Google Signals in Google Analytics 4 - See demographics (gender, age) data

What is Google Signals in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)

Google Signals GA4 is an advertising reporting feature through which Google Analytics 4 can collect cross-device data from those website users who have signed in to one of their Google accounts (Gmail, YouTube, etc) and have turned on ad personalization.

Advantages of activating Google Signals for GA4 property

When you activate Google Signals for your GA4 property, you can:

1. More accurately track users across different devices and platforms.
2. Remarket to more website users across devices.
3. Analyze users’ data by age, gender and interest.

Note: Google Signals is not enabled by default in GA4.

How to activate Google Signals in GA4?

Follow the steps below to activate Google Signals for your GA4 property:

Step-1: Navigate to the ‘Admin’ section of your GA4 property.

Step-2: Click on ‘Data Collection‘ under the ‘Data Collection and Modification‘ column:

Step-3: Find and click on the link named ‘Google Advertising Features Policy‘ link and go through the policy:

If your company can not agree with the Google Advertising Features policy, you should not activate Google Signals.

Step-4: If you agree with the Google Advertising Features policy, then click on the ‘Turn on‘ button:

Step-5: Click on the ‘Continue‘ button:

Step-6: Scroll down and click on the ‘Activate‘ button:

Step-7: Click on the wheel button if you have to turn off Google Signal data collection in particular countries (optional).

Step-8: Turn off the toggle button next to ‘Include Google signals in reporting identity‘ (optional).

When turned on, the demographic and interest data will be available in your reports, but it will increase the likelihood of data thresholding. 

When turned off, the demographics and interest data will be omitted from your reports, but at the same time, GA4 will still continue to collect Google signals data in audiences and conversions and share the data with linked Google Ads accounts for remarketing and bid optimization.

This setting allows you to turn off Google Signals data in reporting identity without disabling Google Signals in GA4.

If, in the future, you want to disable Google Signals, just turn off the toggle button next to ‘Google Signals data collection‘:

Step-9: After 24 hrs have elapsed, navigate to the ‘Overview‘ report under ‘User Attributes‘:

If you can see the users’ data by gender, interest and age, then it means Google Signals data has started flowing in your GA4 reports:

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