As the sunset of Google Universal Analytics (UA) 360 approaches, with less than 27 days left, many of our clients still find themselves struggling to trust Google Analytics 4 (GA4), often due to discrepancies between UA and GA4.
These discrepancies are not only at a percentage that would leave any business user sceptical about the GA4’s data accuracy, but also teams scratching their heads at the differing stories they tell as the insights are often directionally, also not the same!
Regardless, time is ticking and soon GA4 might become your primary data source. Like any primary data source, it will hold a great responsibility, enabling marketers to effectively identify and personalise target audiences, optimise campaigns in real-time, allocate budgets more efficiently, and accurately measure return on investment (ROI).
All the more reason to ensure its accuracy, right?
It’s not only the lack of trust and confusion of directionally misaligned data sets that will impact teams, but the upstream effects of conservative decision-making, missed opportunities, and a failure to respond agilely to market changes, ultimately hindering growth.
What’s the solution?
Now more than ever, with organisations holding a need for continuity in boardroom reporting, should a light and lean audit be conducted to demystify the differences between what we expect and what is occurring as a result of the decisions made within your implementation.
While all the variations conveniently get attributed to different data models and definitions for tracking user interactions between the platforms, businesses often overlook potential implementation differences and errors.
Small data differences are to be expected as no two platforms will be the same and there are many varied methods to collect and transfer data. That being said, if the differences are significant or contradictory – you might want to audit your GA4 implementation.
If you are seeing data discrepancies, here are the two questions you want to ask your data team:
- Are we measuring the same thing?
- Are we measuring it the same way?
While most of the data differences could easily be explained away by the significant shift in GA4 data model and definitions, you would be surprised on how many occasions we have encountered this simple explanation not being the whole story.
Among other reasons UA and GA4 metrics could be fundamentally misaligning due to:
- GA4 tracking events across subdomains not covered in UA.
- UA having different data filters set up compared to GA4.
- GA4 tracking Web/ Mobile compared to a UA property tracking Web only.
How do you know if it’s something simple or something a little more under the hood?
If a straightforward measure like pageviews doesn’t align (~ 10% variations are expected), you might not be even measuring the same thing.
Another common implementation related issue we run into is GA4 been set up to measure things differently.
For example, let’s say your ‘Sign Up’ metrics don’t align, this could be due to
- UA is setup to track Sign Up clicks on the home page and navigation bar while GA4 is setup to track Sign Up clicks on home page only.
- UA is setup to track successful sign ups while GA4 is setup to track the number of clicks on the Sign-Up button.
If you can relate to any of the situations we’ve discussed or you are seeing significant data differences between UA and GA4, you might want to conduct an audit of UA and GA4 implementations to verify that your GA4 transition has been properly carried out.
Even if you are not seeing any major variations it might be prudent to understand with total clarity, and in detail, exactly how your events stack up. Doing this will ensure that you’re accurately interpreting and explaining those numbers at boardroom table without losing trust or causing confusion.
Interested in a deep dive into your integration for your most important metrics? Talk to our team today on how we can help to quickly validate your source of truth.
