7 Common Google Analytics 4 Configuration Mistakes To Avoid

For those who had an opportunity to learn earlier guides we’ve revealed on Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you most likely know that it isn’t a plug-and-play analytics instrument like Common Analytics was.

There’s lots of info one wants to soak up so as to have the ability to arrange GA4 correctly, and time is ticking.

With GA4 being a extra advanced instrument, it’s simple to make errors that may hinder the accuracy and reliability of the information collected.

On this article, we’ll discover 5 widespread Google Analytics 4 errors that may simply occur and supply sensible tricks to keep away from them.

1. Not Setting Information Retention Interval

GA4 comes with a two-month knowledge retention interval by default, and you’ve got the choice to set it to 14 months. The retention interval is utilized to customized stories in explorations, whereas knowledge in the usual stories by no means expire.

As soon as the retention interval has handed, knowledge might be routinely deleted – which implies should you don’t change that setting as you arrange GA4, you won’t be able to run YoY customized stories and can lose worthwhile historic knowledge.

As a way to change the retention interval, navigate to Information Settings > Date Retention, and within the dropdown, select 14 months.

Additionally, you will discover a checkbox studying “Reset user data on new activity,” which implies the 14-month knowledge retention interval is counted from the second of the person’s final go to onwards.

In different phrases, every time a person engages in a brand new exercise, their knowledge retention interval will get prolonged for an additional 14 months.

Actually, I can’t consider a use case if you would select to show that possibility off, so I maintain it switched on.

2. Dimensions With Excessive Cardinality

Excessive-cardinality dimensions are dimensions that include greater than 500 distinctive values inside a single day. This will current challenges and limitations in knowledge evaluation inside GA4.

Cardinality in GA4 can negatively have an effect on knowledge accuracy and reliability.

For instance, if you observe the precise phrase depend as a customized dimension on each article web page, it’s possible you’ll find yourself having excessive cardinality when you have hundreds of articles as a result of the phrase depend could be completely different for each article.

How To Repair Excessive Cardinality

To mitigate the influence of excessive cardinality in GA4, think about making a bucket of values.

With the instance above of phrase depend customized dimension, it actually doesn’t matter that a lot whether or not the article can have 500 or 501 phrases. You possibly can bucket values into ranges like:

• <500.
• 500-1000.
• 1001-1500.
• 1501-2000.
• +2000.

And as a substitute of pushing too many distinct values, you should have solely 5 completely different dimensions.

Additionally, as a greatest apply, all the time outline customized dimensions properly.

Make sure that customized dimensions align together with your evaluation targets and think about their potential influence on knowledge accuracy and useful resource consumption.

3. Not Linking To BigQuery Account

Linking to BigQuery was accessible in Common Analytics 360 however not within the free model. With GA4 now, all customers have entry to that premium function.

Since it’s exporting knowledge to BigQuery from the second you join, it’s essential to set it up at first as a way to have as a lot historic knowledge as attainable.

BigQuery has an enormous benefit over GA4 customized stories as knowledge is rarely sampled, whereas in customized stories, knowledge might be sampled if there are greater than 10M events within the exploration report.

As a way to hyperlink GA4 to BigQuery, navigate to BigQuery Hyperlinks in your GA4 settings.

As a way to full linking to BigQuery, you would want to create a BigQuery venture which would require you to enter your billing info.

It’s freemium, and 10 GB is free every month; it should cost you $0.02 per GB should you exceed that quantity.

4. Failing To Set Up Customized Audiences

GA4 has highly effective audience-building capabilities you’ll be able to learn extra about in our information on how one can create segments and audiences.

With GA4 audiences, you’ll be able to analyze particular knowledge segments, empowering you to derive worthwhile insights. As an example, you’ll be able to create goal audiences resembling engaged customers, subscribed customers, or customers who made a purchase order previously 30 days.

It’s advisable to create audiences to your ICP and mark it as a conversion.

Since viewers dates will not be retroactive, it is very important outline your goal audiences at first of setup as a way to collect historic knowledge.

5. Utilizing Auto Migration From Common Analytics

GA4 is a completely completely different beast in comparison with UA, with a special knowledge mannequin.

Regardless that it gives the choice to routinely acquire Common Analytics occasions, it’s higher to not use that, as it’s a probability to rethink your analytics and design your event collection structure anew for higher analytics.

6. Not Excluding Undesirable Referrals

Typically ecommerce web sites have third-party cost processors that are hosted below completely different domains – and when redirecting them again to the web site after the person completes a checkout, GA will detect it as a brand new session as a result of the referral is completely different.

As a way to keep away from that and never distort your conversions knowledge, that you must exclude such domains from referrals so GA doesn’t provoke a brand new session.

At SEJ, for instance, we now have the brief hyperlink “sejr.nl” area, which needs to be handled as the identical area – so we added it to our exclusion checklist.

Additionally, when you have subdomains and wish to observe throughout subdomains utilizing the identical GA4 property, that you must exclude your individual area from referrals as a way to maintain the identical session when customers navigate from one subdomain to your fundamental area.

7. Not Selecting The Proper Reporting Identification

The next reporting id choices can be found in GA4:

• Blended.
• Noticed.
• Gadget-based.

The excellent news is you’ll be able to swap backwards and forwards between these choices anytime, and it’ll mirror in your customized exploration stories.

However I wish to point out why it’s essential to decide on the precise possibility in response to your corporation case.

For those who don’t have login and person IDs in your web site, 99% of instances ought to go together with “device-based,” as a result of the opposite two choices might distort your conversions knowledge.

The reason being the person’s privateness. With Google alerts enabled, GA makes use of person IDs to trace customers throughout gadgets, then matches them if they’re logged in to their Google service accounts on completely different gadgets – and there’s a probability that person id could also be uncovered.

In such instances, it hides person knowledge from the stories and fashions knowledge based mostly on person habits. Modeling of knowledge can introduce some stage of inaccuracy as a result of it’s an estimation quite than a precise measurement.

With modeled and noticed choices, you’ll typically discover “Data thresholds are applied” in your stories which have implications for knowledge accuracy.

You could attempt switching between these choices and see how your knowledge is altering.

For those who discover a major distinction within the variety of conversions between blended, noticed identities, and device-based, it might be preferable to make use of the latter possibility.

Gadget-based id works equally to how Common Analytics monitoring works.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it’s essential to keep away from widespread configuration errors when establishing Google Analytics 4 to make sure correct and dependable knowledge assortment.

By understanding these potential pitfalls and taking the required measures, you’ll be able to benefit from GA4’s capabilities and derive significant insights to your web site or software.

Moreover, GA4 requires ongoing upkeep quite than a one-time setup.

Failing to recurrently monitor and analyze your knowledge can result in missed alternatives and make it tough to establish and tackle points on time.

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