GA4 Parameter Limits and How They Affect Your Analytics Strategy

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has specific parameter and configuration limits that directly impact how you design your analytics strategy. Key limits include:

• Event names: You can have up to 500 distinct event names per property. This means you should keep event names focused on user actions (e.g., "click", "video_play") and use parameters to describe details about those actions rather than creating many unique event names.

• Custom dimensions and metrics: GA4 allows up to 135 custom dimensions or metrics in total, with 25 user-scoped custom dimensions and 50 event-scoped custom dimensions per property. You must register event parameters as custom dimensions to see their data in reports.

• Other configuration limits:

  • Up to 30 registered custom conversion events
  • Maximum 100 audiences per property
  • Up to 50 data streams per property
  • Data retention is limited to 14 months by default
  • Explorations (custom analysis) are limited to 200 created per user and 500 shared.

These limits affect your analytics strategy by requiring careful planning and prioritization of what events and parameters to track. Overloading GA4 with too many distinct events or custom dimensions can lead to hitting these limits, which prevents further configuration and may cause data loss or incomplete reporting.

Best practices to manage these limits include:

• Use generic event names and leverage parameters to capture details instead of creating many unique event names.

• Plan your custom dimensions and metrics carefully to align with your key business questions and reporting needs.

• Maintain good documentation (a "Solution Design") of your events, parameters, and custom dimensions to ensure consistency and ease of troubleshooting.

• Regularly review and archive unused audiences, custom insights, or key events to stay within limits.

• Consider upgrading to Google Analytics 360 if your data volume or configuration needs exceed standard GA4 limits.

In summary, GA4's parameter and configuration limits require a strategic approach to event and parameter design, focusing on efficiency and clarity to ensure accurate and actionable analytics data.