{"id":1266,"date":"2022-09-20T00:55:28","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T23:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/absolute.digital\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2026-10-27T12:56:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T12:56:36","slug":"our-top-10-ga4-faqs-answered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/absolute.digital\/ae\/insights\/our-top-10-ga4-faqs-answered\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Top 10 GA4 FAQs Answered"},"content":{"rendered":"
With Universal Analytics (UA) officially retiring in less than a year on July 1, 2023, we thought there was no better time to get you up to speed with GA4.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

We\u2019ve spoken to our Head Of SEO, Andrew Tuxford, and PPC Manager Tiffany Shears, to answer 10 of our most frequently asked questions. Check them out below!<\/p>\n

Do I really need to upgrade to GA4?<\/h2>\n

Yes! Whilst it may be tempting to stay with the system you are familiar with, not only is UA no longer going to be supported from 2023, it will actively stop working. So if you want to continue tracking your website\u2019s data, you\u2019ll need to update to GA4.<\/p>\n

Why is my data different from UA? Does that mean it\u2019s not tracking correctly?<\/h2>\n

Not necessarily! GA4 and UA track traffic on your site in fundamentally different ways so the data will almost always be a little bit different. UA is built on a \u201csessions\u201d system whilst GA4 is built on an \u201cevents\u201d system, and even where the metrics have the same name, they are often calculated differently.<\/p>\n

For example in UA a new session is started for every active user at midnight, in GA4 it isn\u2019t. One of the biggest differences is in how conversions are calculated. UA reports converting sessions per goal, GA4 reports on conversion events. For example if a user triggers the same goal three times that will be 1 conversion in UA, 1 session converted on 1 goal, but in GA4 it would be 3 conversions, as there were 3 conversion events recorded.<\/p>\n

Can I merge my existing UA account with a new GA4 account?<\/h2>\n

Unfortunately not, because they track data in a fundamentally different way they can\u2019t be merged. This means that you\u2019ll have to \u201cstart over\u201d with a new GA4 account so it\u2019s really important you get it setup asap and start building up data in there. You can also export your historical data from UA to keep this stored for any future analysis.<\/p>\n

Can I use both GA4 and UA side by side?<\/h2>\n

Yes you can, and they won\u2019t interfere with each other, in fact if you are using the newer UA tracking code on your site both can run from a single tracking code installation.. You may want to consider using both for a while so you still have easy access to your site’s historic data whilst you build up that data in GA4, however, UA data will become inaccessible 6 months after UA is depreciated.<\/p>\n

What happened to Bounce Rate. I can\u2019t find it?<\/h2>\n

Initially, GA4 didn\u2019t include Bounce Rate as a metric and used Engagement Rate instead, however, in July 22 Google reintroduced Bounce Rate into GA4. However, keep in mind that the Bounce Rate in GA4 is calculated differently to that in UA so they are not directly comparable. In UA Bounce Rate was calculated as the % of sessions where the user only viewed 1 page and no events were triggered, this means that sessions where a user read your content for 5 minutes before leaving would still be considered a bounce. In GA4 Bounce Rate is the inverse of Engagement Rate, and engagement rate is the % of sessions that viewed more than 1 page, or triggered a conversion event, or spent more than 10s with a page active (the main tab in an open browser).<\/p>\n

The main difference here is that if you spend more than 10s on a page then the session is not a bounce, whereas in UA it would have been.<\/p>\n

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