If GA4 is already on your website, you do not need to learn every menu: an owner needs four screens and one column. Realtime shows that data is flowing at all. Reports snapshot opens the reports section. Traffic acquisition says where people came from. Pages and screens shows what they opened. The Key events column finally answers whether people left a lead.
GA4 shows a visitor’s path through your site, not which ad is profitable. You decide about money together with Google Ads data and your CRM. Which numbers matter for those decisions I covered in ad analytics for business owners. This piece is about something else: where the data sits in the interface and how to read it.
Before you start: is GA4 collecting data at all
First make sure data is arriving. In the left menu select Reports, then Realtime. Google’s help names this report as one way to verify that the measurement code is working on your site. Open your own website in another tab and check whether active users appear for the last 5 and 30 minutes.
If it is empty, that is not a verdict yet. Google does not guarantee delivery time for this report, so check again in a few minutes. If nothing ever appears, GA4 is not installed or is installed with an error. How to install it is covered in my piece on installing GA4 with Google Tag Manager.
Do not draw conclusions about channels from this report: its attribution is limited, and the Acquisition reports give a more accurate picture.
Reports overview: what to look at first
In the left menu open Reports. This section contains the Reports snapshot, plus collections and topics of reports. Start with the snapshot, then move into the specific reports covered below.
If a report you need is missing from the menu, it may have been removed or not added to the default view. A user with the Editor role or higher can add it back to the left navigation, so ask whoever set up GA4 if you need it.
For unusual questions there is the Explorations section (the Explore button in the left menu). You can pick a free-form table, a funnel or a path exploration there. You do not need it to start.
Where your customers came from (traffic acquisition)
Open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. The report shows where visitors come from, counted in sessions. By default they are grouped into channels such as Direct, Organic Search, Paid Social, Organic Social and Email. The list in Google’s help is not exhaustive, so your report may show other channels too.
Read three columns: Sessions, Engaged sessions and Key events. A session starts when a person opens your site and by default ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. An engaged session lasts at least 10 seconds, or has a key event, or has two or more page or screen views. To see one source, type it into the search bar above the table, for example google / organic for ordinary Google search.
The neighboring report, User acquisition (same Acquisition section), answers a different question: how new users first found your site. Use it for “where do people who did not know me come from” and use Traffic acquisition for “where do visits come from overall”. So the numbers in these two reports do not have to match. For Google Ads campaigns to show up in these reports, link GA4 with Google Ads or add UTM tags to your links.
Which pages work
Open Reports, then Engagement, then Pages and screens. The report shows the website pages and app screens that users opened. Look at Views, Active users, Average engagement time and Key events. The Key events column counts events by the page where they happened. If the form submits to a separate thank-you or contact page, the service page will show no events even though the leads come from it. So zero events on a service page is not a verdict yet: first check where the event fires.
This report does not show the order in which a person opened pages. For the first page of a visit, use the Landing page report. To see one page, add a filter on the Page path and screen class dimension. What people did before and after a page is shown by a path exploration in Explorations.
Leads: key events
A lead in GA4 is an event: a submitted form, a pressed contact button. For it to count in the Key events column, you have to mark it as a key event. What to treat as an advertising result is covered in my piece on GA4 events and key events. Marking an event works like this:
- Open Admin and under Data display click Events.
- Find the event on the Recent events tab and click the star icon next to it.
- If the event does not exist yet, click Create event, enter a name and switch on Mark as key event.
- Wait: it can take up to 24 hours to show in standard reports, and a few minutes in Realtime.
To mark an existing event you need the Editor role or higher. To create a new event and mark it at once, the Marketer role is enough. You can mark up to 30 events on a standard property. Marking collects nothing by itself: the event has to be sent by the code on your site, and you can mark a new event in advance so it becomes a key event once it starts arriving. The marking applies from the moment you set it and does not change historic data. The full procedure is on Google’s page on marking events as key events.
Why GA4 and Google Ads show different numbers
These are two systems with different units. Google Ads counts clicks and cost. GA4 counts sessions on your site. A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, so one click is not always one session.
A key event in GA4 is also not the same as a conversion in Google Ads. Google Ads conversions do not appear in standard Google Analytics reports: you evaluate them in Google Ads or in the Advertising section of Google Analytics.
Check the link between the accounts. You set it up under Admin, Product links, Google Ads links. After linking, Google Ads data appears in Analytics reports within 48 hours. Without the link, click and cost data is not fully visible in Analytics. So when the numbers diverge, first check the account link and whether the right event is marked as a key event.
Table: question → report
| Owner’s question | GA4 report | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Is GA4 collecting data right now? | Realtime | Reports → Realtime |
| Where do visitors come from? | Traffic acquisition | Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition |
| How do new people first find the site? | User acquisition | Reports → Acquisition → User acquisition |
| Which pages get opened most? | Pages and screens | Reports → Engagement → Pages and screens |
| How many leads, and from where? | Key events column in those reports | Marking: Admin → Data display → Events |
| Are GA4 and Google Ads linked? | Google Ads links | Admin → Product links → Google Ads links |
| What did people do before and after a page? | Explorations, path exploration | Explore button in the left menu |
The report showed where customers come from. The step-by-step version of what to do with your advertising next, turning these numbers into decisions about budget and search terms, is in my book on Google Ads for business owners.
My e-book “19 Google Ads Secrets”: how to get the most out of Google Ads without draining your budget, drawn from real campaigns and tests.
See the book →When this does not apply
GA4 does not tell you which ad is profitable. It shows the visitor’s path, and you count the money together with Google Ads and your CRM.
If key events are not marked, the Key events column is empty, and you will not see leads in the reports however much traffic there is.
GA4 sees only what the code on your site sends. Direct phone calls, messenger chats and requests made outside the site will not appear until separate events are set up for them.
Data arrives with a delay: Google does not guarantee delivery time in Realtime, and a new key event can take up to a day to show in standard reports. Do not judge results by the first hour.
Questions and answers
How long does GA4 keep data?
Google’s help on Explorations says that by default Google Analytics properties retain two months of data. You can change this under Admin, Data collection and modification, Data Retention. If you plan to look at deeper history in Explorations, check the setting right away. For standard reports I do not name a period: the help I read does not give one.
Why does GA4 show fewer leads than Google Ads?
Start with three checks: is the right event marked as a key event (marking applies only from the moment you set it), does it match the Google Ads conversion (Google Ads conversions do not appear in standard Google Analytics reports), and are the accounts linked (Google Ads data appears in Analytics reports within 48 hours). Check them in that order.
What role do I need to mark a key event?
To mark an existing event, Editor or higher. To create a new event and mark it at once, Marketer is enough.