Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Junior SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
Since 13th November, users have been reporting issues with data collection on Google Analytics 4 with reports that certain users are only seeing up to 50% of actual traffic figures.
Googles Response
Google responded to the issue on their Ads Status Dashboard stating,
“We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Analytics. There is an issue affecting the generation of standard reporting tables. Granular reports (accessed via the explore module) and BigQuery exports are unaffected. We are working on restoring the reporting tables.”
How to know if your GA4 is misreporting data?
To know if your GA4 is misrepresenting your data you can check the real-time report to see if data is being captured. If you go to your site and perform certain actions then check the real time reports and these actions aren’t showing then you can see something is misconfigured, your Google analytics isn’t working properly.
Why is it a problem?
Problems with data tracking on analytics make it harder for businesses to understand and interpret how well their site is performing. Historical data can be stored over a long period of time to affect future decision making processes and without accurate data this makes it difficult.
Alternatives to GA4
There are alternatives to Google Analytics 4 that can be used for data collection and analysis, should you be facing persistent problems with the tool.
- Google Search Console Search Console is another Google tool but rather than reporting on overall traffic levels and how users interact with the site, GSC only shows data on organic traffic levels and how you can improve organic search performance. GSC can be integrated in Google Analytics 4 but you can also use it separately to understand any data discrepancies in GA4 should they arise by cross referencing organic traffic levels.
- Publytics Is a cookieless Google Analytics alternative that is made for web publishers. If you have both Publytics and GA4 tracking set up you can use Publytics to cross reference data performance on GA4 if you think you are having issues.
UPDATE
Google has now resolved the issue with GA4 data on Nov 20th commenting ‘’The problem with Google Analytics has been resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.”
