Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for Beginners - Events in GA4 (Part 2)

So, what are recommended events in Google Analytics 4? To begin, let's first take a look at Google's page on recommended events. This will give us an idea of ​​the kind of events fall into this category. At the time of writing, Google has divided recommended events into the categories 'for all properties', 'for online sales' and 'for games'. In this guide, we will use an example from the category 'for all properties' to show how you can collect a recommended event, and ultimately find it in your GA4 reports. Obviously, this is not about the specific example, but rather about the steps we have to follow to collect a recommended event, as these step can also be applied to collect other recommended events.

When we check the variables of our Facebook/Meta share button click event, the value for the 'Click Classes' variable is 'facebook'. This means that we might be able to use the Click Classes variable to distinguish our LinkedIn button from other buttons. Just to be sure, we will also take look at the variables of yet another link click event.

Aside from clicking the LinkedIn and Meta share buttons, we have also clicked on our logo at the top left of our website (which in this case is also a link). The variables in the image above are the result of that click event. As you can see, the value of the Click Classes variable is now 'brxe-logo'. Seeing as the value seems to be different for each link click event, it means we can use the Click Classes variable to distinguish the LinkedIn share button from other buttons.

In the Google Tag Manager overview screen, click the 'triggers' button.

In case click events were not visible to you at step 1, and you therefore had to follow step 1.1, you will already have had the chance to create a trigger. If so, you can select the trigger and alter its settings to resemble the settings we will describe below. If you haven't yet created a trigger, please click the 'new' button.

To create a trigger, we will first have to choose a trigger type. To do so, click anywhere in the trigger configuration field.

Under the heading 'click', choose the option 'just links'. This trigger type will only fire when a link is clicked. Seeing as our LinkedIn share button is in essence a link, this trigger type will fit our needs best.

You will then be presented with several options. Choose the option 'some link clicks'. After all, we do not want to fire the trigger with every click. Only clicks on our LinkedIn share button should fire the trigger.

Since we have chosen 'some clicks', we will have to specify what we mean by 'some'. In other words, what are the conditions to fire our trigger? Remember us figuring out that we can distinguish a click on our LinkedIn button by having the variable 'Click Classes' containing the value 'linkedin'? Well, this is where we can put it into practice. In the leftmost box, select the variable 'Click Classes'. Select 'equals' for the box in the middle. The rightmost box should contain our value, which in our case is 'linkedin' (without the ' '). It is very important that we enter the value exactly like we saw in the GTM preview mode (minus the ' '), which is why we adviced you to copy-paste the value in a note, so you can now copy-paste it into the rightermost box. Make sure to remove any leading or trailing spaces.

Enter a descriptive name and save your trigger. In our example, we have chosen the name 'Link click - LinkedIn share button'.

In the Google Tag Manager overview screen, click the 'tags' button.

To create a new tag, click the 'new' button.

Click anywhere in the tag configuration field. This will let us choose a tag type.

Then, click 'Google Analytics'.

Choose the 'Google Analytics: GA4 event' tag type. This is the GA4 event tag we will use to send the LinkedIn share button clicks to GA4

Enter your measurement ID. This is the measurement ID you previously used to create a Google tag, which allowed you to connect Google Tag Manager to Google Analytics 4. If you don't know your measurement ID, go to back to the GTM overview screen and click 'Tags'. Then click the Google tag you've created earlier. There you will find your measurement ID under 'tag id'.

After having entered your measurement ID, we will need to enter an event name. Google gives us a lot of flexibility in naming events. For example, you're free to come up with a name yourself. However, we would advise you to use Google's own naming convention, because it is easier for GA4 to recognize the values paired with these event names. Let's take a look at Google's documentation.

Seeing as Google's naming convention is to use 'share' as an event name for sharing content, we will follow suit and use 'share' as our event name. Simply manually type into the event name field or copy-paste it from the documentation. Make sure to remove any leading or trailing spaces.

Wait, didn't we do that already? Haven't we already let GTM know to distinguish the Linkedin share button based on the 'Click Classes' variable and the corresponding 'linkedin' value? Yes and no. (It's understandable if this is confusing.) The situation is as follows: as soon as someone clicks the the LinkedIn share button, GTM will collect a link click event and see that the value of the 'Click Classes' variable is 'linkedin'. This, in turn, will trigger the GA4 event tag in GTM, which wil send data to GA4. However, even though the value 'linkedin' has triggered the GA4 event tag, it doesn't mean that the value 'linkedin' will be sent along with it to GA4. The 'linkedin' value is just what has triggered the GA4 event tag. We will also have to manually instruct GTM to send the 'linkedin' value to GA4, so that we can distinguish between a click on the LinkedIn button and a click on any other button. This is where parameters come into play. We will send the 'linkedin' value as parameter along with the GA4 event to Google Analytics 4.

To add a parameter, firstly click on 'event parameters' to show additional options. Then click on 'add parameter'. Two fields will appear in which you can enter the parameter name and value respectively.

When it comes to naming, it's always advisable to check whether or not Google recommends using a certain name.

Google gives us three example parameters we may send along with the event. If we look at the first example value, it says 'Twitter'. This will fit our needs. We will just have to replace the value with 'LinkedIn', seeing as our button will share the article on LinkedIn rather than Twitter (or now X).

In the field on the left, manually type the word 'method' (without the ' '). In the on the right, manually type the name of the social media platform. In our example, this is of course 'LinkedIn' (without the ' '). For both, make sure you don't accidentally enter any leading or trailing spaces.

Although the method parameter together with the parameters that are sent by GTM by default (such as the URL of the page) would actually be sufficient, we will add an extra parameter, just to be able to drive home the idea of how to go about adding a parameter.

If we go back to what we saw in the GTM preview mode after clicking the LinkedIn share button, we see a 'Click URL' variable. This is the URL that will be loaded when a visitor clicks the LinkedIn share button. Although this data might not necessarily be useful social media share buttons, for regular links it's actually incredibly useful. After all, redirecting a visitor to a different page is generally the purpose of a link, and knowing the most popular URL destinations will give you a good indication of what is useful to your website visitors. So, let's add the Click URL as a parameter to be sent along with our GA4 event.

Like before, we should think about what name we should give it. The first step, generally, is to take a look at Google's documentation. However, when we look at the documentation for recommended events, there's no 'Click URL' parameter to be found. Luckily, there's another name we can use. If you have followed part 1 of our guide to events in Google Google Analytics 4, you have come across enhanced event measurement. These are events GA4 will collect for your automatically after you have enabled enhanced event measurement. One of these events is outbound clicks. Seeing as our LinkedIn share button is an outbound click, we should be able to use its name.

If we look at Google's documentation on enhanced event measurement, you will see 'link_url' as a parameter for outbound clicks. We can also be able to use this parameter name to send along with our GA4 event.

But, if outbound clicks are automatically measured for us through enhanced measurement events, why do we have to manually add it as a parameter for our GA4 event? Well, GA4 will automatically collect outbound click URLs for us through enhanced measurement events, but it will do so separately. Through improved measurement events, outbound clicks are tracked by GA4 as standalone events. They won't automatically be paired with our GA4 LinkedIn share button event. If we want to include this data, we will have to manually set it up like we're doing now.

In the field on the left, type or paste the word link_url. Again, be sure to remove any leading or trailing spaces.

To choose a variable, click the icon next to the value field.

Choose the variable 'Click URL'.

The value {{Click URL}} will be filled in for you automatically. The curly brackets show that their value is dynamic.

Now, we will have to select a trigger. Fortunately, we have already created our trigger in step 3. Click anywhere on the triggering field to select a trigger.

Here you will need to choose the trigger we have made at step 3.

Finally, name your event tag and click 'save'. It is advisable to use a certain format for your tag names, so that you will be able to see at a glance what the tag does. For example, tag type > tag name > addition. In this case, GA4 event is the tag type, share is the tage name and LinkedIn is additional information about the tag., share is de naam van de tag en LinkedIn is extra informatie over de tag.

In Google Tag Manager we will test it out using our trusty GTM preview mode. Open the preview mode via the 'preview' button in the Google Tag Manager overview screen.

Enter the URL of the website page which contains your LinkedIn button and click 'connect'. After a connection has been established, we can test whether or not the trigger and GA4 event tag are working properly by clicking the LinkedIn share button, as well as one or more other buttons.

Switch back to the GTM preview mode browser tab. In the bar on the left side of the screen, you will see one link click event for each button you have clicked on your website. In our example, we have our LinkedIn share button as well as two additional buttons. As can be seen in the image above, this has resulted in three link click events in GTM preview mode. Click on the link click event belonging to you LinkedIn share button click. (If you have clicked the LinkedIn button first, it will be the click event nearest to the bottom.)

In the 'tags' tab of our LinkedIn share button event, we will see that our GA4 event tag has been successfully activated. (Your Google tag has already been activated during the 'initialization' phase rather than during the link click event. That is why the Google tag has been placed under the heading 'tags not fired' heading.) To compare, let's check out the other link click events to make sure our LinkedIn event hasn't accidentally fired there as well.

Tip: To get more information about why a tag has or has not fired, you can also click on the tag itself. This can be very useful if tags and triggers don't work as you expected.

You will see something similar to the image above. However, it might some time for the events to reach your DebugView. If no data is received after waiting a while, please repeat the part about clicking the links in GTM preview mode until GA4's DebugView populated with said events.

Once you have clicked the share event, all parameters sent by GTM will become visible. As can be seen in the image above, the method and link_url parameters we manually added to our GA4 Event tag have been sent along with it. Based on this we can conclude that everything is working properly and that we can let the tag go live for all visitors.

From the overview screen in Google Tag Manager, click the 'submit' button.

Here you come up with a descriptive name to publishing the changes we've made. You can, of course, do so according to your own wishes. Just be sure to use a name which will tell you in a glance what changes you have pushed live. If, for any reason, you will need to revert to an earlier version at a later time, you will have to do so based on these descriptions. If such a moment occurs (and it will), you will not have to sift through all the versions you've published just to find the right one. You might also want to shortly mention what is new in the version description field.

Once you're done, click the blue 'publish' button at the top right, which will make the new version go live. It will take at least 24 hours before you can see the new data in your GA4 reports.

Even though we have used Google's own terms in this guide, let's pretend that's not the case. Let's say that we came up with the method parameter name ourselves and that it isn't one which is recognized by GA4 automatically. To make Google recognize it, we will have to register the parameter as a so called 'custom dimension'. We strongly advise you to do so as soon as possible. Ideally, this is done right after publishing your GTM container, so that this parameter can be collected right away.

Next, make sure the 'custom dimensions' tab is selected. Then click the blue 'create custom dimension' button.

As a reminder, the event parameter we need to fill in is the event parameter we came up with in Google Tag Manager during the creating of our GA4 Event tag. (Step 4 of this guide.)

Be sure to enter the parameter name exactly as you have written it in Google Tag Manager, and remove any leading or trailing spaces. It is possible that GA4 will automatically recognize your event parameter in the event parameter box. If so, simply select it. If this is not the case, don't worry. Simply type in the event parameter manually. When you are done, click the 'save' button in the upper right corner. You will need to wait 24-48 hours before GA4 will have implemented the changes.

Here you will find the data on our new share event. When you click on 'share' you will see more information about our new LinkedIn share button event.

Here you will see, among other things, the custom dimension we have registered with the name 'LinkedIn button parameter', as well as how often this value has been received by GA4.

As we can see, all of the dimensions have been added. We will now add the metrics by clicking on the '+' symbol under the 'metrics' heading.

Similarly to when we were adding our dimensions, we can use the search bar to find and add the right metrics. Use the search bar to add the 'Total users' and 'Event count' metrics.

Now that we have added both the dimensions and metrics, we will need to select the ones we want to visualize on the canvas to the right. Remember how we mentioned that in a tabular format, dimensions would be the row and column labels metrics would be the values ​​in the columns? That's why we will add the dimensions to the rows section.

Click on the top button in the rows section to add a dimension. Then click on 'event name'. Also do this for 'link URL' and 'LinkedIn button parameter'.

Now that we have added all the dimensions to the rows section, it's time to do add the metrics to the values section. 

Similarly to adding the dimensions, click on the '+ Drop or select metric' button to add our metrics. Add both the 'total users' and 'event count' values.

Select 'event name' to use it in our filter.

Finally, make sure you have the table icon selected under 'visualizations'.

On the canvas, you will see a table with our LinkedIn share button data. In it, you will see an event called 'share', with two parameters, which has been clicked eleven times by one user, which is me. If you have read or followed along, great job! Even though that probably felt like a lot, it will become easier the more you do it.

This brings us to the end of part 2 of our GA4 for beginners guide where we looked at recommended events in GA4. In our next installment, we will take a look at custom events.