UA users is the new reporting interface and the metrics themselves. Some of our old go-to metrics are gone, replaced by new ones with slightly different definitions.

• No More Bounce Rate (Sort of): Bounce Rate - a session with only one pageview - was a classic digital marketing KPI. In GA4, it's gone. It's been replaced by Engaged sessions and Engagement Rate. An "engaged session" is one that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least two pageviews/screenviews. Engagement Rate is simply the percentage of sessions that were engaged. It's a more positive framing that measures what users did do rather than what they didn't do.
• Customization Over Canned Reports: UA had over 100 canned reports for seemingly every purpose. GA4 has far fewer standard reports, encouraging you to build your own using the Explore section. In Explore, you can create free-form explorations, funnel reports, and path explorations - powerful analyses that were previously only available in the paid version of Google Analytics.
• Conversions are Just Flipped Toggles: Setting up "Goals" in Universal Analytics could be a bit clunky. In GA4, any event you're tracking can be turned into a conversion with the flip of a single switch in the Admin panel. Did someone submit a form that generates a generate_lead event? Just mark it as a conversion and you’re done. It’s far more intuitive.

Built for a Cookieless, Privacy-First Future

GA4 was engineered with the reality of increasing data privacy regulations (like GDPR and CCPA) and the imminent death of the third-party cookie in mind. It includes several features that make it more privacy-conscious by default:

• Consent Mode: Allows you to adjust how Google's tags behave based on the consent choices of your users.
• IP Anonymization: This is a default and cannot be turned off. GA4 doesn’t store user IP addresses.
• Shorter Data Retention: You can only keep user-level data for a maximum of 14 months, compared to up to 50 months (or indefinitely) in UA.
• Behavioral Modeling: For users who decline analytics cookies, GA4 can use machine learning to model their behavior based on similar users who did consent. This helps you fill in data gaps while still respecting user privacy.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Why This Transition is a Big Deal

Switching analytics platforms can be a hassle, but this time, it isn't optional. Understanding GA4 isn't just about learning another tool, it's about aligning with the new industry standard.

First and foremost, Universal Analytics stopped collecting new data on July 1, 2023. Any data you see in your old UA property is now historical. Furthermore, Google has started the process of deleting all UA data forever. If you want year-over-year reporting going forward, your history needs to be building inside GA4.

Secondly, GA4 is simply a better tool for the modern web. The user journey is no longer linear and often spans multiple touchpoints on different platforms. GA4's flexible, event-based model is far better equipped to capture that complex reality than the session-based model of a decade before.

Final Thoughts

Google Analytics 4 isn't just an update, it's a complete reimagining of web analytics. It moves us away from fixed, session-based metrics toward a flexible, event-driven model that provides a unified view of the customer journey across your website and apps.

The learning curve for tools like GA4 can be steep, especially when its data is just one piece of your overall marketing puzzle. To see the full picture, you need to combine it with performance data from other platforms like Facebook Ads, Shopify, or HubSpot. With Graphed , you can securely connect all your sources in just a few clicks. From there, you just ask questions in plain English - like "create a dashboard showing GA4 traffic sources and my Shopify revenue for the last month" - and we instantly build auto-updating, shareable reports for you.