We wanted to call this article Why Google Analytics 4 Sucks, but we were afraid to be punished by the Google algorithm 🙂.
Do we really need to present Google Analytics (GA4), the free web analytics tool offered by Google and used on literally millions and millions of websites worldwide?
With such popularity and the trust it has earned over the years, you may wonder why we are so critical. We will show you what the concern is with trusting GA4 as your source of truth too much and why marketing agencies like Zima Media are moving their clients to more accurate and more robust tools.
Despite its very helpful features like session analytics and user behavior, GA4 has several big limitations affecting the accuracy of its data and reporting. Some include ad blockers, limited conversion windows, anonymous reporting, non-transparent data-driven attribution, no LTV (Lifetime Value), and no “offline” conversions, to name but a few.
The truth is that GA4 underreports marketing results compared to real results, such as leads and revenue, by up to 40% (or even higher) in 2024, and this number will continue to rise. That means the data you see in GA4 is now, at best, a trend and not really something you should trust for making data-driven decisions like which campaign or channel has the best ROI.
To explain the issues with GA4, we have prepared a two-part series that will break down two key areas of concern: data collection and reporting. This series is written mainly for business owners, so it’s crucial for you to pay close attention to the insights we share.
In part 1, we’ll explore the challenges GA4 faces in accurately collecting data, the impact of various factors such as consent and ad blockers, and how you can improve your data collection. In part 2, we will dive into GA4’s reporting weaknesses and explore advanced tools like CDPs (Customer Data Platforms) that can help improve the accuracy of your insights.
Without further ado, let’s get into why GA4 data collection is inaccurate.
Section 1: GA4 Setup Problems
At first glance, Google Analytics may appear to be the perfect, easy-to-set-up, free web analytics tool. However, in our years of experience as an agency, we’ve found that nearly 90% of Google Analytics accounts are improperly configured. Businesses often treat GA4 as a ready-to-go solution (when, at best, GA4 is still in beta), placing too much trust in the default settings. Common setup issues that can distort your analytics data include:
Session Length
The Session timeout setting in GA4 measures how long users interact with your website before leaving the page or becoming inactive. By default, it is set to only 30 minutes, which is usually insufficient and can skew your reports.
For example, suppose a potential client spends a few minutes on your site but leaves to research competitors and returns after 45 minutes to purchase your product. In that case, GA4 will log two different sessions: one with no conversion and one with a sale. The second session, which will be logged as “direct,” will be credited with the results, whereas the first session (potentially driven by ads, SEO, or other marketing campaigns) will not get any credit.
So, what can you do?
We recommend setting it up to 7 hours and 55 minutes, the maximum available. To adjust this setting, you should find the “Adjust session timeout” under the “Configure tag settings” inside your data stream (under admin and data streams).
Data Retention
This setting shows how long data received from your website is stored and can be used for reporting. In GA4, the default data retention is two months for event-level data (purchases, website visits, etc.) and user-level data (geographic location, age, gender, etc.).
However, if your sales cycles are over 2 months, you will lose cookies and data from visitors, and only the last source will be recorded. It also does not allow you to make year-over-year comparisons, which hinders you from seeing how your business performs in the long run.
That’s why we recommend setting it up to 14 months. (It’s in data collection and modification under admin settings)
This only scratches the surface of the issues you may face during GA4 setup and the default settings. In fact, at Zima Media, we go over 50 settings with our clients to ensure that GA4 is set up as best as possible.
Section 2: Privacy and Cookie Restrictions
GA4 inaccuracies also come from the increase in tracking restrictions. Users always find new ways to avoid sharing their data, and who can blame them for that (maybe just us marketers 🙂?) Here are some ways they do it:
Ad Blockers
Popular ad-blocking software stops Google Analytics scripts and cookies, leading to underreporting. In 2024, 31.5% of internet users globally used ad blockers.
You read that right, which means billions of user sales go untracked.
iOS and Privacy-centric Browsers; Incognito/Private Browsing
Apple’s iOS is openly known to block cross-site tracking, including Google Analytics, while browsers like Brave and Thor prioritize user privacy with built-in tracking prevention software. Incognito/private browsing also limits the data GA4 can access, greatly reducing the collected data.
Blocking of First-Party vs. Third-Party Cookies
Cookies are files that collect and share data on websites when a user visits them. First-party cookies are collected by the website, and some are essential for its usage, while third-party cookies are collected by external sites, like Google, to track user data across websites. Essential first-party cookies can’t be blocked, but optional ones can be, even though users often accept them for convenience (e.g., saved login info). Due to privacy concerns, third-party cookies, often used for ad targeting and to collect info, face increasing restrictions from governments, browsers, and users. As a result, blocking third-party cookies affects Google Analytics’ ability to track unique users well.
Corporate Firewall Restrictions
Many companies implement firewall restrictions that protect their online data and limit how data can be transmitted and processed to prevent information breaches and suspicious traffic. Google states that if users access your website from behind a firewall, data from those users is limited.
In the example below, you see that 28.5% of the total requests on our client’s account for the last 30 days would have been lost (not tracked) due to ad blockers and other tracking prevention measures.
How Can You Work Around These Restrictions?
The answer lies in a very geeky term: server-side tracking. This method gathers data from your website directly and sends it to your server, allowing you to own the data (and not give it freely to Google) or use it in the analytics tool of your choice.
Essentially, client-side tracking loses a lot of data because there are many intermediaries and servers, which makes data collection more difficult. However, with server-side tracking, your cookies are in the same location as your website’s data (not on your visitors’ computers), and no 3rd parties are involved, which brings quite a few benefits.
Server-Side Tracking Benefits:
- More data: It collects more data on users and actions. Why? Ad blockers or iOS can’t block it because it does not use third-party cookies. Server-side tracking depends on first-party cookies, which creates safer data collection because only the website owner can access the information, and third-party websites (like Google) do not own it. Here’s an example of the “Begin Checkout” conversions as seen in a client’s Google Ads account.
- Better speed: It helps improve site speed and can potentially boost your website’s SEO performance. Client-side tracking collects data by pushing scripts and tags into the user’s browser, making your site slower to load. Server-side tracking does not download anything on their browsers.
- Better remarketing: Server-side tracking helps you build better remarketing lists faster. As you collect, store, and process the data yourself, you can send more data elements (IP address, email, user IDs, you name it) about your website visitors and better match them with Google and Facebook users. This increases your audience match rate and improves your targeting and remarketing, helping you get more value for your marketing investments.
At Zima Media, we have been moving our clients to server-side tracking using Stape as much as possible.
Section 3: User Consent Denial
Google Consent Mode V2 (the official and very fancy name) is a feature in Google Ads and Google Analytics that ensures data collected from users on your website aligns with their cookie consent choices. It helps to stay compliant with privacy laws such as GDPR (in the EU) and CCPA (California) and helps collect data ethically (if there is such a thing 🙂).
But what happens when you give users a choice of collecting their data for your own benefit; how do you think this affects your Google Analytics data?
Well, you guessed it. We see traffic literally plummet, as you only see the traffic that consented to give you their data. Consent is making Google Analytics 4 a tool that only provides trends/insights, and its numbers are not trustworthy anymore (as too many businesses still believe).
In the example below, you see that in just 30 days, around 22% of users refused cookies when they entered the website, and they will not appear in your GA4 reports.
With the consent banner, even if you have to ask for permission, there are still a few tricks that can greatly increase the percentage of people who simply accept to give you their data when browsing your site. Once again, the goal is to be able to collect as much data as possible—that’s why we’re here to share these insights with you.
How To Increase Consent Rate:
- Ensure that the cookie banner occupies the middle of the screen as soon as a user lands on your site and “force” them to choose immediately what cookies they allow. This will reduce the number of people who don’t give their preference, as no preference means no collection allowed. It’s also important to note that if a user only consents to the second page they visit, GA4 loses the attribution and assigns this to Direct or Unassigned traffic.
- Even if there are different legal requirements from different countries and states that you have to follow, you can optimize the color, placement, or text for the deny button. Making the deny button green in the corner increases adoption compared to having it red, right in the middle.
- You can also remove the button to close the banner’s window, so once again, users have to make a choice before browsing your site.
- Some studies also mention that adding your logo to the banner increases trust and acceptance rates.
At Zima Media, we have been using (as you can see in the screenshot above) and moving our clients to Cookiebot, a consent banner compatible with Google Mode V2 and server-side tracking.
Section 4 Offline conversions (extra)
Some businesses make all sales online (on their website), meaning a client sees an ad, goes to the website, looks at the products, and buys. In this example, GA4 shows 1 conversion (if the user consented and did not use any cookie blockers—you know the drill).
However, other businesses may have people go on their website and then call to buy over the phone or go to a physical store to buy what they saw online. These sales are “offline” because they happen in the physical world rather than online on a website where we can easily track activities. In this case, GA4 won’t show any conversions at all (even if users consented).
How to Utilize “Offline Conversions” with GA4
Businesses can record all actions and plug their online marketing with their ”offline” sales data by uploading these “offline” conversions into GA4 to track the full user journey from finding your brand to purchasing.
This is a bit technical and challenging, but you can match the user identifiers, such as email, phone number, etc., to their unique online browser ID. You can utilize backend data, such as lead forms, to send “offline” data back to GA4 using tools like Zapier or a customer data platform.
Conclusion
In this article, we explored the key challenges of collecting data with GA4, from core setup issues to the impact of privacy regulations and, of course, users using tools to block their data. We also offered our recommendations to improve the accuracy of your data and explained how you can minimize data loss.
It’s important to acknowledge that even with the ‘perfect data collection’ in 2024, GA4 has inherent flaws. These limitations prevent us from relying on it as a source of truth, but instead, we use it more as what it has always meant to be: a free web analytics tool that shows us trends and insights from a declining portion of website users.
So please, please, don’t trust what you see on your GA4 account and believe these are your true results. As explained in this post, only 50% to 80% of your real results might appear. So, if you see 100 sales, you are probably closer to 150 in your Shopify store.
If, after reading this article, you are concerned about the accuracy of your Google Analytics that you trust to make informed decisions like many business owners do, you might want to move to server-side tracking and consent banner management. This is what we have been doing for our clients at Zima Media, and we have seen a big difference. And, of course, there are even more advanced tracking solutions, and CDPs are becoming more and more a necessity—but more on that in part 2!
Please note that this article has some referral links, but we only mention partners with whom we actually work and trust.
