How to set up GA4 on your website (and the settings most people miss)

You can set up GA4 on a website in about twenty minutes. The part that takes longer, and that most setup guides skip, is the handful of settings you should change on day one so the data is still useful six months from now. This walkthrough covers both.

Everything below matches Google’s official setup guide, with the practical bits I check whenever I audit an analytics account.

Before you start

You need three things: a Google Account the business will own long-term (not a freelancer’s personal Gmail), admin access to your website or its tag manager, and a clear idea of what counts as success on the site. That last one sounds soft, but it decides which events you’ll track in step 6.

How to set up GA4, step by step

1. Create an Analytics account

Go to analytics.google.com and click Start measuring. If you already use Analytics, go to Admin, then Create, then Account. Name the account after the business, not the website. One business can have several properties under one account later.

2. Create a property

In Admin, choose Create, then Property. Give it a clear name such as “Brand name, website”, then set two things carefully:

• Reporting time zone. Use the time zone your business reports in. If your team is in Dubai but most customers are in the UK, pick the zone your finance team uses, so daily numbers line up with sales data.
• Currency. Pick the currency you’ll report revenue in. GA4 converts other currencies into it.

Then choose your industry and business size, and tick the business objectives that fit. These only change which reports appear by default, so don’t overthink them.

3. Add a web data stream

Under Admin, open Data streams, click Add stream and choose Web. Enter your domain and a stream name. Leave enhanced measurement switched on. It automatically tracks page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement on embedded YouTube videos, file downloads and form interactions, with no extra code.

4. Install the Google tag

Your stream has a Measurement ID that starts with G-. You have three ways to install it:

• Your CMS or website builder. Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and WordPress.com all have a field where you paste the G- ID.
• A plugin. On self-hosted WordPress, Site Kit by Google connects Analytics without touching code.
• Google Tag Manager. The best option if you run ads or plan to track anything beyond the basics. Add a Google tag in GTM with your G- ID and fire it on all pages.

Pick one method only. Installing the tag twice, for example through a plugin and GTM at the same time, doubles every page view. It’s one of the most common GA4 mistakes I see in audits.

5. Check that data is arriving

Google notes that collection can take up to 30 minutes to start. Open your site in another browser, click around, then open Reports, then Realtime. You should see yourself. If you use GTM, its Preview mode shows exactly which tags fired on each page.

6. Mark your key events

GA4 calls the actions that matter to your business key events. They used to be called conversions. To mark one, go to Admin, then Events under Data display, and click the star next to the event. You can mark up to 30 key events on a standard property.

Good key events for most small businesses are a contact form submission, a booking or purchase, a click on a phone number or WhatsApp link, and a newsletter signup. Page views on your homepage are not a key event.

Settings to change on day one

This is the part most guides leave out after you set up GA4, and it’s where the long-term value is.

1. Data retention. Admin, then Data collection and modification, then Data retention. Change event data retention from the default of 2 months to 14 months. Standard reports aren’t affected, but Explorations only go back as far as this setting allows.
2. Internal traffic. Define your office or home IP addresses as internal traffic and activate the filter, so your own visits don’t inflate the numbers.
3. Unwanted referrals. If customers pay through PayPal, Stripe or a booking engine on another domain, list those domains so the sale isn’t credited to the payment provider.
4. Google Ads and Search Console links. Link both under Product links. Search Console shows the queries people used to find you; Google Ads shares audiences and key events with your campaigns.
5. Consent. If you have visitors from the EU, UK or other regions with consent rules, run a consent banner that supports Google Consent Mode. Without it, Google’s advertising features won’t work properly for those users.

A quick worked example

Say you run a small tour company selling day trips to travelers from the US, Germany and India. After you set up GA4 with the steps above, you’d mark “booking_completed” and “whatsapp_click” as key events, set the currency to your booking currency, and add your booking engine’s domain to the unwanted referrals list. Within a week you’d see which countries and channels bring bookings, not just visits, which is the question the business actually cares about.

What to do next

Once data is flowing, the next job is reading it. This guide to tracking website traffic in GA4 shows which reports to check each week, and this one on funnel exploration shows where visitors drop off before they buy.

If you’d rather have someone check your tracking before you spend on ads, our free growth check includes a tracking review.