Create an account
Your first step is to set up an Analytics account unless you already have one. Skip to create a property unless you want to create a separate account for this website. For example, you might want to create another account if this website belongs to a separate business.
- In Admin, in the Account column, click Create Account.
- Provide an account name. Configure the data-sharing settings to control which data you share with Google.
- Click Next to add the first property to the account.
Create a property
- Enter a name for the property (e.g. “My Business, Inc website”) and select the reporting time zone and currency. If a visitor comes to your website on a Tuesday in their time zone, but it’s Monday in your time zone, the visit is recorded as having occurred on Monday.
- If you choose a time zone that honors Daylight Savings Time, Analytics automatically adjusts for time changes. Use Greenwich Mean Time if you don’t want to adjust for Daylight Savings Time.
- Changing the time zone only affects data going forward. If you change the time zone for an existing property, you may see a flat spot or a spike in your data, caused by the time shift forwards or backward, respectively. Report data may refer to the old-time zone for a short period after you update your settings until Analytics servers have processed the change.
- Click Show advanced options (below the property-setup fields).
- Turn on the switch for Create a Universal Analytics property.
- Enter the website URL. Select the protocol (http or https).
Most domain hosts support only UTF-8 characters in URLs. Use either UTF-8 characters or punycode for symbols and any non-UTF-8 characters (including Cyrillic characters) in your domain name. Try a punycode converter for help with this. - At this point, choose to create
- Both a Google Analytics 4 property and a Universal Analytics property. This option
- Sets up a parallel Google Analytics 4 property that collects data alongside your Universal Analytics property. Once you add the tag for the Google Analytics 4 property to your site, data will be sent to both properties. You can switch back and forth between properties using the property selector or Admin screen.
- Establishes a connection between the two properties that allow you to migrate configuration settings from your Universal Analytics property to your Google Analytics 4 property later on.
- Only a Universal Analytics property. Choose this option if you only want a Universal Analytics property.
- Both a Google Analytics 4 property and a Universal Analytics property. This option
- Click Next and provide information about your business
- Click Create.
Accept the Analytics Terms of Service and the Data Processing Amendment if prompted, and click Finish.
Using Google Analytics
- Click Admin.
- Select an account from the menu in the ACCOUNT column.
- Select a property from the menu in the PROPERTY column.
- Under PROPERTY, click Tracking Info > Tracking Code. Your Tracking ID is displayed at the top of the page. Your global site tag is displayed farther down the page in a text box under Website Tracking > Global Site Tag (gtag.js)
The global site tag
The global site tag is several lines of code that you need to copy and paste into each webpage you want to measure OR into your header.php file to track all pages of your WordPress site.
<<!– Global Site Tag (gtag.js) – Google Analytics –>
… (several lines of code) …
</script>
To add the global site tag to your web pages:
- Copy the entire contents of the text box.
- Paste it inside the <head></head> tags.
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