Summary
Additional events are collected from your website without the need to change your website's code. Enhanced measurement is built into the GA4 web tag and automatically records scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, file downloads and form interactions. You control it from the web data stream settings in Admin, where each event can be toggled individually.
Nitin Batra is a Google Analytics 4 certified professional who configures web and app data streams, audits enhanced measurement events in DebugView and builds event tracking for client properties.
Last updated: August 16, 2026
To determine whether website traffic is coming from organic search, paid search, referral, direct or another source, look at the Session Primary Channel Group dimension in the Traffic acquisition report in Google Analytics 4.
- Events can be associated with signed-in users to activate cross-device reporting.
- Additional events are collected from your website without the need to change your website’s code.
- Conversion reporting for the web data stream uses machine learning to distribute credit across channels.
- Events from your mobile app can be combined with your existing website data.
The correct answer is: Additional events are collected from your website without the need to change your website’s code.
Key Takeaways
- – Enhanced measurement collects additional events from your website automatically, with no changes needed to your website’s code.
- – The events covered are page_view, scroll, click for outbound links, view_search_results, video_start, video_progress, video_complete, file_download and form_start and form_submit, and each one can be toggled individually from the gear icon in the data stream settings.
- – GA4 is event based, so these automatic events land in the same event stream as your custom events and can be used in reports, explorations, audiences and key events.
- – Enhanced measurement is a web data stream feature only. App streams use the Firebase SDK and automatically collected events instead, and site search or video tracking will not fire if your site uses non standard query parameters or a video player that is not the embedded YouTube iframe API.
Which events does enhanced measurement collect in GA4?
Enhanced measurement covers page views including history changes on single page sites, scrolls at 90 percent depth, outbound clicks, site search results, video engagement for embedded YouTube players, file downloads and form interactions. All of these arrive as normal GA4 events with their own parameters. You can see them in Reports, then Engagement, then Events once traffic starts coming in.
Where do I turn enhanced measurement on or off for a web data stream?
Go to Admin, then Data collection and modification, then Data streams, and select your web stream. The Enhanced measurement card has a master toggle, and the gear icon opens the list where you can disable individual events such as site search or video engagement. Changes take effect on new hits, they do not apply retroactively to data already collected.
Does enhanced measurement give me cross device reporting for signed-in users?
No, and this is the option people most often confuse. Cross device reporting for signed-in users comes from sending a User-ID with your events, or from enabling Google signals, both configured separately in Admin. Enhanced measurement only adds browser side event collection for a single web stream.
Should I still use Google Tag Manager if enhanced measurement is enabled?
Yes, for anything enhanced measurement does not cover, such as ecommerce events, lead form submissions with custom logic, or button clicks on specific elements. Enhanced measurement handles generic engagement signals only. A common mistake is tracking outbound clicks or file downloads again in Tag Manager, which produces duplicate events, so check the automatic list before building your own tags.