Event tracking is the measurement of individual interactions on a website or in an app, such as link clicks, file downloads, video plays, or form submissions. An analytics tool records each interaction as an event with a name and optional parameters, and reports on them.
How does event tracking work in GA4?
Google Analytics 4 is built entirely on events. Even a page view is recorded as the event page_view. Google sorts events into four groups: automatically collected events, enhanced measurement events, recommended events with predefined names, and custom events. Custom events don’t show up in most standard reports.
Enhanced measurement covers common interactions without extra code. Examples include scroll when 90% of a page’s height becomes visible, outbound link clicks, file_download, site search, and form_start and form_submit. Any event can be marked as a key event, which is how GA4 labels actions that matter to the business.
Older tutorials describe the Universal Analytics model with category, action, and label. Standard Universal Analytics properties stopped processing data on July 1, 2023.
Example
gtag('event', 'sign_up', {
method: 'email'
});
sign_up is a recommended event, and method is a parameter. With Google Tag Manager, the same event usually arrives through dataLayer.push().
Common mistakes
- Custom names for standard actions. If a recommended event exists, its name unlocks reporting that a custom name doesn’t.
- Inconsistent spelling. Event names are case-sensitive, so
sign_upandSign_Upcount as two events. - Double counting. An enhanced measurement event and a custom tag can record the same action twice (assessment).
Sources
- [GA4] About events – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
- [GA4] Enhanced measurement events – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
- [GA4] Event naming rules – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
- Set up events – Google Analytics, Google for Developersdevelopers.google.com
- Universal Analytics has been replaced by Google Analytics 4 – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
- About key events – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
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