How GA4 Stores Your Data (Everything Is an Event)

Why this matters

GA4 replaced Universal Analytics with a flat, event-centric data model that changes how every report is constructed and every metric is defined. Understanding the schema before you touch any report saves hours of mis-attribution later.

Try it yourself

1. In BigQuery (or GA4 Explore), inspect the raw event table schema and locate the event_params repeated record — expand one row and identify three key-value pairs present on a page_view event.
2. In GA4's Reports > Realtime, switch between the 'Event count' and 'Users' cards and note which number is always greater, confirming the many-events-per-user relationship.
3. Pull a GA4 Exploration with dimensions event_name and platform and verify that page_view and session_start appear automatically without any custom implementation.

References

• https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ga4/reference/events