Installing Google Analytics 4

As you probably have heard, on July 1, 2023, Google's Universal Analytics, aka GA-3, app will be discontinued. If you want to collect information on traffic to your website, then you will have to install Google Analytics 4 (GA-4).

There is much criticism of GA-4, criticism I find warranted. Google took something that was working fine, i.e., Google Analytics (aka GA-3), and broke it till it wasn't working. But there's no choice: starting July 1 you have to install GA-4 (or rely on some other app) to track visits to your website.

I don't monetize my blog, nor do I operate an eCommerce website. So tracking visits to my blog is not a life-or-death function, it's simply a way of seeing if anyone is paying any attention to what I write. But obviously, people who operate monetized websites are going to have to install GA-4. 

Earlier this month I installed GA-4. It was kind of a pain in the ass, and took me about 45 minutes. Below is a screen clip of GA-4 data for The PorPor Books Blog:

If you're selling auto parts, or widgets, or nudies, or handcrafted pot holders, online, then this type of data analysis and presentation may be of use to you. I can't say the GA-4 data presentation panels are very user-friendly or informative to me, but like I said, I'm not charging advertising rates based on how many visits, over 30 seconds in length, from url addresses in continental Europe, I get on an hourly basis.

ANYWAYS, if you Google 'install Google Analytics 4' you'll get no shortage of instructional pages and videos. I looked through quite a few of these. The ones from Google itself are kind of useless, as they simply give an overview of the process and then tell you to ask your IT manager to do the dirty work. Yeah...........like I have an IT manager. According to one Comment I have seen at YouTube, 

My dev team tried to charge us $7800 to upgrade our GA to GA4. Unbelievable

Of the do-it-yourself videos I consulted, one of the most helpful and easiest is by 'Matt the WP Doctor'. Also of value is this one by 'Analytics Mania'. 

Good luck !