Google Signals is a service within Google Analytics 4 which, once switched on, allows the property owner to monitor the activity of app users and website visitors and to match together information about the activities of one user across their different devices, such as a phone, tablet or computer. It will also help you get the information that Google collects about the user, if the user has not switched off consent to so-called Ads Personalization in their settings – that is, adapting what is shown to their interests and demographic characteristics. The collected information appears in the User → User Attributes reports within 48 hours of switching it on.
You can collect data about users such as where they are connecting from, age group, interests, gender and other characteristics, for better targeting of your remarketing campaigns. With Google Signals activated you can also target the YouTube platform through a GA4 audience!
There is, however, one unpleasant piece of information. Google Signals are not supported on iPhones with iOS 14 or higher.
As I have already mentioned, the Signals service only starts once it is switched on and data cannot be obtained retroactively for the period when it was not active. So if you want to switch it on in your property, I will advise you where to find it in GA4.
You can reach it in 4 steps if you have sufficient access rights to your property.
How to Set Up Google Signals?
In the Google Analytics 4 tool first click the settings icon at the bottom left (step 1) and go to the admin section, then choose Data settings from the property menu and select the very first tab – Data collection (step 2). After you flip the switch marked (step 3) on the screenshot below, you will go through a short explanation of the service itself with all the legal information connected with it, which you just need to agree to. If you would be collecting data that we cannot collect in some countries because of legislation, you can use the setting marked (step 4) to tick only the countries where you want or are allowed to collect data. Or, conversely, switch off only those where you cannot. That is how you successfully activated Google Signals!
On this page you also have a switch for collecting granular location and device information.
When Google Signals is switched on it turns on, but it can also be turned off with the switch. It allows collecting more precise data such as city, latitude and longitude, phone model and brand, operating system name, screen resolution and more
That leaves us to answer the last question: when not to switch Google Signals on?
The Google Signals service comes with a so-called threshold in reports, as part of privacy protection. So that a specific person cannot be identified in the data, it groups data from events for which there is an insufficient amount of data. This may mean you have fewer categories in your reports. You will then also see a "not set" category, in which data from several categories with a small amount of data is merged.
This can be partly prevented by switching to the Device-based option in the property menu called Reporting Identity. Data from Google Signals is then again not reflected in the reports. They will be based only on the original method of identifying the user using the Device ID, and you will therefore not get identification of the same user across devices.
What Can Be Used to Identify Users?
- Device ID – a combination of the device identifier and the browser you use
- User ID – the ID of a logged-in user (after login it makes it possible to identify the same user across devices if they have the same ID)
- Google Signals – a logged-in Google user who has agreed to Ads Personalization
- Modeled Data (with GS switched on) – Google understands that there are many people in the population who do not agree to being tracked. It tries to model the data of these users.
Overall we can recommend Google Signals for websites and apps with high traffic, from about 10,000 visitors a week upwards. Otherwise we recommend rather not switching signals on, so that you see as much accurate and adequate data as possible. If you do have enough traffic, then thanks to GS being switched on, the data in your reports will correspond more to the number of users than to the number of devices.
The article Google Signals Part II continues here.