Google Analytics

Google Analytics is Google's analytics service for understanding how people find and use websites and apps. The current version, often called GA4, collects both website and app data and measures everything as events, such as a page view, a scroll, a form submission or a purchase. The older Universal Analytics has stopped processing data.

Events that matter to the business are marked as key events, such as a lead form submission, a phone click or a completed checkout. Google Analytics also includes privacy controls, modeling for gaps in measurement and direct links to Google Ads.

What Google Analytics reports

• Traffic sources, campaigns and landing pages
• Events and key events such as leads and purchases
• User paths through the site
• E-commerce revenue by product and channel
• Audiences that can be shared with Google Ads

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that controls which tracking tags fire on a site and when, without editing site code for every change. Most GA4 setups use Tag Manager to send events such as form submissions, phone and email clicks and checkout steps.

Why setup matters

Default GA4 installs measure page views but often miss the actions that matter. Common problems include forms that are not tracked, duplicate tags that double-count conversions, internal traffic mixed with customer traffic and key events that do not match what the business counts as a lead. A reliable setup defines key events on purpose, tests each one and checks that numbers line up with the CRM and ad platforms.

Google Analytics fits nearly every business website and is free to use. Businesses with phone leads should pair it with call tracking, since GA4 can record a tap on a phone number but cannot see whether the call connected, how long it lasted or whether the caller became a customer.