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Google Analytics and Product Analytics Fundamentals

Google Analytics and product analytics turn website and app interactions into event data that supports questions about acquisition, conversion, engagement, and retention. The work includes planning events, collecting them responsibly, validating the data, and interpreting reports without confusing measurement with proof of causation.

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Google Analytics and Product Analytics Fundamentals

Google Analytics is an event-based measurement service for websites and apps. Product analytics is the broader practice of using behavioral data to understand how people find, adopt, and continue using a product. Google Analytics 4, or GA4, can support both marketing and product questions, but the practice begins with a measurement design rather than a dashboard.

An implementation has five working layers:

Questions and decisions define what the team needs to understand and what action an answer could change.
Events and properties describe observable behavior in a stable vocabulary.
Collection sends events from a website, app, or server while applying consent choices.
Processing and identity organize events into users, sessions, dimensions, metrics, and audiences.
Analysis and activation turn the processed data into reports, explorations, exports, and downstream actions.

Each layer constrains the next. A polished funnel cannot repair a missing event. A complete event stream cannot answer a question whose success condition was never defined.

The event model

An event records an interaction or occurrence. Examples include a page view, a product search, an account creation, a purchase, or an application error. An event name identifies what happened. Event parameters provide context, such as the page location, plan name, or item identifier. User properties describe relatively persistent attributes that are suitable for analysis, such as an account tier. Do not place personally identifiable information in analytics fields.

GA4 collects some events automatically. Enhanced measurement can collect common web interactions, including page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site searches, video engagement, and file downloads. Recommended events use Google-defined names and parameters for common scenarios. Custom events cover behavior that the automatic and recommended sets do not express.

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