Google Analytics 4 for dental practices: what to set up and read

Google Analytics 4 for dental practices is worth setting up properly, because out of the box it counts visits, not new-patient enquiries. GA4 is Google's free website analytics tool, and with an hour of set-up it can tell you how many people called or booked from your website, which treatment pages they came through, and whether they found you through Google, an ad or your Business Profile. This guide covers the set-up that matters for a practice, the reports worth reading each month, and the UK cookie rules you need to get right first.

What GA4 is, and what happened to the old Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 is the current version of Google Analytics. The previous version, Universal Analytics, is gone. Google's shutdown notice says standard Universal Analytics properties stopped processing data on 1 July 2023, and that from the week of 1 July 2024 users lost access to the interface and to historical Universal Analytics data.

So if your practice's analytics history stops in 2023, that is why. Any figures from before then cannot be compared directly with GA4, because the two versions measure in different ways.

Is Google Analytics free?

Yes. The standard version of Google Analytics is free. Google sells an enterprise version, Google Analytics 360, aimed at very large organisations. A dental practice or small group does not need it.

Check the UK cookie rules before anything else

Analytics sets cookies or similar technologies on your visitors' devices, so it falls under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), regulated by the ICO. The rules changed with the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, and they matter for how much GA4 can see.

The ICO's guidance on exceptions to the consent rule now includes a statistical purposes exception, sometimes called the analytics exception. In summary, the ICO says:

• It applies only where the sole purpose is collecting statistical information about how your service is used, with a view to improving it.
• You must give clear and comprehensive information and a simple, free way to object.
• You can use a third-party provider, but only if the provider acts on your behalf and uses the information only to help you improve your service.
• The exception does not apply to purposes related to online advertising.

That last point is important for practices that run Google Ads. If your GA4 data feeds advertising, for example by sharing conversions with Google Ads or using advertising features, the exception does not cover it, and you need consent for that use. Whoever manages your cookie banner should be able to show you which tags run before consent and which wait for it. If in doubt, take advice and read the ICO guidance in full.

What consent means for your numbers

Where Analytics only runs after a visitor accepts cookies, visitors who decline are not counted. Google's consent mode documentation describes two approaches: a basic set-up that blocks Google tags until consent is given, and an advanced one that sends cookieless signals when consent is denied and lets Analytics model some of the gap. Either way, GA4 will usually show fewer visitors than really came. Treat its figures as trends rather than exact counts.

One practical check: open your website in a private browser window and make sure the cookie banner actually appears. If a speed plugin or a theme conflict stops it showing, your analytics may be recording almost nothing.

Setting up a Google Analytics 4 property

A GA4 property is the container for one website's data. To create one:

1. Sign in at analytics.google.com with a Google account the practice owns, not a personal or agency account. That is the Google Analytics login.
2. Create an account for the practice, then a property inside it. Set the reporting time zone to the United Kingdom and the currency to pounds sterling.
3. Add a web data stream for your website address.
4. Install the tag. Most website platforms have a box for the measurement ID, or your developer can add it through Google Tag Manager.
5. Turn on enhanced measurement in the data stream settings.

Then change one default. Google's data retention page explains that standard properties keep user-level and event-level data for either 2 months or 14 months, and that this only affects explorations and funnel reports, not the standard reports. Set it to 14 months so year-on-year explorations work.

Google Tag Manager or the plain tag?

Google Tag Manager is a free container that holds all your tracking tags in one place. For a practice that only needs GA4, the plain tag is fine. If you also run Google Ads, Microsoft Ads or a booking system that needs its own tracking, Tag Manager keeps it manageable and means changes do not need a developer each time.

Turn visits into enquiries: set up key events

This is the step most practice sites miss. GA4 records page views automatically, but a page view is not a patient. You need it to record the actions that lead to bookings, and mark them as key events. Google defines a key event as an event that measures an action particularly important to the success of your business, as set out in its key events explainer. Older guides call these "conversions".

For a dental practice, the key events are usually:

Enhanced measurement already records some things automatically, including outbound clicks, file downloads such as a fee list PDF, and form interactions, as listed in Google's enhanced measurement guide. Whether automatic form tracking works depends on how your form is built, so test it before relying on it.

Test every key event yourself. Tap the phone number on your own phone, submit the form, and check the Realtime report shows each one.

Keep patient information out of Analytics

Google's guidance on personal information says no data should be passed to Google that it could use or recognise as personally identifiable information, and gives email addresses in page URLs as an example to avoid. For a dental practice this needs particular care:

• Check your form thank-you page address. Some forms put the patient's name or email into the URL, which then lands in Analytics.
• Never send form contents, such as a patient describing a dental problem, into GA4 as event details.
• Do not use Analytics features that join visits to known individuals unless you have taken advice on it.

Analytics should tell you how many people enquired and from where, never who they were.

Track your Google Business Profile visits separately

Visits from the website link on your Business Profile can appear in GA4 mixed in with ordinary Google search or as direct traffic. You can separate them by adding campaign tags to the website link on your profile. Google's campaign URL guide says to always use utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign together. For example, a link ending in ?utm_source=google and utm_medium=organic and utm_campaign=gbp, joined with the usual ampersands, lets you see profile visits as their own line.

Do the same for links in emails, social posts and printed QR codes, so each one shows separately.

The Google Analytics dashboard: five reports worth reading

You do not need to build a custom Google Analytics dashboard. Five standard views answer most questions:

1. Traffic acquisition (Reports, Acquisition). Sessions and key events by channel: organic search, paid search, direct, referral, organic social. This shows where enquiries come from.
2. Pages and screens (Reports, Engagement). Which pages people visit. Check your main treatment pages are getting traffic at all.
3. Landing pages. The first page of each visit. A treatment page that brings visitors and produces no enquiries needs a clearer next step, such as a visible phone number and booking button.
4. Key events. The count of calls, forms and bookings. This is the number that matters most.
5. Search Console reports. Once you link Search Console to GA4, you get the searches that brought people to each page. Google's linking guide explains the steps.

A monthly 10-minute check

• Key events this month against the same month last year.
• Which channel produced them.
• Which landing pages produced them.
• Any page whose visits dropped sharply.

Keep a running note of what changed in the practice that month, such as a new treatment page, a price change or a week of closures. Numbers mean little without that context.

What GA4 cannot tell you

• Whether a caller became a patient. A tap on the phone number is not a booked appointment. Compare GA4's call taps with your practice management software's new-patient records each month to see how they relate.
• What happened before the click. Searches where you appeared but nobody clicked are in Search Console, not Analytics.
• Calls from your Business Profile. Patients who ring straight from the call button on Google never touch your website. Your Business Profile's own performance view counts those.
• How you compare with rivals. Analytics only sees your own site.

For the bigger picture of how patients find a practice, read how to get more dental patients. If you run paid search, our guide to Google Ads for dentists covers measuring what ads actually bring in.