Thread by @CharlesFarina

Here are 10 of my favorite things you can do with Google Analytics 4 that you could never do with Universal.

1. Audience Conversions - In GA3, you could only have conversions based on a page or event. In GA4, you can have audience-based conversions.

2. Elapsed Time - GA3 did a terrible job at measuring time. It only could measure time per page, session, and user, and it never worked well.

GA4 rebuilt time, so you can now measure the time between interactions. Build any funnel you want and easily see the exact time it takes

3. Funnels - GA3 didn't have funnels that you'd ever want to show another human. The enterprise funnels that were only in GA360 are now available for everyone.

4. Trended Funnels - The funnels in GA4, have improved features that weren't even in the GA360 version. Let's say you wanted to analyze how your funnel performed over the past year. GA4 has trended funnels

5. Event Scoped Segments - GA3 only offered user or session scoped segments. If you wanted to only return data about your blog and nothing else, segments couldn't help.

GA4 has event scoped segments to isolate precisely the events you want (and nothing else)

6. Pathing - The flow reports were another part of GA3 that never helped anyone.

Pathing has been rebuilt in GA4. You can do backward and forwards pathing. Start with a conversion you care about and see what pages or events preceded it.

7. Debugging - DebugView was an excellent addition for Mobile Apps/Firebase in that it allowed you to get a real-time stream of test data in the UI. GA4 now provides this for the web.

Simply entering preview mode in Google Tag Manager sends data to this new debug report.

8. Flexible Conversions - Has anyone used Google Analytics for a while and run out of goals? You can't delete them.

GA4 provides you 30 conversions, and more importantly, you can archive them to free up slots. This includes support for seasonal and campaign-based conversions.

9. Dimension / Metric Scoping - Ever try and use page and session in a GA3 report? Hopefully not because that dimension/metric is incompatible and returns incorrect data.

The new GA4 data model solves many of the scoping issues that plagued us. Page + session work 😀

10. Free BigQuery Integration - There is/was no good way to get data out of GA3. It only provides simple report exports. Only GA360 customers had access to the raw data.

GA4 provides everyone the ability to build a marketing data warehouse. Connect your CRM with GA4 easily!

Thinking later this week I'll make another thread for my top ten feature GA4 requests/improvements needed.