GA4 and Search Console: how to connect them and track user behaviour

🔗 What each tool does

• Google Search Console: queries you appear for, clicks, positions, indexing and errors.
• Google Analytics 4 (GA4): number of visits, sources, pages viewed, time on page and events (such as a button click).

Search Console answers "how do they find me", GA4 answers "what do they do when they arrive".

🪜 Step by step

1. Search Console: add the site and verify ownership (DNS record or HTML tag), then submit the sitemap.
2. GA4: create an account and a property, add a web "data stream" and copy the measurement ID (G-XXXXXXXXXX).
3. Place the tag on the site (directly or via Google Tag Manager).
4. Link the tools: in GA4 go to Admin, then Product links, then Search Console links and select the site.
5. Wait a few days for data to appear.

🎯 Events worth tracking

For small businesses the most important are actions that bring enquiries: a click to call, clicks on Viber and WhatsApp, a contact form submission. In GA4 mark them as key events and you will see which page and which source bring enquiries. Also see how to make the button more effective.

🍪 Cookie consent

GA4 uses cookies, so privacy rules say it should load only after the visitor consents. On our sites the cookie banner loads measurement only when the visitor chooses "Accept all". Read the privacy policy too and always align it with what you actually use.

📊 What to look at every week

• Search Console: queries with many impressions and a low CTR (fix the title and description).
• GA4: pages with many visits and few events (improve the call to action).
• Traffic sources: organic search, direct, social.
• Devices: how many visits come from phones.

🤝 Help with setup

We set up GA4 and Search Console as part of SEO optimisation, and it is included in the Pro and Premium packages on the website cost page. The article on how to write a title and meta description explains headlines that lift clicks.