You will be able to create a GA4 property and data stream and install the tag on a website.
When Priya asked her web designer for the GA4 login, the designer was not sure which account it was under. It turned out the property belonged to the designer's own Google account, along with a dozen other clients' sites. Priya could see the reports only because someone had once shared them with her. If the designer moved on, the maths centre's data would go with them.
That is a common starting point, and a good reason to set GA4 up yourself, under an account the business owns. This lesson goes through the setup in the order you will meet it.
GA4 has three levels. An account is the top level, usually one per business. Inside it sits a property, which is where reports, settings and data live; most small businesses need one property for their website. Inside the property are data streams, one for each place data comes from: a website, an iOS app or an Android app.
Create the account under a Google login the business controls, ideally a shared business address rather than one person's personal Gmail. Then give other people access at the level they need. A designer who installs the tag needs editor access to the property. An owner who reads reports can have viewer access. You can remove anyone later without losing data.
When you create the property, GA4 asks for a time zone and currency. Choose Singapore and SGD if that is where you sell. The time zone decides where each day starts and ends in your reports, which matters when you compare days with your own sales records.
Then add a web data stream with your site's address. GA4 gives the stream a measurement ID, which starts with G-. That ID is what connects your website to this property.
The Google tag is the piece of code that sends events from your site to GA4. You can install it in one of three ways, and you only need one.
Directly, by pasting the code snippet GA4 gives you into the head section of every page. This suits a hand-built site where someone is comfortable editing the code.
Through your website builder's integration. Most popular builders and online shop platforms have a settings page or plugin where you paste the measurement ID and they add the tag for you. This is the easiest path for most small businesses, and it usually survives theme changes.
Through Google Tag Manager, a free tool that holds all your tags in one container. You install the Tag Manager code once, then add GA4 and other tags inside it without touching the site again. It is worth learning if you will run several tags or need custom events, as lesson 3.4 may require. It adds a layer to learn, so a business with one simple site can start without it.
Whichever you choose, install only one. Installing GA4 through the builder and through Tag Manager at the same time is a common cause of every page view being counted twice.
Priya's site runs on a website builder, so she pasted her measurement ID into its analytics settings and saved.
You and your staff visit your site far more than any customer, often to check prices or fix typos. On a small site, those visits can make up a noticeable share of the traffic and distort every rate.
GA4 handles this with an internal traffic filter. In the web data stream's tag settings, you define internal traffic by IP address, for example the centre's office connection. Then, in the property's data filters, you find the internal traffic filter, which starts in a testing state, and switch it to active. From then on, matching visits are excluded from reports.
Two cautions. Home broadband addresses can change from time to time, so check the rule now and then. And once the filter is active, your own test visits disappear, so when you test tags or events, use your phone on mobile data instead of the office connection.
GA4 keeps detailed, user-level data for a limited time, and the default setting is the shorter option. This does not affect the standard reports, but it limits how far back explorations can look, which matters in module 4. Go to the data retention setting under the property's data collection settings, choose the longest period offered, and save. Google's GA4 help centre lists the current options.
Analytics also involves personal data, so your cookie banner and privacy notice should say that you use it and why. Google's consent mode lets your tags adjust to what each visitor accepts, sending less or no data when they decline. Lesson 3.3 of Paid ads: Meta, Google and TikTok, Consent, privacy and the PDPA, covers the obligations in Singapore. If you use a cookie banner tool, check whether it supports consent mode before you buy or configure it.
Once the tag is in place, open your site in a browser, then open the realtime report in GA4. Within a minute or so you should see at least one active user, along with the page you are on. If you set up the internal traffic filter already, view the site on mobile data so your visit is not filtered out.
If nothing appears after a few minutes, the usual suspects are a measurement ID with a typo, the tag installed on a staging version of the site rather than the live one, or an ad blocker in your own browser. Fix those in that order and check again. When your own visit shows up, the setup is working, and you are ready to do the same for your own site.
Create a GA4 property and data stream for your site, install the tag, and confirm your own visit appears in the realtime report.
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