Overview

Google Analytics 4 is used to view in-depth program activity along with your other web site activities you are already tracking. Visits to your member and referral pages, member shares, referral form adds and referrals directly added by a member.

Use this document to learn all the basics for using GA4 with your Referral Rock account.

🚧

Prerequisites

• A Google Analytics 4 (GA4) account

📘

GA4 Property Recommendation

It is recommended use the same GA4 property you're already using to track all your marketing activities. One of the benefits of GA4 is being able to tie user and session activity across multiple websites. To best utilize this functionality we recommend:

• Use your existing GA4 Property Measurement ID
• Set up cross-domain measurement in order to make GA4 tracking consistent across multiple domains (either using the RR subdomain or your custom domain if using one)

Our tracking will still work with it's own GA4 property, but you won't get the benefit of seeing the whole member and referral session, page view, and event journey's with your other marketing analytics.

Add your Measurement ID

To get started using Google Analytics 4 to track the progress of your Referral Program, locate and copy the Measurement ID provided by Google in your GA4 account.

You'll know you have the right code if it follow this format G-XXXXXXXXX

Add the ID into your Referral Rock account by following the below steps:

1. Open your Referral Rock account.
2. Go to Settings > Branding > Site Settings
3. Paste the ID in the text field provided under GA4.

Note: Changes to the tracking and analytics settings affect all programs and program pages. It may also take up between 24-48 hours for data to show up in GA4

Tracked Events and Page Views

Events are a core functionality of GA4. You can use the event properties to see the differences by program

*Not all referral adds can be tracked using GA4 since they may not all happen during a web session or on the same pages you may be utilizing conversion tracking. Please see your Account dashboards for the most accurate information.

All authenticated and unauthenticated portal pages are tracked as page views. This includes tracking of pages like the referral landing pages, terms & conditions, registration pages, and all sharing widgets.

UTM Parameters

We will automatically attach standard UTM Parameters to further track the performance of your programs based on the applicable social network

All UTM codes are standard across the Referral Rock platform and cannot be edited with the exception of "Campaign". The Campaign tag is pulled from the "Program Name" and can be updated when the Program Name is changed. These will be there regardless if you're using Google Analytics.

FAQs

Do you support Google Analytics Universal?

We only support one Google Analytics tracking per account at a time. That means after you switch from our old Google Analytics Universal tracking to GA4, the GA Universal data will no longer show up.

GA4 is now the preferred method of integrating Referral Rock with Google Analytics. If you were previously tracking with Google Analytics Universal, our GA4 tracking will replace it after you update the Measurement ID.

Note: Google is sunsetting legacy UA support in July 2023.

When does reporting start?

It can take between 24-48 hours for tracking data to appear on your Analytics dashboard. Once you have Google Analytics 4 set up and have begun tracking data, you can use Google's Real Time reporting to check your integration is working properly.

For more information on reporting and how you can test your integration, visit Google's Help Center.

What events are tracked using GA4?
Once set up, GA4 will track member page views, member shares, referral form adds, referral direct adds by a member, and referral visits.

Can I use an existing tag or do I have to create a new one?
You can create a new one, but one of the more powerful features of GA4 is that you can track users across sites. You can create an audience and use the hostname as a selector if you just want to see activity on your referral program.