Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google Analytics 4 is Google's event-based analytics platform, and since Universal Analytics shut down it is the only version of Google Analytics that exists.

You install it once per site or app, and it records what users do as events rather than through the pageview-and-session model the old version leaned on. The reports read differently, the data model is different, and anything you built against Universal Analytics does not carry over.

If you ran Universal Analytics before July 1, 2024, that property and its historical data are gone, deleted by Google on that date. A store that migrated late opened GA4 with zero history and had to rebuild every year-over-year comparison from scratch.

GA4 is not a reskin of the old Analytics. The event model, the metrics, and the definitions all changed, so the numbers rarely match what Universal Analytics reported for the same traffic. Stop trying to reconcile them.

It is the only Google Analytics now. Learn it on its own terms.