Know what happens on your site from data, not guesses.

What are Google Analytics 4 and Search Console for?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a free analytics tool that measures where visitors to your website come from and what they do on the site. Google Search Console shows how your site appears in Google Search, which queries it is shown for and whether it has any technical problems. One describes the inside of the site and the other the shop window in the search result; used together they give the full picture.

The difference between the two tools

Search Console data tells what happens before the user reaches your site: how many times your pages were shown, how many times they were clicked, the average position and which search queries they appeared for. It also reports whether pages are indexed, and mobile usability and security problems. GA4 tracks what happens after the user enters the site: which pages they looked at, how long they stayed, whether they filled in a form or made a purchase. Search Console covers only Google organic search; GA4 shows all channels such as ads, social media, direct visits and referrals.

How does GA4 work?

GA4 records everything as an event: a page view, a scroll, a click, a form submission or a purchase. The events that matter to your business are marked as key events and reported as conversions. Because the old Universal Analytics stopped collecting data in 2023, the valid setup today is GA4. Since GA4's default reports are simple, it is often necessary to prepare custom reports and explorations that answer the questions your business cares about.

What should a correct measurement setup include?

• Accounts belonging to the business: Properties in the business's Google account, with the agency and employees defined only as users.
• A single tag source: The measurement code loaded from one place, preferably with Google Tag Manager.
• Clear key events: A few core actions that matter to your business, such as a form, a phone click, a WhatsApp referral, a quote request or a purchase.
• Separating internal traffic: Visits by your own team not distorting the reports.
• Connections: Data links set up between Google Ads, Search Console and GA4.
• Consent mode: If a cookie consent banner is used, the tags working according to the visitor's choice.

Google Tag Manager is the backbone of this arrangement. The tags of Analytics, Google Ads and other ad platforms are managed from a single panel; a new event can be added without touching the site's code each time, and changes can be tested in preview mode before going live. When cookie consent is declined, it is normal for some visits not to appear in reports or to be filled in with modeled data; so when interpreting the numbers, the consent rate must also be taken into account.

What to look at in Search Console

1. Performance report: Shows which queries you are shown for and your click-through rate. Pages shown a lot but clicked little are places where the title and description need improving.
2. Page indexing report: Lists which pages are not in the index and why. Not every warning is a problem; what matters is that valuable pages are in the index.
3. Sitemaps: Passes the list of your pages to Google regularly.
4. URL inspection: Checks how a single page is seen by Google.
5. Security and manual actions: Reports whether Google has applied a penalty to your site.

Google also includes impressions and clicks from AI-powered search features in the Search Console performance data; so part of the visibility in these areas can be tracked here too.

When reading the performance report it is useful to separate searches made with your brand name from other searches. A visitor coming with your business name already knows you; a visitor coming with a general search like "accounting office in Sakarya" is the real gain of SEO work. We make this distinction with filters and track the change in the two groups separately.

Turning data into decisions, and common mistakes

Collecting numbers is the easy part; what matters is which question you ask. A report that answers questions such as "Which service page brings the most quote requests?", "Do visitors from ads or from organic search fill in more forms?" or "Which blog post leads to the service page?" is worth more than dozens of charts. That is why in the reports we prepare with Looker Studio we include only the indicators that matter to your business. The report combines Analytics and Search Console data on one screen and opens from the same place every month.

For reports to be reliable, these mistakes must be avoided in the setup:

• The measurement code being loaded twice, through both the theme and a plugin.
• Conversions not being measured at all on forms with no thank-you page.
• Leaving the data retention period at the short default setting.
• Verifying only one address variation in Search Console.
• Setting reports up and leaving them without ever reviewing them.

On-site and online work

Setup and reporting can be done entirely online. With businesses in and around Sakarya we can read the reports together face to face and give your team a short training. With our customers across Turkey we run the same process by video calls. In every case we access the accounts not with a password but through Google's user authorization.

When setup is finished, we leave you a written measurement plan, a table showing what each event counts and a short note listing who has which permissions in the accounts. That way, even if you later work with another team or agency, how the infrastructure was built is on record and the continuity of the data is not broken.