GA4 is Google’s free analytics tool for websites and apps. It counts who visits, from where, and what they do on your pages. For an affiliate it shows what happens on your own site up to the moment a visitor clicks away to an offer; what happens after that is visible to the network and the advertiser, not to you.
Google Analytics 4 is the current version of Google Analytics. It replaced Universal Analytics, whose standard properties stopped processing data on July 1, 2023, with Analytics 360 properties following a year later. GA4 records everything as events with parameters: a page view, a scroll, an outbound click, a form submission. Events you mark as important become key events, the name Google adopted in 2024 for what the interface used to call conversions.
Sessions, users and traffic sources are built on top of those events. The source of a visit comes from referrer data, Google Ads auto-tagging and UTM parameters, and is grouped into default channels such as Organic Search, Paid Social or Email. Key events are credited to channels with data-driven attribution by default; the rule-based models other than last click were retired from GA4 at the end of 2023. Standard properties keep event-level data for two months by default, adjustable to fourteen.
For affiliates GA4 is a tool for their own properties: content sites, prelanders and landing pages. Enhanced measurement can log outbound clicks automatically, which is as close as GA4 gets to an affiliate conversion, because the actual sale happens on the advertiser’s domain, where the affiliate’s tag does not run. Revenue therefore lives in the network dashboard or the tracker, and GA4 explains the traffic and the on-site behaviour that led to the click.
GA4 figures rarely match a tracker’s. Consent banners in the EU, ad blockers, bot filtering, data thresholds applied when Google signals is enabled and different definitions of a session and a click all open gaps. For paid campaigns a purpose-built tracker remains the decision tool; GA4 is the free, broad view of on-site behaviour and of organic, referral and email traffic.
A VPN review site marks outbound clicks to offers as a key event and reads them per landing page for one month.
| Landing page | Sessions | Engagement rate | Outbound clicks | Click-through |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /best-vpn | 12,400 | 61% | 2,350 | 19% |
| /vpn-for-streaming | 6,800 | 54% | 820 | 12% |
| /what-is-a-vpn | 15,100 | 48% | 310 | 2% |
The explainer brings the most traffic but almost no outbound clicks, as expected for an informational page, while the comparison page earns. Linking the explainer more visibly to the comparison is the obvious test. Sales and revenue for those clicks come from the network report through sub IDs on each outbound link, not from GA4. Numbers are illustrative.
If you run campaigns on gut feel, you are flying blind with your own money.
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Google Analytics 4, Google’s current analytics platform for websites and apps. It measures user interactions as events and replaced Universal Analytics in 2023.
Not directly, because the sale happens on the advertiser’s site. GA4 can record outbound clicks to offers; revenue comes from the network or your tracker.
Events you mark as important, such as an outbound click or a sign-up. Google renamed conversions to key events in GA4 in 2024.
Consent choices, ad blockers, bot filtering, data thresholds and different definitions of sessions and clicks all create gaps between the two.
References are listed as plain text on purpose; look them up by title and publisher. Updated: 2026-10-09.
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