What is event tracking?
Event tracking is measuring specific actions people take on your site, a click, a form submit, a video play, rather than just which pages they viewed. In GA4, this is how almost everything is measured.
Everything is an event in GA4
GA4 is built entirely around events. A page view is an event, a scroll is an event, a purchase is an event. Each event can carry extra detail, called parameters, such as which product or how much it was worth.
Automatic vs custom events
- Automatic and enhanced: GA4 collects page views, scrolls, outbound clicks and more with no setup.
- Custom: actions specific to your site, a quote request, a booking step, that you define and send yourself, usually via Google Tag Manager and a data layer.
From event to conversion
An event only becomes a conversion when you mark it as a key event in GA4. This is the step people miss: the event is arriving perfectly, but the conversions report stays empty because nobody flipped the switch. If that is you, see GA4 shows no conversions.
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