Universal Analytics to GA4 Field Mapping

27 Jul

July 27, 2023

Big changes with Google Analytics means we need to learn a lot of new names.

Your first day in a new class, you had to learn a ton of new names. For most of us, it took some time to remember all of them but after a while, we not only knew everyone’s name, but their favorite color and snack.

The changes to Universal Analytics are a bit like that. There are a ton of new fields and names. It can be overwhelming but in time, it will be just as familiar to us as the old fields are.

For marketing teams, this creates a challenge if they want to keep reporting on performance across both platforms, for instance when carrying out a year-on-year analysis. With TapClicks, it is possible to import and store both your UA and GA4 data at the same time and create custom fields to seamlessly report on data across both platforms without overlap, but know that the fields won’t match up the same and even Google has recommended against doing this.

TapClicks adds additional functionality to your GA4 experience by offering both an on-demand and a stored data connector, a pre-built GA4 template to help you get a jumpstart on your reporting and the ability to retrieve data past the 14 month window that Google is now limiting users to.

Even though the data models of Universal Analytics & Google Analytics 4 are significantly different, there are a number of fields that behave in the same way across both platforms, and therefore can be harmonized. Here is the short list of the fields that are the same in UA and GA4.

Shortlist of Field Names That Haven't Changed

Please note: Keep in mind that even though these fields are available in both UA and GA4, the data aggregation has changed, so your numbers might not match one-to-one.

Field name	UA Name	GA4 equivalent name
Users	ga:users	totalUsers
Sessions	ga:sessions	sessions
Campaign	ga:campaign	sessionCampaignName
Source	ga:source	sessionSource
Medium	ga:medium	sessionMedium