Google Analytics 4 (GA4) started on July 1 2023 and has now replaced Google Analytics’ Universal Analytics. Find more information on GA4 updates here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10089681?hl=en
Below are the top reasons for discrepancies between GA4 and Dianomi’s data:
1. The site’s CMP is not set up correctly with the right consent mode settings
GA4 works with the website’s Consent Management Platform (CMP) to only track when consent is given to place an analytics cookie by the user. If the set up is incorrect and the CMP is not sending the correct consent signals then tracking can be greatly impacted. There is more information on setting up consent mode on your website here:
https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/security/guides/consent?consentmode=advanced#passthroughs
You can use Google Tag Assistant to help debug and troubleshoot GMT and GA4 consent mode set up – https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/security/guides/consent-debugging.
2. The layout and design of CMP banner
GA4’s default status is to not allow analytics tracking without CMP consent which means that the design and layout of the CMP banner has a big impact on the capabilities of GA4. Here are a few tips when reviewing CMP banner performance:
- Is the CMP mobile optimized? If it isn’t mobile optimized then you could be missing a large proportion of your traffic on GA4.
- Can the CMP banner be ignored? If the user can still read, scroll and click on the landing page then they can ignore the CMP, especially if the banner is at the foot of the landing page. If the CMP is ignored then GA4 can not track the user.
- Is the CMP design clear and user friendly? Are buttons clear and large enough, text easily readable and transparent.
3. Not having Blended Reporting Identity set on GA4 account
With many users/browsers/devices not allowing cookies to be set which limits the effectiveness of GA4 data as a result GA4 has added a new feature called Blended Reporting Identity which can be activated to remodel and build out the data to take account of cookieless traffic. It can take up to 72 hours for all the modeling to appear in your GA4 data.
4. The source is not correctly added to the campaign URL
Landing page traffic can be incorrectly attributed without having a source UTM added to the URL. To add Dianomi as the source you add ‘utm_source=dianomi’ to the URL. Other UTMs like campaign and channel are also useful to help attribute the traffic correctly. Below is an example of how these UTMs could be used:
www.marketviews.com?utm_source=dianomi&utm_campaign=2024h1ifaesg&utm_channel=native
Additionally Safari and some other browsers strip UTMs from URLs when set up incorrectly or have a unique identifier.
Even with the above improvements cookie deprecation is growing across browsers, sites and devices which is impacting GA4 tracking and so it is best to check site and campaign performance using server logs as well as using cookieless analytics options. Using a cookieless analytics provider will allow you to compare GA4 results with another 3rd party and see where GA4 is not able to track users, an example of a cookieless analytics provider is Plausible.io.