Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a powerful tool for understanding user behavior on your website or app. One of the most important aspects of GA4 is the ability to track key events, which are actions that are particularly important to the success of your business. By understanding how users interact with these key events, you can gain valuable insights into your marketing efforts and improve your overall business strategy.
A key event in GA4 is an event that measures an action that's particularly important to the success of your business. These events are the milestones you want your users to achieve, such as:
When someone triggers the event by performing the action, the key event is recorded in Google Analytics and surfaced in your GA4 reports. Any event you collect can become a key event. To measure a key event, create or identify an event that measures the action and then mark the event as a key event.
In short, if an event is important to your business's success, you can mark the event as a key event in Analytics. Event → Key Event.
GA4 provides various ways to analyze and report on key events. You can use Google Analytics reports and explorations to count the number of times users trigger key events and attribute credit to different touchpoints along a user's path to triggering key events.
Many Google Analytics reports, such as the Landing pages and User acquisition reports, include a Key events column. The Key events column displays the number of times users triggered key events on your website or app, separated out by the dimension values on the left.
To narrow down the counts by a specific key event, you can select the All events menu and choose a specific key event so you can view the number of times users triggered the key event.
To further investigate key event counts separated out by any compatible dimensions, you can build your own explorations using key event metrics like Key events and Session key event rate.
In the Advertising section, you can use the Pathing and Attribution reports to attribute credit to different touchpoints along a user's path to triggering key events and see how different attribution models distribute credit differently to those touchpoints. This information can help you understand which marketing channels are most effective at driving key events. Learn more about advertising reports.
One of the most powerful features of GA4 is the ability to create Google Ads conversions from key events. This integration allows you to:
By creating Google Ads conversions based on key events, you can optimize your ad campaigns for the actions that matter most to your business.
Learn how to create a Google Ads conversion.
Key events are a critical component of GA4, providing valuable insights into user behavior and marketing performance. By understanding how to define, track, and analyze key events, you can make data-driven decisions to improve your business outcomes.
