[GA4] Best practices for User-ID

Best practices

It is recommended that you do not register a user ID as a custom dimension.

Creating unnecessary high-cardinality custom dimensions, like User ID, negatively impact your reports and explorations, and cause data to be condensed under the (other) row. Instead, use the User-ID feature.

Analyze user-based data

The following describes features you can use to interact with and analyze user-based data:

Use case

Feature

I want to explore segments of users and drill into individual user activities.

User Exploration

I want to monitor user properties as they are collected, troubleshoot issues as issues arise, and understand a user's behavior as the user explores my website or app.

DebugView

I want de-duplicated reporting based on user ID.

I want to compare users who are signed in with those who aren't signed in.

Verify the reporting identity

In Universal Analytics, User ID is only used in specific User ID reports. Thus, User ID is registered as a custom dimension to be used in non-User ID Views, and compare traffic.

In GA4, with User-ID in the reporting identity, User ID de-duplication is present across all reports.

Compare signed in with non-signed in users

I want to create remarketing audiences based on user IDs.

Create remarketing audiences based on User-ID data
I want to see user-level data by user ID.

BigQuery Export

GA4 BigQuery Export has both Client ID (user_pseudo_id) and User ID (user_id) in the schema.

I want to join my Analytics data with first party data (e.g. CRM data) so I can measure offline key events. BigQuery Export
I want to run additional analysis on my GA4 data (e.g. run ML models) and import the insights back into Google Analytics. BigQuery Export and Offline Event Data Import

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