Recommended way to setup server-side event tracking for Google Analytics 4?

Question

We've setup a property in Google Analytics a while ago, to track a web-based app. Since it was the default option, this property is using Google Analytics 4 instead of Universal Analytics.

Now we wanted to implement server-side event tracking, e.g. for sign-ups and were pretty surprised that the GA4-version of the "Measurement Protocol" is still in Alpha and not recommended for production use.

Since we need server-side event tracking urgently, we are wondering how to deal with the situation. I guess we can't just "go back" to Universal Analytics without losing our tracking data.

So we dug into the GA4 Measurement Protocol, but stumbled upon some weird stuff. For instance, this protocol requires a "client_id" to be sent along with the events, which makes no sense at all in a server-to-server scenario. There is no such thing as a "unique client" in this case. The old UA protocol did not require this.

I am wondering if there is any best-practices for sending server-side events to GA4 at the moment? Any tutorials? Is there a way to use the "old" UA Measurement Protocol for GA4? I guess not, because even the Tracking ID format is different.

Any pointer to useful information would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

You can't use "old" measurement protocol for GA4, anyway the measurement protocol v2 is working. You can see it in action in this video of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSxdrG1G_yE

Concerning GA4 events, relative tag is built-in in GTM server-side. You can see this video of Simo Ahava about server-side Tagging In Google Tag Manager: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OGbOh216mU