Analytics Integration

Connect Google Analytics to unlock two powerful features:

1. Use GA4 events as conversion goals - Track any GA4 event (purchases, signups, etc.) as your experiment goal
2. Measure Dalton's overall impact - Compare Optimized vs. Control traffic in your GA4 reports

Learn more about Conversion Goals

Google Analytics · Google Tag Manager

Holdout Group for Impact Tracking

Dalton uses a holdout group to measure overall performance:

• Optimized (80%): Traffic seeing Dalton's experiments
• Control (20%): Traffic seeing original pages (no experiments)

Compare these two groups in GA4 to see the combined effect of all Dalton optimizations.

Adjustable Holdout

The control percentage (default 20%) can be changed in Dalton settings.

Events Sent to Google Analytics

Dalton sends two events to GA4 on every page visit where an experiment is active:

Event	Parameter	Values	Purpose
dalton	type	optimized or control	Identifies whether the visitor is in the Optimized or Control group
dalton_experiment	variantId	The active variant's ID	Identifies which specific experiment variant the visitor is exposed to

Use the dalton event to measure Dalton's overall impact (Optimized vs. Control), and the dalton_experiment event to break results down by individual experiment.

Always pushed to the data layer

These events are pushed to window.dataLayer on every qualifying page visit, regardless of whether you've connected GA4 to Dalton. That means you can pick them up in GTM (or any other data-layer-aware tool) even before completing the GA4 integration.

Use dalton_experiment carefully for raw analysis

The dalton_experiment event is useful if you want to pull raw exposure data into your own analysis. Be aware though that interpreting it directly is risky: Dalton uses moving traffic splits and multi-armed bandit allocation, so the share of traffic going to each variant changes over time. A naive conversion-rate comparison in GA4 will conflate variant performance with allocation shifts and seasonality.

Dalton's dashboards correct for adaptive allocation and seasonality to produce a robust uplift.

Setup in Google Analytics

Follow these steps to set up audiences in GA4 that track Optimized vs. Control traffic.

Step 1: Verify Events Are Coming In

Before setting anything up, confirm GA4 is actually receiving Dalton's events.

1. In GA4, go to Reports → Realtime → Overview
2. Open a page on your site where a Dalton experiment is active
3. In the Realtime report, check the Event count by Event name card and confirm a dalton event (and, if applicable, dalton_experiment) shows up and is counting

If the dalton event appears here, data is flowing and you can continue. If it doesn't show up after a minute or two, the events aren't reaching GA4 yet — see the Google Tag Manager section below if your GA4 is wired through GTM.

Step 2: Create New Audience

Navigate to Settings → Audiences → New Audience

Step 3: Configure Custom Audience

1. Click Create a custom audience
2. Select Events as source
3. Choose dalton event

Step 4: Set Audience Conditions

Create two audiences using the type dimension:

• One where type = 'optimized'
• One where type = 'control'

View Results in GA4

Once audiences are set up, compare Optimized vs. Control performance in any GA4 report.

Add Comparison

1. Open any report (e.g., Landing Pages)
2. Click Add Comparison at the top

3. Create comparison groups based on Audience Name

You'll now see side-by-side performance of Optimized (Dalton experiments) vs. Control (original pages) for metrics like conversion rate, bounce rate, and revenue.

Google Tag Manager

If your GA4 setup is wired through Google Tag Manager, the dalton and dalton_experiment events (and their type and variantId parameters) won't reach GA4 unless you forward them with a tag in GTM.

📥 Download the GTM container template — import this file into GTM to set everything up in one go.

The fastest way is to import this ready-made container template:

1. In GTM, go to Admin → Import Container
2. Select the downloaded file
3. Choose your workspace
4. Pick Merge (so it doesn't overwrite your existing setup) and confirm
5. Publish

Important: set your own GA4 Measurement ID

The template ships with a placeholder ID, so before publishing you must replace it with your own. In GTM, click on the created Dalton_Tag and adjust the Google Analytics Measurement ID field to your own GA4 Measurement ID (the G-XXXXXXXXXX). Until you do this, no events will reach your GA4 property.

Where to find your Measurement ID:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account
2. Click Admin (the gear icon) in the bottom-left corner
3. Under the Property column, click Data collection and modification, then select Data streams
4. Click the Web tab and select your website's data stream
5. Your Measurement ID is displayed in the top-right corner of the stream details window

Prefer to build it by hand? You don't need to set up the variables and trigger separately first — start from a new tag and create them inline as you go.

Step 1: Get your GA4 Measurement ID

Grab your GA4 Measurement ID (the G-XXXXXXXXXX) and copy it now — you'll paste it into the tag in the next step.

How to find your Measurement ID:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account
2. Click Admin (the gear icon) in the bottom-left corner
3. Under the Property column, click Data collection and modification, then select Data streams
4. Click the Web tab and select your website's data stream
5. Your Measurement ID is displayed in the top-right corner of the stream details window

Step 2: Create the GA4 Event tag

Go to Tags → New, click Tag Configuration, and choose Google Analytics: GA4 Event. Name the tag Dalton_Tag and set:

• Measurement ID: paste the G-XXXXXXXXXX you copied in Step 1
• Event Name: click the variable picker (the icon to the right of the field), pick Built-In Variables, and enable/select Event so the field becomes {{Event}} — this forwards the original event name (dalton / dalton_experiment) unchanged

Step 3: Add the event parameters (creating the variables inline)

Still in the tag, expand Event Parameters and Add Row twice. For each row, click the variable picker on the Value field → + (New Variable) → Data Layer Variable to create it on the spot:

Parameter Name	New variable	Data Layer Variable Name
type	Dalton - Type	type
variantId	Dalton - Variant ID	variantId

Each Data Layer Variable should look like this (here, Dalton - Type reading the type key):

Step 4: Add the firing trigger (created inline)

Still in the same tag, click the Triggering box → + (New) in the top-right → Trigger Configuration → Custom Event, then:

• Name: Dalton - All Events
• Event name: dalton* with use matches RegEx ticked — fires for both dalton and dalton_experiment

Save the trigger, then Save the tag. Your finished tag should look like this:

Step 5: Preview and publish

Before publishing, click Preview in GTM and load a page on your site where a Dalton experiment is active. In the Tag Assistant preview window you should see Dalton_Tag fire on the dalton event, with the type and variantId parameters populated.

To double-check it's reaching analytics, open your Google Analytics account and go to Reports → Realtime → Overview (top of the report). You should see the dalton events coming in with data in them.

Once that looks right, click Submit / Publish to make the container live.

Step 6: Register the custom dimensions in GA4

Finally, in GA4 register type and variantId as Custom Dimensions (Admin → Custom definitions → Create custom dimension, scope Event) so they become available in reports and audience builders.

Verify it's working

After publishing, use GTM Preview mode and load a page with an active experiment — you should see Dalton_Tag fire on the dalton event. Then confirm the event lands in GA4 via Reports → Realtime → Overview (the same check as Step 1 of the GA setup above).

Custom events blocked in GTM?

Some GTM setups restrict which custom events are allowed to forward to GA4. If the dalton and dalton_experiment events aren't showing up in GA4, make sure the Dalton - All Events trigger isn't being blocked by an exception or a consent setting, and that the tag's firing trigger is set correctly.

Step 7: Continue in Google Analytics

Now that your events are flowing into GA4, head back to the Google Analytics setup to build your audiences and start measuring Dalton's impact.

👉 Go to Setup in Google Analytics