Reply To: Manual Transmission of UA Parameters like GeographicalOverride in GA4

[Lily]

Sure, let me break it down.

Instead of relying solely on the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reference, you can actually dig into the network traffic that Google’s GA4 JavaScript sends. This allows you to see how the data is collected and what parameters are used.

You can find this information by looking at the network tab in your browser’s developer tools and inspecting the packets sent to https://region1.google-analytics.com/g/collect.

The data that is sent contains various parameters such as the version (v), the Google Measurement ID (tid), geo data (gcs), client ID (cid), user language (ul), and more.

Now, here’s the interesting part. You can also send a GET request to the same URL with your own data. You can replace parameters as necessary and leave out the ones that you’re not sure about. In the example given, they were able to get their data (like screen resolution) to show up in their GA4 reports, even though this info was previously missing.

However, the full potential of this method hasn’t been unlocked yet. They weren’t sure how to transmit information about GA4 custom dimensions and custom metrics, which could prove valuable.

So while this doesn’t fully answer the question about Universal Analytics parameters in GA4, hopefully it gives you a new way to approach your data tracking and consider how you can augment the built-in auto-fill capabilities of the GA4 Measurement Protocol.