GA4 Benchmarking: Comparing Your Site With Your Industry

This guide is based on Google's Analytics Help articles: Benchmarking, Data sharing settings, About the Home page, About data thresholds, Engagement rate and bounce rate and Conversions vs. key events. Google moves menus from time to time, so the clicks below may shift a little.

What GA4 benchmarking is

Most GA4 numbers only tell you about your own site. Is a 55% engagement rate good? Is your share of new users low? On its own the number does not say. Benchmarking adds context: Google calls benchmarks "reference metrics that help you compare your business performance against the performance of other businesses in your industry", built from similar businesses that use Google Analytics.

Benchmarks are shown as percentiles for a peer group: the median, the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile. You do not see other companies' names or numbers. Google says the data stays "private and aggregated", that a minimum number of properties must be in a peer group before its benchmarks appear, and that a property needs a minimum volume of users and meaningful data before it is included in a peer group and contributes to its benchmarks. The figures are refreshed every 24 hours.

The setting that turns it on

Benchmarking works on a give-and-take basis. To be eligible, the account must have the Modeling contributions & business insights data sharing setting turned on. To check it:

1. Go to Admin and, under Account, click Account details.
2. Find Modeling contributions & business insights, tick it and click Save.

You need the Editor role or above at the account level to change data sharing settings. Google explains that data shared under this setting is aggregated with data from other websites and apps, "so it cannot be used to identify your organization, account, or users". With the setting off, data can still flow between Analytics and the Google products you have explicitly linked, such as a linked Google Ads account.

This is a different switch from Google products & services, which lets Google use your data to improve its own products. Benchmarking only asks for the modeling contributions setting. If your company has a policy on data sharing, check that turning it on fits that policy, and that your privacy notice covers it, before you tick the box.

Finding and reading the benchmark

Benchmarks live on the GA4 Home page, in the overview card at the top. That card shows a few metrics with a trendline and adapts to what you look at most. To see a benchmark:

1. In the overview card on the Home page, select the metric you want to change.
2. Expand the Benchmarking category and pick one of the metrics listed below.
3. Check the benchmarking badge in the top right of the card. "On" means benchmarks are shown; click the badge to turn them on or off.

With benchmarks on, the card shows three things:

• Solid line: your property's own trend.
• Dotted line: the median of your peer group.
• Shaded area: the peer group's range, from the 25th to the 75th percentile.

Hover over the line to see the details for a day. In plain terms: if your line sits inside the shaded band, you are in the middle half of comparable properties for that metric. Above the band means you beat three quarters of them; below it means three quarters do better. Whether "above" is good depends on the metric: higher is good for engagement rate, lower is good for bounce rate.

Your personal changes to the overview card are not shown to other users of the property, and Analytics remembers your choices in later sessions.

Peer groups and how to change yours

A peer group is, in Google's words, "a cohort of businesses that are similar to yours, categorized based on shared industry characteristics". Your default peer group is assigned from the industry category chosen when the property was set up, plus signals such as the default URL and the app IDs in your data streams. You can see the property's industry category in Admin > Property > Property details.

The default is a guess, so check it. To change it, expand the benchmarking badge on the overview card and click the button under "Benchmarking peer group". The top-level categories are:

Arts & Entertainment, Autos & Vehicles, Beauty & Fitness, Books & Literature, Business & Industrial, Computers & Electronics, Finance, Food & Drink, Games, Health, Hobbies & Leisure, Home & Garden, Internet & Telecom, Jobs & Education, Law & Government, News, Online Communities, People & Society, Pets & Animals, Real Estate, Reference, Science, Shopping, Sports, Travel & Transportation.

Each has subcategories, and you can go several levels deep; Google's example is Shopping > Apparel > Footwear > Athletic shoes. A narrower group is a closer comparison, as long as it holds enough properties to show benchmarks at all. A local service business that mainly wants calls and form enquiries should pick the category for its trade, not a broad one full of online shops and publishers.

Which metrics have benchmarks

Benchmarks exist for a fixed list of metrics, grouped into four categories. These are the ones Google lists:

DAU, WAU and MAU are daily, weekly and monthly active users; the ratios show how many of your monthly users come back weekly or daily, which matters most for apps and content people return to. The monetization metrics only mean something if your property records purchases; our GA4 ecommerce tracking guide covers that. Revenue totals, traffic volumes and channel splits are not on the list.

Why you might not see benchmarks

• The data sharing setting is off. Without Modeling contributions & business insights, the property is not eligible.
• The date range is "today". Benchmarks are not available for today; pick a range that ends yesterday or earlier.
• The dates are too old. Google says benchmarking data is available from May 30, 2024 onwards.
• The metric has no benchmark. Only the metrics in the table above have one.
• The peer group is too small. A minimum number of properties must be in a peer group before its benchmarks become available. If a narrow subcategory shows nothing, try its parent category.
• Your property is small or new. Properties need a minimum volume of users and meaningful data to be included in a peer group. Google does not publish the exact minimums.

Thresholds are a general GA4 privacy measure: they are system-defined and you cannot adjust them, which is also why some explorations hide rows for small groups of users.

Using benchmarks without fooling yourself

The comparison is only fair if your numbers are measured the same way as everyone else's, and several of these metrics depend on your own setup. The points below are our reading of Google's definitions, not Google's advice:

• Engagement and bounce rate follow a fixed rule. GA4 counts a session as engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has 2 or more page or screen views. Bounce rate is simply the share of sessions that were not engaged. A site where people read one page for 8 seconds and call the number at the top will look worse than it is.
• Key event rates depend on what you marked. Session and user key event rate count the events you chose as key events. If you mark a scroll or a page view as a key event, your rate jumps above your peers without a single extra enquiry; if you only mark real leads, it looks low next to properties that count softer actions.
• Your own visits skew the line. Staff, developers and test traffic add engaged sessions and returning users. Filter internal traffic before you trust the comparison.
• The peer group is a broad mix. Even a subcategory holds sites of different sizes, markets and business models. Treat the band as context, not a target.

Google's own help page gives examples of how to act on a gap: a new user rate below the 25th percentile may point to investing more in user acquisition, while a bounce rate well above the median suggests looking at the site's user experience. Use a gap as a reason to dig into the detailed reports and find which pages, channels or devices cause it, then measure the fix against your own history, as our monthly website report guide suggests. If a benchmark is or is not useful, Google asks for a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the card, which it uses to decide which benchmarks to surface.

Frequently asked questions

What is benchmarking in GA4?

Benchmarks are reference metrics that compare your property with a peer group of similar businesses using Google Analytics. GA4 shows the peer group's median and its 25th to 75th percentile range next to your own trendline in the Home page overview card.

How do I turn on benchmarking in GA4?

An Editor or above at the account level turns on Modeling contributions & business insights in Admin > Account details. Then, in the Home page overview card, pick a metric from the Benchmarking category and set the benchmarking badge to On.

How does GA4 choose my peer group?

From the industry category chosen when the property was set up, plus signals such as your default URL and app IDs. You can change it from the benchmarking badge on the overview card, down to subcategories such as Shopping > Apparel.

Why are GA4 benchmarks not showing?

Common reasons: the data sharing setting is off, the date range is set to today, the dates are before May 30, 2024, the metric has no benchmark, the peer group has too few properties, or your property does not yet have enough users and data.

Can other companies see my GA4 data through benchmarking?

No. Google says shared data is aggregated with data from other sites and apps so it cannot identify your organization, account or users, and benchmarks only appear once a peer group has a minimum number of properties.

Benchmarks are only as good as the tracking behind them. See our website development and web app development services and all our services, or email [email protected].