How do I check if my GA4 has Data Retention configured correctly?

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Definition · GA4 Glossary

What is Data Retention?

A property setting that dictates how long GA4 is allowed to store user-specific identifier data before automatically deleting it.

By default, when you create a new GA4 property, the Data Retention is strictly set to 2 months. This is a privacy-first default.

What this means:

If you leave it at 2 months, you will not be able to build explorations or segments that analyze user behavior spanning farther back than 60 days. The data is permanently purged from Google's servers. Standard aggregated reports will still work, but custom funnels will break.

Best Practice: The very first thing you should do when setting up GA4 is navigate to Admin > Data Retention and change the limit from 2 months to 14 months (the maximum allowed).

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Related terms.

BigQuery Export

A native GA4 integration that allows you to stream your raw, unsampled event data into Google's enterprise data warehouse.

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