[Felix]

When you customize any report in analytics tools, the changes do not reflect real-time data. The new data according to the changes will start accumulating from the time the changes were made. This is likely why you’re only seeing aggregated data immediately after saving your report. The data will not be retroactive to before the changes. As for waiting a day or two, that might indeed be a good idea. In a day or couple’s time, the customized report should begin to populate with data collected according to the new parameters you set (Link URL in this case). So, you could check back after some time to see if new data is appearing as expected.

[Felix]

Absolutely, the best way to dynamically capture these custom parameters and send them to Google Analytics 4 is by taking advantage of data layer variables in Google Tag Manager.

You can start by creating a data layer variable for each custom parameter. Go to Variables, create a new one, and designate it as a data layer variable. Enter the name of the parameter as the Data Layer Variable Name (e.g., “a” or “b”).

Next, include these data layer variables as fields in your Google Analytics 4 Event tag. Go to the tag, click on “More Settings” and then “Fields to Set”. Specify the name of your data layer variable (like “a” or “b”) and input the corresponding value as {{a}} or {{b}}. Be sure to do this for each custom parameter.

After implementing these changes, you’ll need to publish your updates in Google Tag Manager. Now whenever an event is pushed to the data layer, these custom parameters will be included as well and sent to Google Analytics 4. This process eliminates the need for the developers to manually update the GA4 Event tag every time they want to add a new parameter.

One important note about this approach: Keep your parameters consistent across all events in order to prevent any discrepancies in Google Analytics 4.

[Felix]

Unfortunately, as of this time, user demographic data like age and gender are not available in BigQuery exports from Google Analytics 4 (GA4). The primary reason is indeed centered around user privacy and compliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Although you can see aggregated user demographic data in reports within GA4, exporting raw, unaggregated user demographic details to an external platform like BigQuery may pose potential privacy risks and enable individually identifiable user profiling. This could violate the privacy rights and expectations of users, hence Google’s decision to prevent this sort of data export. It’s always a good idea to keep checking for updates on this issue, as Google does update their services and offerings from time to time based on user feedback and changes in regulations.

[Felix]

Sure thing! That GA4 user flow screenshot can indeed serve as a great reference. We can certainly make our diagram mimic that style. Actually, there’s a very handy module in Highcharts that’s perfect for this kind of diagram: it’s called the sankey module.

Here’s a demo for inspiration: [Highcharts Sankey Diagram Demo](https://www.highcharts.com/demo/sankey-diagram)

And if you want to go deep into details, the API Reference can be found here: [Highcharts Sankey API Reference](https://api.highcharts.com/highcharts/series.sankey)

There it is! Now let’s start adapting our diagram.

[Felix]

Yes, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can be complex, but once you get the hang of it, it can yield a lot of useful information. To check the primary traffic sources or medium for a particular page, you may need to create a custom report. Unfortunately, as of yet, GA4 does not provide a dedicated report to view a single page’s traffic sources, unlike Universal Analytics.

Here’s a way around: Start by going to ‘Analysis’ on the left-hand menu, then choose ‘Analysis Hub’. Click on ‘Explorations’ and use ‘Free Form’. There, on the Variables panel, you may put ‘Page title and screen name’ in ‘Rows’ and ‘Medium’ in ‘Columns’. In the ‘Values’, you might use metrics like ‘User Engagement’ or ‘Active Users’ as per your needs.

Filter ‘Page title and screen name’ to the specific page you’re interested in. Now, this exploration should provide you a kind of breakdown of traffic medium/source for the particular page. Remember, GA4 stresses more on the event-based data model, which is a shift from the session-centric model in Universal Analytics. Hence, getting used to it requires a bit of a learning curve but it’s definitely possible.

[Felix]

Sure, here’s a simpler interpretation of it. The GA4 tag isn’t visible because it’s made really straightforward to connect Firebase data to GA4. This way, developers don’t need to reimplement their app analytics. So essentially, when people implement app tracking for GA4, they’re actually linking Firebase to GA4.

Interestingly, GA4 has adopted the entire data structure from Firebase, which means Firebase data fits into GA4 tables seamlessly. The superior user interface and data export capabilities are some of the major reasons many prefer GA4.

So, in terms of modifying anything in your GTM or Firebase SDK, there’s really not much to do. You can handle everything needed in your Firebase user interface.

One quick thing to note: using a Mobile GTM usually complicates things, and that’s why many have opted not to implement it at all.

[Felix]

Sure thing! When it comes to switching from analytics.js to gtag.js, you’re basically dealing with a change in how Google Analytics integrates with Google Tag Manager. Basically, things have been streamlined a bit more. Rather than calling APIs directly, which can get a little sticky, you’re better off plopping a GTM container right into your site.

Then, within that GTM container, you can manage your GA4 setup and event tags as they come up. It’s like telling gtag.js, “Hey, you just handle this when you need to.” Less stress for you!

As for the ‘OPT_XXXXXXX’ bit, I’m not totally sure. Might be worth checking out the original vendor to see how this fits into the GTM/GA4 puzzle. Keep in mind that everything’s shifting towards GTM and GA4 playing nicely together, so any outside elements will want to align with that too. Good luck!