Google Analytics 4 (GA4) uses different event types to capture user interactions and support specific analysis goals.
In addition to automatically recorded events, GA4 provides optimized analyses that track common website interactions—such as scrolling, outbound link clicks, site search, form usage, video engagement, and file downloads—without requiring custom code. Understanding how these event types work and what data they collect helps ensure that user behavior is measured consistently and can be analyzed effectively in GA4 reports.
You can switch this tracking on or off in the data stream settings, as shown in the figure below. Unfortunately, Google came up with the somewhat unwieldy name of optimized analyses instead of calling these “automatic events” too.
You can activate optimized analyses for various tasks. The Google tag executes out the necessary code and fires the corresponding events without any further adjustments to your website’s code. This capability works both for the integration via gtag code and for integration via Google Tag Manager. You can also switch optimized analyses on or off at any time in the administration of the data stream.
In contrast to automatically recorded events, you can see optimized analyses under the Network tab of your browser, and you can track what data is being sent.
GA4 provides seven automatically tracked events with optimized analyses, which we’ll now look at in detail.
When a page is loaded and the associated Google tag is loaded along with it, a page view is triggered. A page view also happens whenever a user reloads a page by clicking on the refresh button in their browser. In the event report in GA4, the action appears as page_view.
Page views are the only optimized analysis that cannot be deactivated. They only allow the behavior to be adapted for dynamic websites, as shown in the figure below. For example, changes in the browser history (history change) are also logged by default. These changes often occur on dynamic and code-heavy websites that use JavaScript to load content without leaving the actual page. You can sometimes recognize them in the browser by a hash # in the URL.
You can deactivate this behavior under Advanced settings, although this step is only necessary in very special cases. Usually, you can ignore this option and leave the settings as is.
As mentioned earlier, you cannot deactivate automatic page loading—so make sure that you only load the Google tag after the user has given their consent.
If a page is too long for a user’s browser window, the user must scroll down. With this optimized analysis, the Google tag records the moment when a user has seen 90% of a page (or when it was technically visible in the browser). In this case, the scroll event is triggered, and the value 90 is passed as a parameter.
An external link is a link that leads to another domain (i.e., to a domain that is different from the one currently called in the browser). When you click this link, not only is the click event fired, but a number of parameters are also transferred, which you can analyze later in GA4, such as the following parameters:
Domains you have stored for cross-domain tracking are not regarded as external domains and are therefore not counted per event.
If you provide a search function on your website that users can use to browse your website’s contents, you can configure an analysis of the search queries entered in that search field.
For this task, first check whether the search of your offer transfers the search query with a URL parameter. You can check this capability by starting a search on the website and then viewing the URL in the browser. For example, when searching on Google, the query is passed in the q parameter:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mysearchquery
The website search is already preconfigured for the following parameters:
q, s, search, query, keyword
If your input appears in the URL as a value after another parameter, you should add this parameter in the field provided.
If additional data is transferred in your search, such as a category filter, you can enter this value in the input field for additional search parameters and later analysis.
If a user views a page that contains one of the stored parameters in the URL, the Google tag fires the view_search_results event and passes the input and additional fields as parameters for later evaluation.
If forms are built into the website, GA4 attempts to record the interaction and submission. For this purpose, the form_start and form_submit events are triggered.
The following parameters are transferred:
The recognition of the form dispatch does not necessarily work as intended in all cases.
If videos are integrated on your website, the user’s actions with the player will be recorded. However, one prerequisite is that the player element use of the JavaScript application programming interface (API). For example, if you embed the YouTube player, you must activate the API with a parameter. (For more information, review the YouTube documentation under the “enablejsapi” keyword.)
If the communication between the player and the Google tag works, events are fired at the start (video_start); at the end (video_complete); and when 10%, 25%, 50%, and 75% (video_progress) of the video has been reached.
For these events, additional information is transferred as parameters for the video, such as the following:
The Google tag recognizes a click on a link to a specific file type as a download. These file types can be documents, compressed archives, videos, or audio files. Specifically, the following extensions are recognized as downloads:
If the extension is recognized, the Google tag fires the file_download event along with additional information. The following information about the click event is transferred as parameters:
You can also use event names and parameters for your own programming for all events in the optimized analyses. If, for example, downloads on your site are not automatically recorded because the file extension is not recognized, you can have the event fired by your own code.
GA4’s optimized analyses make it possible to capture many common user interactions automatically, reducing the need for manual event implementation. By understanding which events are triggered, what parameters are collected, and where limitations may occur, analysts can better interpret engagement data and identify gaps in tracking. When default event recognition is insufficient, GA4 also allows custom event definitions to ensure that key interactions are fully represented in analysis and reporting.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book Google Analytics 4: The Practical Guide by Markus Vollmert. Markus is the founder and managing director of the Cologne-based digital marketing agency luna-park.
This post was originally published 1/2026.