Google Analytics Demo Account: What to Practise in GA4

Olamide Sule, founder of Dolphin Analytics: a digital analytics expert based in London delivering solutions for agency and in-house clients.

We set up and fix GA4 for agency and in-house teams most weeks, and the Google Analytics demo account is the first place we’d send anyone learning the tool. It costs nothing, it can’t break anything, and it has more data in it than a new property on a test site ever will. This guide covers how to get in, what the Viewer role lets you do, six exercises worth your time, and the gaps the demo leaves.

What is the Google Analytics demo account?

The Google Analytics demo account is a read-only GA4 account that Google gives to anyone with a Google account. It holds two properties: the Google Merchandise Store, an online shop selling Google-branded products, and Flood-It!, a puzzle game with app and web data. Google obfuscates the data, but it behaves like a normal GA4 property.

Per Google’s demo account help page, the Merchandise Store property carries traffic source, content and transaction data. The Flood-It! property carries events and ecommerce data from app and web usage. Start with the Merchandise Store: ecommerce data makes the reports easier to reason about, because every question ends in “did they buy?”

How do you access the GA4 demo account?

You add the demo account from Google’s help page, and it then appears in your GA4 account selector. The steps:

1. Sign in to the Google account you want to use.
2. Open Google’s demo account help page and click the access link for the property you want (Google Merchandise Store or Flood-It!).
3. Agree to the prompt. Google either adds the demo to your existing Analytics access or creates a new account to hold it.
4. In GA4, click the account name at the top left to open the account selector, then pick the demo property.

One catch: the demo counts towards the account limit for your Google login. Google’s help page puts that limit at 2,000 Analytics accounts per Google account, so it only matters for agency logins holding a very large client list.

What can you do in the demo account, and what can’t you?

Every user gets the Viewer role. Viewers can read reports and configuration and change what they see, but can’t change the property itself. Google also blocks a few features on top of the normal Viewer limits.

You can	You can’t
Open every standard report under Reports	Export reports or explorations
Filter tables and add secondary dimensions	Use User Exploration
Build explorations and create segments	Use the device ID dimension
Read Admin settings (events, key events, data streams)	Pull data through the Analytics Data API
Compare date ranges and audiences	Edit settings, add events or install tags

Because exports are blocked, write your answers down or screenshot them as you go. The limits in this table come from Google’s own help page.

What should you practise in the GA4 demo account?

Practise answering business questions, not touring menus. Each exercise below starts with a question a client would ask, then gives the exact path in the Merchandise Store property. If a report name is new to you, our guide to which GA4 report answers which question maps them out.

1. Which channel brings in the most revenue?

1. Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
2. Set the date range to the last 90 days.
3. Scroll the table right to the revenue column and sort by it.
4. Click the dropdown on the first column and switch the dimension to Session source / medium to see which sources sit inside each channel.

The lesson: a channel can win on sessions and lose on revenue. Note which one does.

2. Which products sell, and which only get viewed?

1. Go to Reports > Monetisation > Ecommerce purchases.
2. Compare the items viewed column with the items purchased column.
3. Find a product with lots of views and few purchases.

A product page that attracts views but not sales is a question for the merchandising team, and spotting it is a skill you’ll use on every ecommerce account.

3. What events does the site collect?

1. Go to Reports > Engagement > Events.
2. Click an event name, such as add_to_cart, to open its detail view.
3. Then go to Admin > Data display > Events to see the same list from the configuration side, and Admin > Data display > Key events to see which ones count as conversions.

If the difference between events, sessions and users still feels loose, our explainer on GA4 sessions and events covers the model.

4. Where do shoppers drop out of checkout?

1. Go to Explore and choose the Funnel exploration template.
2. Click the pencil next to Steps and set five steps using event names: view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, add_payment_info, purchase.
3. Apply, then add Device category as a breakdown.

Look for the step with the biggest fall, then check whether mobile and desktop fall at the same step. That comparison is where most useful checkout insight comes from.

5. Do buyers behave differently from browsers?

1. Go to Explore and choose Free form.
2. Under Segments, click +, choose User segment, and set the condition to event name purchase.
3. Drag Device category into rows and Sessions and Engaged sessions into values.
4. Drag your new segment into Segment comparisons.

6. How is the property configured?

1. Go to Admin > Data collection and modification > Data streams and open the web stream.
2. Read which enhanced measurement options are switched on (scrolls, outbound clicks, site search and so on).
3. Check Admin > Data display > Custom definitions for any custom dimensions.

This last exercise matters more than it looks. When we audit a client’s GA4 property, the settings screens are where we start, because a report can only be as right as the configuration behind it.

What can’t the demo account teach you?

The demo account can’t teach setup, because Viewers can’t install or change anything. You won’t practise creating a property, adding tags in Google Tag Manager, marking key events, configuring consent, or reading DebugView as your own events arrive. And you won’t see what broken data looks like.

That last gap is the big one. The Merchandise Store is a tidy property. In the accounts we audit, the faults we find most are duplicate purchase events, key events that quietly stopped firing after a site change, and consent settings that drop more traffic than anyone expected. None of that shows up in a demo. Our GA4 audit checklist walks through how we look for those faults in a live property.

How do you practise GA4 setup when the demo is read-only?

Build your own property on a site you control, such as a free blog or a personal test page. It costs nothing and gives you Editor access. The steps:

1. In GA4, go to Admin > Create > Property, name it, and set your time zone and currency.
2. Choose Web as the platform, enter the site URL, and copy the Measurement ID (it starts with G-).
3. Install Google Tag Manager on the site, then add a Google tag in GTM with that Measurement ID, triggered on Initialization - All Pages.
4. Click Preview in GTM. Tag Assistant opens your site in debug mode.
5. In GA4, go to Admin > Data display > DebugView and watch your pageviews arrive.

Our GTM setup guide covers step 3 in detail, and if events don’t appear in step 5, this DebugView troubleshooting guide covers the usual causes.

How do you practise SQL on GA4 data?

Use Google’s public BigQuery dataset from the same store. Per Google’s dataset documentation, it holds obfuscated Merchandise Store events from 1 November 2020 to 31 January 2021, and it runs in the free BigQuery sandbox. This query counts events by name for November 2020:

SELECT
  event_name,
  COUNT(*) AS events
FROM `bigquery-public-data.ga4_obfuscated_sample_ecommerce.events_*`
WHERE _TABLE_SUFFIX BETWEEN '20201101' AND '20201130'
GROUP BY event_name
ORDER BY events DESC;

Google notes the dataset uses placeholder values in places, so treat it as practice, not as a real store’s results.

How do you remove the demo account?

Open the demo property, go to Admin > Account Access Management, confirm the demo property is selected, and click Remove myself. You can add it back at any time from the same help page.

What happens when the account in front of you is real?

A real client property rarely looks like the demo. Several people added the tags over the years, a site rebuild moved the checkout, and nobody is sure which purchase event is the right one. We find and fix those faults for agency and in-house teams most weeks. For Toyota, our work recovered around 1,000 sign-ups a month that a bug had been losing.

If you want a first look at what tracking a site runs, Dolphin Analytics’ free Sonar scan checks the tags, pixels and consent setup a visitor’s browser can see, in one click with no account. If the numbers in a live account already look wrong, tell us what’s broken, or book a call.