About this video

• Video Title: Why GA4 ‘Out of the Box’ Sucks (And How to Fix It with Custom Definitions)
• Channel: MeasureU
• Speakers: Jeff (Host), Josh Silverbower
• Duration: 00:48:24

Overview

This video explains why the default Google Analytics 4 (GA4) setup is insufficient for most businesses and demonstrates how to enhance it using custom definitions. The discussion highlights the limitations of GA4's out-of-the-box tracking and emphasizes the importance of customization to gain valuable business insights. It covers creating custom dimensions, metrics, and calculated metrics to tailor GA4 to specific business needs, and provides practical guidance on implementation using Google Tag Manager.

Key takeaways

• GA4's Limited Out-of-the-Box Functionality: GA4, by default, tracks only a basic set of events without essential context, unlike Universal Analytics which was more comprehensive.
• The Need for Customization: To derive meaningful insights, GA4 requires customization through custom definitions, allowing businesses to track specific events, user properties, and item data relevant to their operations.
• Types of Custom Definitions: GA4 offers custom dimensions (event, user, item scope), custom metrics, and calculated metrics, each serving different purposes in data enrichment and analysis.
• Proactive Setup is Crucial: Custom definitions only collect data from the moment they are implemented. It's important to set them up proactively to avoid missing historical data.
• Measurement Plan is Key: A well-defined measurement plan that aligns with business objectives is essential for identifying what truly needs to be tracked, ensuring that custom definitions provide valuable, actionable data rather than just noise.
• Google Tag Manager Integration: Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a powerful tool for implementing custom dimensions by capturing and sending specific data points (like click text or URL) as event parameters to GA4.
• Value Beyond Default Reports: Custom definitions enable more robust analysis and reporting, often requiring data export to tools like BigQuery and visualization in Looker Studio, transforming GA4 into a data structure rather than just an all-in-one interface.

Proactive setup of custom definitions is important in GA4 because the data collection for these definitions only begins from the moment they are implemented. Any data prior to their implementation will not be captured, which can lead to incomplete historical analysis and missed insights. Setting them up proactively ensures that you start collecting valuable, contextualized data as soon as possible.

The video advises using custom definitions to enhance the "out-of-the-box" data in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) by adding context to events and user properties that are not tracked by default. Specifically, it recommends:

• Custom Dimensions: To capture more detailed information about events and users. Examples given include:
  • Video Title and Video URL: To understand which specific videos users are engaging with when a "video play" event occurs.
  • Search Term: To know what users are searching for on the website.
  • Click Text and Click URL: To track specific outbound links or calls-to-action (CTAs) that users click, and to identify which game cards users are clicking on in the example provided.
  • User Properties: Such as industry or revenue range for B2B sites, or purchase history for e-commerce.
• Custom Metrics: For tracking numerical data that GA4 doesn't natively provide or that requires specific aggregation. An example used is creating custom scroll metrics (e.g., 25%, 35%, 50%, 75%, 100% scroll depth) to calculate an average scroll depth per page, which is more granular than the default scroll metric.
• Calculated Metrics: To derive new metrics by combining existing ones using formulas. The video suggests this can be useful for creating funnel conversion rates, such as "add to cart to begin checkout rate" or "begin checkout to purchase rate."

Essentially, the advice is to identify business questions and then implement custom definitions that provide the necessary data to answer those questions, making GA4 more tailored and valuable to the specific business.

To activate custom definitions to capture and read the "search term" in GA4, you need to perform these steps:

1. Identify if "search_term" is already a parameter:

   • GA4 automatically tracks some search events. The parameter for the search term is often search_term. You can verify this by looking at your existing event data. Go to Reports > Engagement > Events. Find a search-related event (like view_search_results) and click on it. Look at the "Parameters" card to see if search_term is listed. If it is, you might just need to register it as a custom dimension.

2. Register "search_term" as a Custom Dimension in GA4:

   • Navigate to Admin (gear icon in the bottom left).
   • In the Property column, go to Data display > Custom definitions.
   • Click the Create custom dimensions button.
   • Dimension name: Enter a clear name, like "Search Term".
   • Scope: Select Event. The search term is associated with the specific search event.
   • Description: (Optional) Add a brief description, e.g., "The term searched by the user on the website."
   • Event parameter: Enter search_term (or whatever the actual parameter name is if different).
   • Click Save.

3. Wait for Data Collection:

   • After saving, GA4 will start collecting data for this custom dimension. It can take up to 24-48 hours for new custom dimensions to become fully available in reports and explorations.

4. View Search Terms in Reports/Explorations:

   • Once the data is processed, you can add "Search Term" as a dimension in your GA4 reports and explorations.
   • For example, in the Explore section, create a new exploration (e.g., a Free Form).
   • Under Dimensions, click the "+" icon and search for "Search Term" (or the name you gave it). Import it.
   • Under Metrics, you might use "Event count" or "Active users".
   • Drag "Search Term" to Rows and "Event count" to Values. This will show you the terms users searched for and how many times they were searched.

Important Considerations:

• Ensure Search Tracking is Active: For search_term to be sent to GA4 in the first place, your website must be configured to track searches. This is often done via Google Tag Manager by sending a view_search_results event with the search_term parameter when a user performs a search. If search tracking isn't set up, you'll need to implement that first using GTM.
• Parameter Name Accuracy: It's crucial to use the exact parameter name that your website is sending. If your website sends query instead of search_term, you'll need to use query when creating the custom dimension.
• Data Latency: Remember that data in GA4 has a processing delay. You won't see the search terms immediately after setting up the custom dimension.