It is one of the latest Google Analytics questions revolving across the internet.
Google Analytics 4 is a popular service for business owners to measure engagement and traffic across apps or websites. The purpose of GA4 is to record all sessions of a single client or user over a website instead of creating a new session every time someone returns.
It allows Google easy de-duplication and emphasizes what the users can implement over the site. Keeping that in mind, many businesses are now inclined towards the data obtained by Google Analytics 4. But there’s a question that has consumed the internet revolving around GA4!
The question has arisen, as many business owners are coming across metric data saying they have more ‘new users’ than ‘total users,’ which isn’t logically possible for many people! So, what might be the reason behind it?
Let’s go deeper into this Google Analytics guide for trying and understanding these possibly misunderstood variations in the GA4 metrics.
What is the ‘New User’ and ‘Total User’ Metric over Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics for beginners might be a bit complex to understand until explained! Therefore, before you get along with the answer to your question, if you are a new business owner and have just started with GA4, here is a brief explanation of the perks of Google Analytics and the depth of these two metrics.
Users are one of the major elements for understanding how GA4 works. If you intend to get a complete hold of the building blocks of GA4 data, you can come across the explanation of sessions, events, hits, and users.
There were only two metrics over Google Analytics which were ‘new user’ and ‘total users.’ But in 2022, after Google Analytics 4 came to play, a new metric, ‘Active Users,’ was added to the insights.
Now, each of these metrics has a very straightforward explanation, but a detailed understanding would help you take these metrics forward for better business utilization:
1. New User
The number of active or current users who don’t have any previously recorded sessions are accounted as new users. These individuals are the users who visited your site for the first time and remained active for a while.
Remember that GA4 won’t count the users as new who weren’t active on your site. If someone just accessed the website and closed the tab without spending time on it, then Google won’t count it as a new user session.
But that’s how GA4 is different from that of Universal Analytics, where every site visit from a new user was taken into the record. It didn’t matter if they were active users or not.
2. Total Users
Total users, a very straightforward definition, is the collective count of people identified as unique and returning visitors. It means when the users who were once tagged as new users revisit the site, they will be tagged as returning users.
Thus, the number of new and returning users is calculated to update you on the total number of users.
3. Active Users
The new metric by GA4 plays a major role in determining the other two metrics listed above. A user cannot be considered new if he/she isn’t active on the site. And there are specific parameters that go into considering whether or not a user is active.
They should have an engaging session over your site or app or when the analytics is collected. The users should be active over the site when GA4 collects the first_visit, user_engagement or first_open event.
The first_visit collection of analytics data is for the users who visit the website for the first that has GA4 enabled. And, first_open is the analytics initiation to record the users who launched an app for the first time after installing/re-installing it.
And the user_engagement initiation is when the application or webpage is in focus for at least a second.
Why is the Count on ‘New Users’ Higher than ‘Total Users’?
Now, let’s get to the answer right away! You can see more new users over Google Analytics 4 than total users because of a dedicated algorithm or policy implemented over the platform. Google Analytics is responsible for counting the midnight visitors as ‘new users.’
Now that might be fresh knowledge for some, whereas some already had a hint about it! It is knowingly done to maintain accuracy with respect to the session count. In simple words, the interactions from users at night are accountable as new, but the unique ID generated for the client remains the same.
There are various possibilities where people have stated this functionality as a flaw by Google Analytics 4. But, the technical overview of Google Analytics 4 has proven the fact that it is a validated functionality to maintain the accuracy of analytics results and other such involved insights.
Conclusion
So, this article was intended to add clarity to this confusion on why people were seeing more new users than total users. It is just a new approach of GA4 toward recording the user count on your website or platform.
If you want a better insight into how Google Analytics works, refer to the GA4 guide for a better understanding. If not, you can also take a course to master the technicalities and way of assessing GA4 metrics. Remember, the Universal Analytics data can’t be processed over the platform starting from 1st July 2023. Therefore, you ought to get comfortable with the new version of Google Analytics 4.
