How to tag for both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 properties

This article describes how to instrument a website/web-app with tags to populate Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) properties at the same time. More advanced functionality (e.g. ecommerce) is covered in companion articles.

Use the following buttons to pick the library you are currently using:

gtag.js analytics.js Google Tag Manager

Set up the basic page tag

To populate both your UA and GA4 properties, you’ll need to either add a new tag or modify your existing page tag.

Note: the basic GA4 Configuration tag will automatically generate page view data in your reports.

Generate a virtual pageview

If you generate virtual pageviews in analytics.js, for example:

ga('set', 'page', '/my-virtualpage-path');
ga('send', 'pageview');

you can do the same thing in gtag.js as follows:

gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX', {
  'page_path': '/my-virtualpage-path'
});

Disable data collection

If your site's privacy policy provides an option for the user to opt-out of Google Analytics, you’ll need to instrument the opt-out for both your UA and GA4 properties.

IP anonymization

In GA4 properties, IP addresses are automatically anonymized.

Cross-domain Measurement

In GA4 properties, cross-domain measurement configuration is handled entirely from the Google Analytics user interface. See Measure activity across domains.

Note: Any existing linker configuration will also be applied to GA4 properties. If domains are configured in both the linker and the interface, they will both apply for GA4 properties.