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Google is dropping support for Universal Analytics soon. See in this article how to activate Google Analytics 4 if you don´t want to lose web traffic tracking for your WordPress website.
Watch these two short videos to see how to activate Google Analytics 4 in your Google Analytics account and your WordPress website.
Step 1: How to activate Google Analytics 4 in your Google Analytics.
Step 2: How to activate Google Analytics 4 in WordPress.
Step 1: Create a new Google Analytics 4 property in Google Analytics
- Log in to your Google Analytics account
- At the top, you will find a prominent info box that asks you to activate Google Analytics 4
- Clicking the button will open the Setup Assistant for the Google Analytics 4 property
- Click on the button to create a new Google Analytics 4 property.
- A dialog will pop up that explains what is going to happen. Just approve by clicking the button.
- Congratulations. You have created your new Google Analytics 4 property. Now, you still need to connect it to your WordPress website.
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 property with your WordPress Website.
- Install the Beehive Analytics plugin in WordPress.
- Copy the Measurement ID of your Google Analytics 4 property.
- In Beehive, connect your Google account and select the right website.
- Paste the Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID in the appropriately named field. I suggest not using automatic detection as this function could get confused if you accidentally create several properties for your website.
- Don´t forget to save the changes!
- That´s it. You are all set. But you will not immediately see any traffic data as you must wait for Google Analytics 4 to start collecting data from your website.
I am a LONG-TIME WordPress user and keep very close tabs on professional WordPress setups.
Over the years, I played around with many Google Analytics plugins for WordPress, both free and paid. I am looking for a simple solution that will display the most essential info directly in my WordPress admin. So that I do not always have to log in to Google Analytics.
There are many plugins that will do this job, but what is super annoying to me is that most are freemium, meaning they only display the most important 4 stats, and you need to upgrade to get the rest of your (free) data that is available in Google – if you just log into your Account.
And yes, Google is not doing the best job of displaying the data in a way that makes sense and is user-friendly. That is the sole reason why those plugins even exist.
I finally solved this for myself and settled on just ONE WordPress GA plugin to rule them all. This Google Analytics plugin is called Beehive Analytics from WPMU DEV.
So, for everyone who wants to go from a super limited data report to a complete data overview, just compare the two images below.
Update November 2023:
Some time has passed since publishing this article, and Google Analytics 4 has come into full effect. I must revise this post and state that I have come back to using the Analytify WordPress plugin. The reason for this is simple: The default configuration you get when setting up a new Google Analytics 4 property through the Google Site Kit plugin is no longer showing you all the usual data. It is like a trimmed downgrade that is missing critical data, like the source breakdown of where your traffic is coming from. Especially for social media, it now only shows a summary that traffic comes from “social media” instead of showing each channel by itself.
Screenshot of the popular Monsterinsights Analytics plugin. Why is this so popular anyway?
Screenshot of the FREE Beehive Analytics plugin. I guess the difference is obvious right? If you need more data than this, just log in to your Google Analytics account and take a look yourself. No need to pay for your own free data anymore!
