Google Analytics 4 Web Destination

Google Analytics 4 is Google’s new Analytics property, which you can use for both websites and applications. Google Analytics 4 has machine learning at its core to help surface insights and give you a more complete understanding of your customers across devices and platforms.

When you have Segment installed, you can use your existing tracking implementation to fulfill your data collection needs with Google Analytics 4. When you enable the Google Analytics 4 Web destination, Segment loads the gtag.js library for you. Remove the native gtag.js script from your page to avoid duplicate data.

Getting started

Before you connect Segment to Google Analytics 4, configure a Google Analytics 4 property in your Analytics account. For more information, see Google’s article Set up Analytics for a website and/or app.

To connect the Google Analytics 4 Web destination:

1. From the Segment web app, click Catalog, then click Destinations.
2. Search for “Google Analytics 4 Web” in the Destinations Catalog, and select the destination.
3. Click Configure Google Analytics 4 Web.
4. Select the web source that will send data to Google Analytics 4 and follow the steps to name your destination. The web source chosen must use Analytics.js 2.0.
5. On the Settings tab, under Basic Settings, enter in the Measurement ID associated with your GA4 web stream.
6. Set up your event mappings by following the steps in the Destinations Actions documentation on Customizing mappings.
7. Analytics.js requires an initial Page call to send data to Google Analytics 4 Web. The Segment snippet includes this initial call by default.

After you’ve set up at least one event in your Mappings tab, you can see your events and parameters using the Google Realtime and DebugView reports. These two reports show you the events users trigger on your website as they occur. The DebugView report requires additional configuration before you can use it.

Some parameters automatically populate prebuilt dimensions and metrics in Google Analytics. For example, the parameters on the automatically collected and enhanced measurement events and the required and optional parameters you send with the recommended events both populate pre-built dimensions and metrics.

With custom parameters, you must create custom dimensions and metrics so you can see the parameter values in Google Analytics.

Custom Events

Google Analytics 4 does not accept custom event names that include spaces. Segment replaces spaces in the Event Name in the Custom Event action with an underscore. As a result, you will see custom events snake cased in Google Analytics 4.

Event names are case-sensitive in Google Analytics 4. If you would like all event names to be lowercase, use the Lowercase Event Name setting when you create a Custom Event mapping and select Yes from the dropdown. If this setting is disabled, Google will treat event names with different casing as distinct events.

Keep in mind that custom events will not appear in Google’s standard reports; you will need to set up custom reports for meaningful analysis.

Custom Dimensions and Metrics

With Google Analytics 4, you must create custom dimensions and metrics within the Google Analytics 4 interface to link event parameters to the corresponding custom dimensions or metrics. When creating the dimension or metric, you can either select a parameter from the list of already collected fields or enter the name of the parameter you plan to collect in the future. For more information, see Google Analytics 4 Custom dimensions and metrics.

Understanding Event Parameters

Parameters provide additional information about the ways users interact with your website. For example, when someone views a product you sell, you can include parameters that describe the product they viewed, like product_name, category, and price.

The automatically collected and enhanced measurement events include parameters by default. Google also provides a set of required and optional parameters to include with each recommended event. Additionally, you can add more event parameters when you need them.

Conversion Events

Some of Segment’s prebuilt Available Actions which map to Google’s recommended events are automatically marked as a conversion in your Analytics dashboard. For example, when you add a “Order Completed” event, it will show up in your Analytics dashboard as “purchase” with the Mark as conversion toggle toggled on by default. However, for other events, such as “Add to Cart”, you will need to manually toggle the Mark as conversion setting on in your Analytics dashboard. If you don’t mark the event as a conversion, it will not show up as a conversion in your built-in reports. You can read more about conversion events in Google’s docs.

Destination Settings

Setting	Description
Allow Ad Personalization Signals	Required. Set to false to disable all advertising features. Set to true by default.
Allow Google Signals	Required. Set to false to disable all advertising features. Set to true by default.
Cookie Domain	Required. Specifies the domain used to store the analytics cookie. Set to “auto” by default.
Cookie Expiration In Seconds	Required. Every time a hit is sent to GA4, the analytics cookie expiration time is updated to be the current time plus the value of this field. The default value is two years (63072000 seconds). Please input the expiration value in seconds. More information in Google Documentation
Cookie Flag	Required. Appends additional flags to the analytics cookie. See write a new cookie for some examples of flags to set.
Cookie Path	Required. Specifies the subpath used to store the analytics cookie.
Cookie Prefix	Required. Specifies a prefix to prepend to the analytics cookie name.
Cookie Update	Required. Set to false to not update cookies on each page load. This has the effect of cookie expiration being relative to the first time a user visited. Set to true by default so update cookies on each page load.
Default Ads Storage Consent State	Required. The default value for ad cookies consent state. This is only used if Enable Consent Mode is on. Set to “granted” if it is not explicitly set. Consent state can be updated for each user in the Set Configuration Fields action.
Default Analytics Storage Consent State	Required. The default value for analytics cookies consent state. This is only used if Enable Consent Mode is on. Set to “granted” if it is not explicitly set. Consent state can be updated for each user in the Set Configuration Fields action.
Enable Consent Mode	Required. Set to true to enable Google’s Consent Mode. Set to false by default.
Measurement ID	Required. The measurement ID associated with the web stream. Found in the Google Analytics UI under: Admin > Data Streams > Web > Measurement ID.
Page Views	Required. Set to false to prevent the default snippet from sending page views. Enabled by default.
Wait Time to Update Consent State	Required. If your CMP loads asynchronously, it might not always run before the Google tag. To handle such situations, specify a millisecond value to control how long to wait before the consent state update is sent. Please input the wait_for_update in milliseconds.

Available Presets

Google Analytics 4 Web has the following presets:

Preset Name	Trigger	Default Action
Set Configuration Fields	Event type = "page" Event type = "identify"	Set Configuration Fields

Available Actions

Build your own Mappings. Combine supported triggers with the following Google Analytics 4 Web-supported actions:

• Add to Cart

• Search

• Select Item

• View Item List

• Sign Up

• Custom Event

• Refund

• Add Payment Info

• View Cart

• Set Configuration Fields

• Purchase

• View Promotion

• Add to Wishlist

• Remove from Cart

• Generate Lead

• Select Promotion

• View Item

• Begin Checkout

• Login

Add to Cart

This event signifies that an item was added to a cart for purchase.

Add to Cart is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Product Added"

Click to show / hide fields

Search

The term that was searched for.

Search is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Products Searched"

Click to show / hide fields

Select Item

This event signifies an item was selected from a list.

Select Item is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Product Clicked"

Click to show / hide fields

View Item List

Log this event when the user has been presented with a list of items of a certain category.

View Item List is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Product List Viewed"

Click to show / hide fields

Sign Up

The method used for sign up.

Sign Up is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Signed Up"

Click to show / hide fields

Custom Event

Send any custom event

Custom Event is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track"

Click to show / hide fields

Refund

This event signifies when one or more items is refunded to a user.

Refund is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Order Refunded"

Click to show / hide fields

Add Payment Info

Send event when a user submits their payment information

Add Payment Info is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Payment Info Entered"

Click to show / hide fields

View Cart

This event signifies that a user viewed their cart.

View Cart is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Cart Viewed"

Click to show / hide fields

Set Configuration Fields

Set custom values for the GA4 configuration fields.

Set Configuration Fields is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "identify" or type = "page"

Click to show / hide fields

Purchase

This event signifies when one or more items is purchased by a user.

Purchase is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Order Completed"

Click to show / hide fields

View Promotion

This event signifies a promotion was viewed from a list.

View Promotion is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Promotion Viewed"

Click to show / hide fields

Add to Wishlist

The event signifies that an item was added to a wishlist. Use this event to identify popular gift items in your app.

Add to Wishlist is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Product Added to Wishlist"

Click to show / hide fields

Remove from Cart

This event signifies that an item was removed from a cart.

Remove from Cart is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Product Removed"

Click to show / hide fields

Generate Lead

Log this event when a lead has been generated to understand the efficacy of your re-engagement campaigns.

Generate Lead is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track"

Click to show / hide fields

Select Promotion

This event signifies a promotion was selected from a list.

Select Promotion is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Promotion Clicked"

Click to show / hide fields

View Item

This event signifies that some content was shown to the user. Use this event to discover the most popular items viewed.

View Item is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Product Viewed"

Click to show / hide fields

Begin Checkout

This event signifies that a user has begun a checkout.

Begin Checkout is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Checkout Started"

Click to show / hide fields

Login

Send event when a user logs in

Login is a Web action. The default Trigger is: type = "track" and event = "Signed In"

Click to show / hide fields

FAQ & Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

The Google Analytics 4 debug mode is supported with the Google Analytics 4 Web destination. DebugView displays the events and user properties that Analytics collects from a user in real-time. This can be helpful in troubleshooting your implementation.

Send events from both the browser and the server

With Google Analytics 4 Web, events are sent from the browser to GA4. If you use Segment’s Google Analytics 4 Cloud destination to send events through the API and tie data between client-side and server-side, you need to pass the same Client ID from the browser and the server. To do this, fetch the Gtag-generated clientId on the web client and pass it to Segment as a property. For more information, see Google Analytics 4 destination: User Identification on the next steps.

Additional (unmapped) events are sent to GA4

Google Analytics 4 collects events triggered by basic interactions with your site. For more information, see Google Analytics 4 Automatically collected events

Data takes a long time to appear in Google’s reports

Google may take 24-48 hours to process data sent to Google Analytics. As a result, the Google Analytics user interface may not reflect the most current data. The Google Analytics Realtime report displays activity on your site as it happens.

Data is not sent to Google

In order for data to be sent downstream to Google Analytics, check your mappings to ensure that:

1. The setConfigurationFields mapping is enabled in your mappings.
2. You’ve added at least one other event mapping for an event you want to send to Google Analytics.

The setConfigurationFields mapping is required in order for data to be sent downstream. If no other mappings are enabled, the destination does not send events.

Manually send page_view events

If you prefer to the keep Page Views setting disabled and manually send a page_view, please see this Google Doc for more on Manual Pageviews.

With Google Analytics 4 Web, you will need to configure a Custom Event mapping for manually sending page_view events. When mapping the events, please make sure to set the Event Name to page_view.

Tracking UTM Parameters

UTM Parameters are automatically tracked and sent to Google when they are present in the URL. For example, with the following URL: https://www.example.com/?utm_content=email_variation1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email_promo&utm_campaign=summer_sale&utm_id=abcd

Without any further configuration, traffic-source data for campaign, campaign_id, content, medium, and source will populate in GA4. This can be observed on Google’s side by triggering a Page call with UTM parameters present in the URL and navigating to the Realtime overview report in GA4 to see the resulting page_view event under the Event count by Event name card.

Differences between Google Analytics 4 Cloud and Google Analytics 4 Web destinations

Segment’s Google Analytics 4 Cloud server-side destination uses Google’s Measurement Protocol API to send event data server to server, whereas Segment’s Google Analytics 4 Web device-mode destination loads the gtag.js library client-side and uses Segment’s event data to map to gtag.js events directly. Each destination has its own advantages and disadvantages. Your choice between the two will depend on your specific use case, technical expertise, and the platforms from which you want to track data.