Google has taken an important step toward bringing GA4 into parity with Universal Analytics by launching the integration of Google Optimize with GA4. Specifically, Optimize users can now link their Optimize containers to GA4 properties. This means that organizations will now have a much clearer path to activating data from GA4 by using it to feed A/B tests and personalizations.
The most important and exciting aspect of this launch is that for the first time, users of the free versions of Google Analytics will be able to define segments/audiences within GA, then seamlessly share those audiences over to Optimize for targeting. This means that you can deploy A/B tests or personalization campaigns against highly-specific, highly-valuable audiences that you’re identifying through your analysis in GA4.
As you might expect, working with Optimize & GA4 entails a few other differences if you’ve been accustomed to working with Optimize & Universal Analytics. You can review these in detail at the link above, but two important ones to highlight include:
- The Google Ads integration which lets you personalize experiences on Ads landing pages isn’t live yet in GA4. Once this is launched, it’ll take the depth of the GA-Optimize integration to the next level.
- Your choice of experiment “objectives” is currently rather limited if working with GA4. You can set purchases, purchase revenue, or overall pageviews as your objectives — but importantly, you can’t yet set your GA “goals” as Optimize objectives. We hope that feature will be coming along soon.
Anyway, if you’re running GA4 and have Google Optimize deployed already, you can get started by linking your Optimize container to your GA4 property, which is a straightforward process.
There’s hopefully more to come on the GA4-Google Optimize integration, but this is an exciting milestone that should help organizations get closer to adopting GA4 for day-to-day use in place of Universal Analytics.
To learn about the move to Google Analytics 4, check out our Beginner’s Guide to GA4 page.
