Google Analytics 4 for Business Owners: The Few Reports That Matter
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Google Analytics 4 shows how people find and use your website. As a small business owner you only need a few things from it: where visitors come from, which pages they land on, and how many become enquiries. Set up key events for form submissions and phone clicks, then check those numbers monthly alongside Search Console and your Google Business Profile.
How do you set up GA4?
- Create a Google Analytics account and a GA4 property for your website (Google)
- Add the Google tag to your site. Framer, WordPress, Squarespace and most builders have a field for the measurement ID
- Check the Realtime report while you visit your own site
- Add your teammate or web designer as a user, rather than sharing your login
Which reports should you look at?
| Report | What it tells you | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic acquisition | Where visitors come from: Google, Maps, social, direct, referrals | Monthly |
| Landing pages | Which pages people arrive on first | Monthly |
| Key events | How many enquiries, calls or bookings happened | Monthly |
| Realtime | Whether tracking works right now | After changes |
This short list is our general guidance; GA4 has many more reports you can ignore.
Set up key events for enquiries
Google says you can mark any event that matters to your business as a key event, and reports such as Landing pages and User acquisition then show a Key events column (Google). Mark events like form submissions and clicks on phone links as key events in Admin. Google notes that marking an event as a key event only affects data from then on, and it can take up to 24 hours to appear in standard reports (Google).
- Form submitted: usually a thank-you page view or a form submit event
- Phone click: a click on a tel: link
- Email click: a click on a mailto: link
- Booking: a confirmation page or booking tool event
How does GA4 fit with your other tools?
- Search Console shows the searches that brought people from Google. See Search Console for business owners
- Your Google Business Profile shows calls and clicks from Maps. See the Google Business Profile performance report
- Call tracking counts phone leads exactly. See call tracking for small businesses
Privacy
Analytics collects data about visitors, so mention it in your privacy policy. See do you need a privacy policy. This is general information, not legal advice.
A 10-minute monthly routine
- Open Traffic acquisition and note visitors from Google organic, Maps and paid
- Open Landing pages and note your top five pages
- Check key events: how many enquiries and calls came from the site
- Compare with the same month last year
- Pick one page to improve next month
GA4, Search Console and your Google profile: which does what?
| Tool | Answers the question | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | What do visitors do once they reach my website? | 120 people landed on the plumbing page and 9 sent an enquiry |
| Search Console | What did people search on Google before they clicked? | 'emergency plumber sunshine' brought 40 clicks |
| Google Business Profile | What do people do on my Maps listing? | 18 calls and 25 direction requests this month |
Each tool sees a different part of the customer's journey, so no single one gives the full picture. The examples are illustrative, not real data. Used together, they tell you whether people find you, whether they visit, and whether they get in touch.
Change the data retention setting on day one
Google lets you set how long GA4 keeps user-level and event-level data, and for a standard property the options are 2 months or 14 months (Google). Google also says the data retention setting only affects explorations and funnel reports, not the standard reports most owners use (Google).
Even so, set it to 14 months as soon as you create the property. If you ever want to dig into a year-on-year comparison in an exploration, the data will be there. Find it in Admin under Data collection and modification, then Data retention. Menu names move around, so search the Admin screen if you can't see it.
Exclude your own visits
You, your staff and your web designer visit your website far more often than a typical customer. In a small business with low traffic, those visits can noticeably skew the numbers. GA4 lets you define internal traffic by IP address and then filter it out with a data filter (Google).
- In Admin, open your web data stream and go to the Google tag settings
- Choose Define internal traffic and add your office IP address
- In Data filters, set the Internal traffic filter to Testing first, then Active once you've checked it works
Filters only apply from when they're active and don't change past data. If your staff work from home or on mobile data, their IP addresses change, so this won't catch every internal visit. It still helps.
Link GA4 to Search Console
Linking the two adds Search Console reports inside GA4, including a Google Organic Search Queries report showing the searches people used (Google). You need edit access in GA4 and to be a verified owner in Search Console. Go to Admin, then Product links, then Search Console links, and follow the prompts.
Google notes that a web data stream can be linked to only one Search Console property, and the Search Console reports in GA4 don't currently show charts over time (Google). For trends, keep using Search Console itself.
How to read Traffic acquisition
Traffic acquisition groups visits by channel. The names look technical, but most of them are simple:
| Channel | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Organic Search | Someone clicked a normal (unpaid) Google or Bing result |
| Direct | Someone typed your address, used a bookmark, or the source wasn't passed on |
| Referral | Someone clicked a link on another website, such as a directory |
| Organic Social | Someone clicked a link on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn |
| Paid Search | Someone clicked one of your Google Ads |
Clicks from your Google Business Profile often show up as organic or direct traffic rather than as their own channel. One simple fix is to add tracking parameters (UTM tags) to the website link on your profile, so you can see those visits separately. Ask your web designer if you're unsure how.
Common setup mistakes we see
- The tag is installed twice, once by the website builder and once by hand, which doubles page views
- Nobody in the business has admin access because a former web designer created the account in their name
- Data retention left at 2 months
- Every button click marked as a key event, so the number means nothing
- Thank-you page tracked as a key event, but the form actually shows a message on the same page instead
- Tracking never rechecked after a website redesign
Each of these is quick to fix once you know to look. The Realtime report is the easiest way to test: submit your own form and watch for the event.
Your business should own its analytics, not your web designer or marketing agency. Create the account with a Google account the business controls, then add others as users with the access they need. You add and remove users in the Admin area of your property, so you never need to share your own Google login.
- Owner: you or a business partner, with Administrator access
- Web designer or agency: Editor access while they're working on the site
- Bookkeeper or staff who only read reports: Viewer access
- Remove access when a contractor or staff member finishes
The same rule applies to Search Console, your Google Business Profile and your domain name. If you ever change agencies, you keep your history.
| Measure | This month | Same month last year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visitors from Organic Search | [number] | [number] | [what changed] |
| Visitors from Google Ads | [number] | [number] | |
| Top landing page | [page] | [page] | |
| Form enquiries (key event) | [number] | [number] | |
| Phone clicks (key event) | [number] | [number] | |
| Calls from Google Business Profile | [number] | [number] | From the profile's performance report |
Fill in the placeholders from your own reports. Keep the same measures every month so you can see trends, and add a one-line note about anything you changed, such as a new page, an ad campaign or a price update. That note is what turns numbers into decisions.
Morphic sets up GA4, key events and simple monthly reports on the websites we build for Melbourne small businesses. Get a free quote, or book a 30-minute call.
Related service. local SEO.
Related reading: Website speed for small businesses and Contact form best practices.
Key Takeaways
GA4 shows where visitors come from and what they do.
Most owners only need acquisition, landing pages and key events.
Mark form submissions and phone clicks as key events.
Use GA4 alongside Search Console and your Google profile.
Check monthly and improve one page at a time.
Emon Datta
Founder, Morphic Agency
Morphic Agency is a Melbourne-based UX design agency. We've shipped 50+ products across 15+ countries.
