Google Analytics 4 Reporting: Troubleshooting Potential Errors

How Do I Troubleshoot Potential Errors?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has made numerous improvements over time. However, with any new tool and releases, we’re bound to run into errors or bugs. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind and common issues we’ve encountered while using GA4:

• Ensure that you are using the correct ID during your tag setup. 
  • GA4 property IDs begin with “G-”, while UA uses “UA-”.
  • If any customization is being made to the gtag, check for case sensitivity and correct casing.
• If you are using one of the standard reports, such as Realtime and no data appears, there may just be no active users at the time and not necessarily an error.
  • You can use this report to quickly confirm your tracking code is working properly.
• Since GA4 does not currently support views, you can emulate this feature by using Exploration to create multiple tabs with different cuts of data. 
• If you are implementing ecommerce, it’s a good rule of thumb to ensure you pass “currency” as a parameter for each purchase.
• Don’t forget to mark translated events as conversions, i.e., the ‘event_name’ parameter.
• Since GA4’s data model is event-based versus session- or pageview-based, data is collected and processed a bit differently. 
• Existing GA4 reports at times can be limiting; instead, you can build GA4 reports in DataStudio or even export your data to BigQuery to drill deeper for further analysis.
• Bounce rate is calculated in a more useful way of measuring the level at which users engage with your site or app.
  • Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged sessions.
  • Engagement rate is the inverse of bounce rate.

To keep up to date on Google’s timeline and to learn more about each stage, check out our Google Analytics 4 Measurement Architecture Roadmap.

Friendly reminder: On July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics (UA)  properties will stop processing new hits (October 1, 2023 for 360 properties). If you still rely on UA, we recommend that you prepare to make the switch to GA4 soon. 

For more information on GA4 and UA, please visit infotrust.com or watch our What You Need To Know webinar to learn more.