Rashid Ali 
In this Google Analytics 4 Guide you will get an overview of the important GA4 features to help you make the transition from the previous version smoothly.
A Guide to Google Analytics 4 Features
When Will Google Analytics 3 (GA3) Also Known as Universal Analytics (UA) & Google Analytics 360 (GA360) Stop Tracking Hits?
Google Analytics 3 (GA3 or Universal Analytics) will stop tracking hits on July 1, 2023, and the newer premium, enterprise edition Google Analytics 360 (GA360) will stop tracking hits on October 1, 2023.See the following answer from Google for more details:
When Should You Start Using Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
Experts advise that you start using Google Analytics 4 (GA4) by July 1, 2022, so that you have one full year’s worth of data in the completely new GA4 platform by July 1, 2023.The phased out GA3/GA360 platform’s data model was based on sessions and pageviews. The new GA4 platform’s data model is based on events and parameters.
See the following answer from Google for more details:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9964640?hl=en#zippy=%2Cin-this-article
About the Google Analytics Platform Transition
On July 1, 2023, Google will switch to their new version of their analytics service — Google Analytics 4. Since Google Analytics is the world’s most popular analytics tool, chances are your site is using it. In this Google Analytics 4 Guide, you will get an overview of the critical Google Analytics 4 features to help you transition from the previous version. You will also find a glossary of all the essential terms to help you fully utilize all the Google Analytics 4 features.
Overview of the New Google Analytics 4 Features
There are lots of new features that are available with Google Analytics 4. The new features revolve around three main improvements with Google Analytics 4 compared to previous versions:
Improved Cross-Platform Integration
Privacy Centric Design
Powerful Custom Reporting Capabilities
True Universal Tracking — Cross-Platform Integration
This feature is perhaps one of the biggest Google Analytics 4 benefits compared to Universal Analytics (Google Analytics 3 — GA3). Before Google Analytics 4, businesses were required to integrate analytics in their app and websites separately. Unfortunately, this also meant the information was analyzed independently on two different Google Analytics properties.
With Google Analytics 4, businesses can now see the visitors’ full information whether they use the app or the website allowing for more complete and accurate decision making.
One area where this cross-platform integration shines is within Google Ads. Customers who use a website on multiple platforms will not be inundated with ads as the new analytics tool will be able to see their entire customer journey.
Another significant benefit of the new Google Analytics 4 features is the availability of Google Artificial Intelligence and Google Machine Learning tools. With Google Analytics 4, you cannot just see what has happened on the website, but Google Analytics 4 will also predict what may happen.
Increased Privacy
Since the emergence of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its requirements, it is more important now than ever to ensure all the tools you use are compliant. Google Analytics 4 is designed with privacy at its core, so you can rest assured it complies with the latest rules and regulations relating to consumer privacy. This aspect is a vital feature that is a big part of the Google Analytics 4 benefits simply because of the legal implications around GDPR.
Powerful Reporting: Get the Information You Need
With prior versions of Google Analytics, most data revolved around page views and sessions. As part of the Google Analytics 4 features, the data revolve around various events.
What are Events in Google Analytics?
Within Google Analytics, any interaction with your website is called an “Event” per se. For example, a visit, a button click, or a purchase are all events. These are all different events that happen on your website.
Events have been part of Google Analytics for some time, but they were not as easy to use. With Google Analytics 4, events have become an integral part of the system and allow marketers to utilize the full power of events without having to rely on developers for integration.
Customized Reports & Dashboard View
With Google Analytics 4, you can now customize the dashboard to view the information that is important to you. Together with this and the increased event tracking, this may be the most immediate benefit of the new Google Analytics 4 features.
You can now much more easily create custom segments that allow you to view detailed and particular data related to a subset of your users. For example, you can create a segment of only your US audience to make sure the decisions you make are relevant according to the region of your audience.
Google Analytics 4 Guide
With the new version of Google Analytics, there are several new terminologies that you will want to be familiar with. Here is a guide to all the new important terms that will help you maximize the benefits of Google Analytics 4.
Analysis Hub
With Google Analytics 4, you now have the Analysis Hub that gives you complete control over how you want to visualize your data. This feature allows you to uncover deeper trends and insights to help you make better marketing decisions or areas where you can improve your technical SEO.
The Analysis Hub replaces the previous canned reports, which were much more limited in how you could customize them. Using Analysis Hub, you can segment your audience, compare different data side by side, apply various visualization styles, and, best of all — you can easily export the data to use within other platforms.
Once you get familiar with the new Analysis Hub, one of the best new Google Analytics features, you will be glad you made the switch to Google Analytics 4.
Attribution
In Google Analytics 4, you can choose how to credit a specific action or event on your site. In the past, all events were automatically attributed to the last step before the conversion (for example, the last seen ad before the user clicked on the conversion action).
The Google Analytics team defines attribution as:
“Attribution is the act of assigning credit for conversions to different ads, clicks, and factors along a user’s path to completing a conversion. An attribution model can be a rule, a set of rules, or a data-driven algorithm that determines how credit for conversions is assigned to touchpoints on conversion paths.”
This attribution model is useful if you want to extract information about what leads to specific actions/events on your website or app.
Automatically Collected Events
Since Google Analytics 4 is heavily reliant on events rather than views and sessions, several events will automatically be collected. These are what Google considers basic actions on your website or app. For your website, here are the events that are automatically collected:
page_view
scroll
session_start
user_engagement
video_complete
video_progress
video_start
view_search_results
All of the above events are automatically tracked, and you do not need to do any additional work to collect these events. This fact is a significant advantage of Google Analytics 4 compared to Universal Analytics.
Audiences
While Audiences is not new to Google Analytics, you can now create your segmented Audiences for more accurate reporting. You can segment by various metrics, including custom events. For exam