How to set up scroll tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
Scroll tracking allows you to measure how website users are engaging with your content. It also provides the ability to change an unnecessarily high bounce rate to a meaningful and real bounce rate.
In this article, I am going to talk about how to set up scroll tracking in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Understanding scroll tracking in Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 tracks scroll events by default through its enhanced measurement options.
With enhanced measurement in GA4, you can automatically track and measure interactions and content on your sites in addition to standard page views. Scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads are the events tracked automatically.
Caveat: By default, GA4 tracks only 90% scroll events. But what about the other scroll depths, like 10%, 25%, 50% and 75%?
These scroll depth events also play an important role in measuring user behaviour on a website, especially if you have a heavy content website.
Another thing to note is that GA4 only tracks vertical scroll events with no parameter collected for the event. If you want to set up scroll events for lesser thresholds (10%, 25%, 50% and 75%) or horizontal scroll tracking you need to set up custom events using the global site tag (gtag.js) or Google Tag Manager.
Let’s set up scroll tracking for your Google Analytics 4 property using Google Tag Manager by following below steps.
Setting up scroll tracking in Google Analytics 4 using Google Tag Manager
Note: You must have GTM container code available on the website before proceeding through these steps.
Scroll depth threshold is a built-in variable in GTM and it should be enabled to use it in our events. If by any chance it’s not enabled, you can enable it by going to the ‘Variable’ tab.
Under ‘Built-in Variables’ click on ‘Configure’.
Click on every checkbox under ‘Scrolling’ to enable the required variables.
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Step 1: Log in to your Google Tag Manager console and click on ‘Tags’ in the left-hand side menu.
Step 2: Click on ‘New’ to create a new scroll event tag for your GA4 property.
Step 3: Give a proper name to your tag and click on ‘Tag Configuration’.
Step 4: An overlay will appear at the right-hand side with a list of tag templates. Select ‘Google Analytics: GA4 Event’.
Step 5: The tag configuration window will open, as below. Click on ‘Select Configuration Tag’.
Step 6: A drop-down menu will appear. You can either select your pageview tag or ‘None- Manually Set ID’ from the drop-down. In our case, we will select ‘None- Manually Set ID’.
Step 7: The next step is to enter the GA measurement ID in the input box.
You can find your measurement ID in the ‘Admin’ section under ‘Data Streams’.
Step 8: Specify the name of the event. The event name you provide here will appear in you GA4 analytics reporting.
In our case, we want to measure vertical scroll events at 10%, 25%, 50% and 75%. So, we can add a ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’ variable. This will only provide a value like 10, 25, 50 and 75 but we want our event name to be more descriptive hence we can add ‘%’ after selecting ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’ and text as ‘Scroll’.
This will give an event name as ‘10% scroll’, ‘25% Scroll’, ‘50% Scroll’ and ‘75% Scroll’.
Click on settings icon with ‘+’ on it like below to add variable.
Step 8.1: An overlay will appear like below. Select ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’.
Step 8.2: Add the ‘%’ sign immediately after the curly braces.
Step 8.3: Now enter a space and then add ‘Scroll’ as text in the input box.
You can also add parameters and user properties to the event but this is optional. Additional parameter and user properties are nothing but custom dimensions that you would like to pass along with the event. Since the event name is sufficient to define the user activity, we are not adding any parameters or user property to this event.
Step 9: Now let’s create a trigger condition to fire our tag. Click anywhere under ‘triggering’.
Step 10: An overlay will appear like below. Click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new trigger.
Step 11: Give a proper name to your trigger and click anywhere in ‘Trigger Configuration’.
Step 12: An overlay will appear like below. Click on ‘Scroll Depth’.
Step 13: Trigger configuration settings options will be available as below. You will get two checkboxes called ‘Vertical Scroll Depth’ and ‘Horizontal Scroll Depth’. You can select one based on your business need or you can even select both. In our case, we are tracking the vertical scroll only.
Select the ‘Vertical Scroll Depth’ option.
Step 14: You also get the option to measure the scroll depth in percentages or in pixels. In our case, we are going to measure it by percentage scrolled. By default, the percentage radio button is selected. Add your own threshold limits separated by commas in the input box like below.
Step 15: Click on the ‘Save’ button to save the trigger configuration.
Congratulations! You have successfully created your custom scroll tracking event. Now let’s debug it and preview.
Debug and preview scroll events
Step 16: Click on the ‘Preview’ button (on the top right-hand side) to preview and test your new scroll tracking setup.
Step 17: New window will open with Google preview mode. Add the URL of your website and click on ‘Start’.
Step 18: Another new window will open with the specified URL. Now gradually scroll down your webpage until you reach the bottom. As you start scrolling down you should see new ‘Scroll Depth’ events in GTM preview mode tab, showing one after another under the ‘Summary’ column.
Step 19: Click on any ‘Scroll Depth’ event and you should see your tag is firing like below.
Step 20: Click on the scroll tag name under ‘Tags Fired’.
Step 21: A new overlay will appear like below providing details of our tag and trigger.
Note: You can see in the image above that the event name is ‘Scroll Depth Threshold% Scroll’. Here ‘Scroll depth threshold’ is the predefined variable and ‘%’ and ‘Scroll’ are text values that we provided while defining the event name.
Step 22: To check the value of ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’ click on ‘Data Layer’ and you can see the threshold value for the selected event from the summary tab.
Step 23: You can also check this in real-time in Google Analytics. Just navigate to your analytics property and click on ‘Realtime’ in the left menu.
Step 24: You will see real-time scroll events firing for our custom threshold defined like below.
Congratulations, you have successfully set up a custom scroll tracking event for Google Analytics 4 using Google Tag Manager.
To check the event’s details in GA4 console you can click on ‘All Events’ at the left side reporting menu and you will get the details of all scroll tracking events occurred on the website like below.
Note: In the above image you can also see an event as ‘Scroll’ with 152 counts. This event is predefined evet tracked by GA4 at the threshold of 90%.
Summary
Since Google Analytics 4 provides by default scroll tracking, it is limited to 90% of scroll depth threshold. If you want to track custom threshold events (10%, 25%, 50% and 75%, etc) you need to set up custom events either using Google Tag Manager or global site tag.
Other articles related to GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
#1 Google Analytics 4 Intro
- What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – The Apps + Web Property
- How to upgrade to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4) vs Universal Analytics – What is the difference?
- Google Signals for GA4 – How to see gender, interest and age data in Google Analytics 4
- Understanding Measurement ID in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- Google Analytics 4 training and tutorial
#2 Google Analytics 4 Integration
- How to connect GA4 (Google Analytics 4) with Google Data Studio
- How to connect GA4 (Google Analytics 4) with Google Ads
- How to connect GA4 (Google Analytics 4) with BigQuery
#3 Google Analytics 4 Events
- How to set up event tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- How to set up Custom Events in GA4 via Google Tag Manager
- How to setup enhanced measurement tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- All Events Report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- How to create user properties in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
#4 Google Analytics 4 Conversions
- How to set up conversion tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- How to import conversions from GA4 property to your Google Ads account
#5 Google Analytics 4 Ecommerce
#6 Google Analytics 4 Specialized Tracking
- How to set up cross-domain tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- How to set up site search tracking in GA4
#7 Google Analytics 4 filters
- What are data filters in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
- How to create and test a new data filter in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
- How to block internal traffic in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
#8 Google Analytics 4 Advanced
- Analysis Hub Google Analytics – How to use the Exploration Report in GA4
- How to use Debug View report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Introduction to Measurement Protocol in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – Version 2
- How to create a remarketing audience in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- How to create a custom audience in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- How to build comparison (Advanced segment) in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
#9 Google Analytics 4 Reporting
Register for the FREE TRAINING...
"How to use Digital Analytics to generate floods of new Sales and Customers without spending years figuring everything out on your own."
Here’s what we’re going to cover in this training…
#1 Why digital analytics is the key to online business success.
#2 The number 1 reason why most marketers are not able to scale their advertising and maximize sales.
#3 Why Google and Facebook ads don’t work for most businesses & how to make them work.
#4 Why you won’t get any competitive advantage in the marketplace just by knowing Google Analytics.
#5 The number 1 reason why conversion optimization is not working for your business.
#6 How to advertise on any marketing platform for FREE with an unlimited budget.
#7 How to learn and master digital analytics and conversion optimization in record time.
My best selling books on Digital Analytics and Conversion Optimization
Maths and Stats for Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization
This expert guide will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of maths and statistics in order to accurately interpret data and take actions, which can quickly improve the bottom-line of your online business.
Master the Essentials of Email Marketing Analytics
This book focuses solely on the ‘analytics’ that power your email marketing optimization program and will help you dramatically reduce your cost per acquisition and increase marketing ROI by tracking the performance of the various KPIs and metrics used for email marketing.
Attribution Modelling in Google Analytics and Beyond
Attribution modelling is the process of determining the most effective marketing channels for investment. This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling. It will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to allocate marketing budget and understand buying behaviour.
Attribution Modelling in Google Ads and Facebook
This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling in Google Ads (Google AdWords) and Facebook. It will teach you, how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to understand the customer purchasing journey and determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
About the Author
Himanshu Sharma
Scroll tracking allows you to measure how website users are engaging with your content. It also provides the ability to change an unnecessarily high bounce rate to a meaningful and real bounce rate.
In this article, I am going to talk about how to set up scroll tracking in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Understanding scroll tracking in Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 tracks scroll events by default through its enhanced measurement options.
With enhanced measurement in GA4, you can automatically track and measure interactions and content on your sites in addition to standard page views. Scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads are the events tracked automatically.
Caveat: By default, GA4 tracks only 90% scroll events. But what about the other scroll depths, like 10%, 25%, 50% and 75%?
These scroll depth events also play an important role in measuring user behaviour on a website, especially if you have a heavy content website.
Another thing to note is that GA4 only tracks vertical scroll events with no parameter collected for the event. If you want to set up scroll events for lesser thresholds (10%, 25%, 50% and 75%) or horizontal scroll tracking you need to set up custom events using the global site tag (gtag.js) or Google Tag Manager.
Let’s set up scroll tracking for your Google Analytics 4 property using Google Tag Manager by following below steps.
Setting up scroll tracking in Google Analytics 4 using Google Tag Manager
Note: You must have GTM container code available on the website before proceeding through these steps.
Scroll depth threshold is a built-in variable in GTM and it should be enabled to use it in our events. If by any chance it’s not enabled, you can enable it by going to the ‘Variable’ tab.
Under ‘Built-in Variables’ click on ‘Configure’.
Click on every checkbox under ‘Scrolling’ to enable the required variables.
Get the E-Book (50 Pages)
Get the FREE E-Book (50+ Pages)
Step 1: Log in to your Google Tag Manager console and click on ‘Tags’ in the left-hand side menu.
Step 2: Click on ‘New’ to create a new scroll event tag for your GA4 property.
Step 3: Give a proper name to your tag and click on ‘Tag Configuration’.
Step 4: An overlay will appear at the right-hand side with a list of tag templates. Select ‘Google Analytics: GA4 Event’.
Step 5: The tag configuration window will open, as below. Click on ‘Select Configuration Tag’.
Step 6: A drop-down menu will appear. You can either select your pageview tag or ‘None- Manually Set ID’ from the drop-down. In our case, we will select ‘None- Manually Set ID’.
Step 7: The next step is to enter the GA measurement ID in the input box.
You can find your measurement ID in the ‘Admin’ section under ‘Data Streams’.
Step 8: Specify the name of the event. The event name you provide here will appear in you GA4 analytics reporting.
In our case, we want to measure vertical scroll events at 10%, 25%, 50% and 75%. So, we can add a ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’ variable. This will only provide a value like 10, 25, 50 and 75 but we want our event name to be more descriptive hence we can add ‘%’ after selecting ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’ and text as ‘Scroll’.
This will give an event name as ‘10% scroll’, ‘25% Scroll’, ‘50% Scroll’ and ‘75% Scroll’.
Click on settings icon with ‘+’ on it like below to add variable.
Step 8.1: An overlay will appear like below. Select ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’.
Step 8.2: Add the ‘%’ sign immediately after the curly braces.
Step 8.3: Now enter a space and then add ‘Scroll’ as text in the input box.
You can also add parameters and user properties to the event but this is optional. Additional parameter and user properties are nothing but custom dimensions that you would like to pass along with the event. Since the event name is sufficient to define the user activity, we are not adding any parameters or user property to this event.
Step 9: Now let’s create a trigger condition to fire our tag. Click anywhere under ‘triggering’.
Step 10: An overlay will appear like below. Click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new trigger.
Step 11: Give a proper name to your trigger and click anywhere in ‘Trigger Configuration’.
Step 12: An overlay will appear like below. Click on ‘Scroll Depth’.
Step 13: Trigger configuration settings options will be available as below. You will get two checkboxes called ‘Vertical Scroll Depth’ and ‘Horizontal Scroll Depth’. You can select one based on your business need or you can even select both. In our case, we are tracking the vertical scroll only.
Select the ‘Vertical Scroll Depth’ option.
Step 14: You also get the option to measure the scroll depth in percentages or in pixels. In our case, we are going to measure it by percentage scrolled. By default, the percentage radio button is selected. Add your own threshold limits separated by commas in the input box like below.
Step 15: Click on the ‘Save’ button to save the trigger configuration.
Congratulations! You have successfully created your custom scroll tracking event. Now let’s debug it and preview.
Debug and preview scroll events
Step 16: Click on the ‘Preview’ button (on the top right-hand side) to preview and test your new scroll tracking setup.
Step 17: New window will open with Google preview mode. Add the URL of your website and click on ‘Start’.
Step 18: Another new window will open with the specified URL. Now gradually scroll down your webpage until you reach the bottom. As you start scrolling down you should see new ‘Scroll Depth’ events in GTM preview mode tab, showing one after another under the ‘Summary’ column.
Step 19: Click on any ‘Scroll Depth’ event and you should see your tag is firing like below.
Step 20: Click on the scroll tag name under ‘Tags Fired’.
Step 21: A new overlay will appear like below providing details of our tag and trigger.
Note: You can see in the image above that the event name is ‘Scroll Depth Threshold% Scroll’. Here ‘Scroll depth threshold’ is the predefined variable and ‘%’ and ‘Scroll’ are text values that we provided while defining the event name.
Step 22: To check the value of ‘Scroll Depth Threshold’ click on ‘Data Layer’ and you can see the threshold value for the selected event from the summary tab.
Step 23: You can also check this in real-time in Google Analytics. Just navigate to your analytics property and click on ‘Realtime’ in the left menu.
Step 24: You will see real-time scroll events firing for our custom threshold defined like below.
Congratulations, you have successfully set up a custom scroll tracking event for Google Analytics 4 using Google Tag Manager.
To check the event’s details in GA4 console you can click on ‘All Events’ at the left side reporting menu and you will get the details of all scroll tracking events occurred on the website like below.
Note: In the above image you can also see an event as ‘Scroll’ with 152 counts. This event is predefined evet tracked by GA4 at the threshold of 90%.
Summary
Since Google Analytics 4 provides by default scroll tracking, it is limited to 90% of scroll depth threshold. If you want to track custom threshold events (10%, 25%, 50% and 75%, etc) you need to set up custom events either using Google Tag Manager or global site tag.
Other articles related to GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
#1 Google Analytics 4 Intro
- What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – The Apps + Web Property
- How to upgrade to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4) vs Universal Analytics – What is the difference?
- Google Signals for GA4 – How to see gender, interest and age data in Google Analytics 4
- Understanding Measurement ID in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- Google Analytics 4 training and tutorial
#2 Google Analytics 4 Integration
- How to connect GA4 (Google Analytics 4) with Google Data Studio
- How to connect GA4 (Google Analytics 4) with Google Ads
- How to connect GA4 (Google Analytics 4) with BigQuery
#3 Google Analytics 4 Events
- How to set up event tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- How to set up Custom Events in GA4 via Google Tag Manager
- How to setup enhanced measurement tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- All Events Report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- How to create user properties in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
#4 Google Analytics 4 Conversions
- How to set up conversion tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- How to import conversions from GA4 property to your Google Ads account
#5 Google Analytics 4 Ecommerce
#6 Google Analytics 4 Specialized Tracking
- How to set up cross-domain tracking in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
- How to set up site search tracking in GA4
#7 Google Analytics 4 filters
- What are data filters in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
- How to create and test a new data filter in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
- How to block internal traffic in GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
#8 Google Analytics 4 Advanced
- Analysis Hub Google Analytics – How to use the Exploration Report in GA4
- How to use Debug View report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Introduction to Measurement Protocol in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – Version 2
- How to create a remarketing audience in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- How to create a custom audience in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- How to build comparison (Advanced segment) in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
#9 Google Analytics 4 Reporting
Register for the FREE TRAINING...
"How to use Digital Analytics to generate floods of new Sales and Customers without spending years figuring everything out on your own."
Here’s what we’re going to cover in this training…
#1 Why digital analytics is the key to online business success.
#2 The number 1 reason why most marketers are not able to scale their advertising and maximize sales.
#3 Why Google and Facebook ads don’t work for most businesses & how to make them work.
#4 Why you won’t get any competitive advantage in the marketplace just by knowing Google Analytics.
#5 The number 1 reason why conversion optimization is not working for your business.
#6 How to advertise on any marketing platform for FREE with an unlimited budget.
#7 How to learn and master digital analytics and conversion optimization in record time.
My best selling books on Digital Analytics and Conversion Optimization
Maths and Stats for Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization
This expert guide will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of maths and statistics in order to accurately interpret data and take actions, which can quickly improve the bottom-line of your online business.
Master the Essentials of Email Marketing Analytics
This book focuses solely on the ‘analytics’ that power your email marketing optimization program and will help you dramatically reduce your cost per acquisition and increase marketing ROI by tracking the performance of the various KPIs and metrics used for email marketing.
Attribution Modelling in Google Analytics and Beyond
Attribution modelling is the process of determining the most effective marketing channels for investment. This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling. It will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to allocate marketing budget and understand buying behaviour.
Attribution Modelling in Google Ads and Facebook
This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling in Google Ads (Google AdWords) and Facebook. It will teach you, how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to understand the customer purchasing journey and determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
About the Author
Himanshu Sharma