If you’ve worked with or are familiar with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you’re likely familiar with two types of events: Regular Events and Key Events. While they might seem similar at first glance, there are key differences between the two that can significantly impact your data tracking and reporting.
Once I understood the difference between events and key events, it provided more accurate reporting and improved Google Ads performance.
The Basic Difference
Understanding GA4 Events & Their Limitations
When you install the GA4 tracking code on your website, Google Analytics automatically begins tracking what they deem important user interactions as an “event” [source]. While this sounds helpful in theory, it often creates more confusion than clarity.
Let me show you a real example from our agency, The Media Captain. Take a look at all the events being automatically tracked on our website:
As you can see, this events list is overwhelming. Our website isn’t even eCommerce, yet we’re tracking dozens of automatic events – many of which I’m not even sure what they mean.
This automatic tracking creates several major problems:
- Inflated Numbers: Your reporting becomes cluttered with inflated numbers that don’t accurately reflect true leads like contact form submissions or phone calls.
- Campaign Optimization Issues: If you import these events into Google Ads and set-up your campaigns to optimize for conversions, your campaigns will try targeting irrelevant events. At The Media Captain, we don’t want our Google Ads campaigns optimized for basic page views – we want them optimizing for actual conversions like contact form submissions.
- Inflexible Naming Conventions: You can’t modify the names of these automatic events. This becomes problematic when you have multiple contact forms and need to distinguish between them for accurate tracking.
Related Blog: Similarities between Meta’s custom vs. standard event compared to events vs. key events in GA4
Understanding GA4 Key Events: Our Preferred Recommendation
After seeing how overwhelming regular events can be, let’s talk about Key Events – what I like to think of as your “actual conversions.” Unlike regular events, Key Events allow you to track and name the specific user actions that truly matter for your business.
Let me show you another example from The Media Captain. Here are the Key Events we track to evaluate our marketing ROI:
As you can see, we focus on three primary Key Events:
- Email Clicks When someone clicks our email button to contact us directly. This helps us track potential leads who prefer email communication.
- Phone Clicks When someone clicks to call us. These are often our highest-intent leads since they want immediate communication.
- Contact Form Submissions When someone completes and submits our contact form. We track these through thank you page visits.
Unlike the overwhelming list of 13+ automatic events we saw earlier, these Key Events provide clear, actionable data that directly reflects potential business opportunities.
Important Setup Notes:
- You must explicitly “Mark as key event” in GA4 for each conversion you want to track
- GA4 automatically includes “Purchase” as a key event for all accounts. If you’re not an eCommerce site (like us), you can ignore this.
- You can customize the names of Key Events to clearly distinguish between different types of conversions (unlike regular events)
If you’re interested in setting up key events yourself within GA4, HERE is a tutorial from Google Analytics with step-by-step instructions. Contact us today if you’d prefer our agency to assist with properly implementing the GA4 pixel with key events.
Best Practices for Setting Up Key Events
Based on our experience working with many clients, here are some best practices for setting up Key Events:
- Use Clear Naming Conventions: When setting up Key Events, make sure the names clearly indicate what’s being tracked. For example, if you have multiple contact forms, distinguish between them (e.g., “general_contact_form_submission” vs “service_page_contact_form_submission”). You may be required to create separate thank you confirmation pages to clearly distinguish.
- Avoid Duplicate Tracking: Be careful not to track the same conversion twice. For instance, if you have multiple forms going to the same thank you page, make sure you’re not counting the same conversion multiple times.
- Regular Auditing: Review your Key Events to ensure they’re still relevant and tracking correctly. Remove or uncheck any outdated or duplicate events to maintain clean, accurate data.
- Import Key Events to Google Ads: We mentioned this earlier but we wanted to reiterate how important it is to import key events vs. events into Google Ads
The Role of Google Tag Manager
While you can create events directly in GA4, our development team strongly recommends using Google Tag Manager (GTM) to set up your events. Why? Because GTM allows you to:
- Spot check that events are firing properly
- Test your tracking before it goes live
- Maintain more control over your event tracking
When you set up events through GTM, they’ll automatically sync with GA4, where you can then mark them as Key Events.
Conclusion
Once you have correctly set up Google Tag Manager and Key Events, you’ll start reaping the benefits of having a clear view of conversions on your website. Simultaneously, your Google Ads performance should improve since your campaigns will start optimizing for actual conversions that are valuable to your business.
I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve worked with where we inherited their Google Analytics account and key events weren’t set-up properly. Getting this right isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. Remember: not all events are created equal – focus on tracking what matters most for your business, and don’t get lost in the sea of automatic events that GA4 provides.