Google Analytics is a browser based system that takes user activity from your website and displays it in tables, graphs, and charts so website owners can make sense of their users’ website usage.

Google is a monolith, sometimes it feels like the internet is built around its platforms and products. Realistically, Google buys up good ideas and sometimes lets them live.

Google Analytics 4 is the replacement for the now very old, and much loved, Universal Analytics - a platform Google put together from products and platforms they bought. GA4 is developed by Google as a platform that can report on traditional websites, single page applications, and mobile apps.

For seasoned users of Universal Analytics and users coming in fresh to GA4, the platform can be bewildering and frustrating to use. But as a new platform it comes with advantages that let users get to what they need to find out.