Google Analytics has been a cornerstone of digital marketing for 2 decades, but it's not without its flaws. Small business owners frequently face issues like data discrepancies which can distort their understanding of customer behavior. We'll explore why these problems occur and how they can impact your business decisions, providing a clearer picture of what you're really seeing in your reports.

Technical Challenges

Transitioning to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has presented several technical challenges that can impact the accuracy of data for businesses. This section highlights key issues, focusing on event tracking, data sampling, the limitations of real-time data, and the practical challenges of cross-device analytics.

Event tracking configuration

The shift from a session-based model in earlier versions to an event-based model in GA4 introduces complexities in tracking configurations:

• Event mapping and tagging: With GA4, all user interactions must be defined and tagged as events. Errors in this process during the migration from Universal Analytics to GA4 can result in significant data omissions or inaccuracies. Dive deeper into GA4 events in this wonderful guide from Loves Data.
• Google Tag Manager integration: When using Google Tag Manager to implement these events, misconfigured triggers or outdated tags can lead to gaps in data. Ensuring accurate setup and ongoing management of GTM is crucial for reliable event tracking.

Data sampling

GA4 uses data sampling in its reporting, which can affect the representativeness of data, especially for large sites:

• Influence on data interpretation: Sampling, while useful for processing large volumes of data quickly, means that reports often don’t fully reflect all user interactions, potentially skewing key metrics and insights. Skewed or incorrect data as a result of sampled data has been reported by a number of GA4 users online.

Real-time data limitations

Real-time data in GA4 is based on a sample of actual traffic, which limits its usefulness for day-to-day performance monitoring:

• Accuracy and timing Issues: While real-time data can give a snapshot of current activity, it rarely provides a complete or accurate picture. For businesses on the free plan of GA4, full accuracy in data reporting can take up to 48 hours and typically requires at least 12 hours. Even with GA 360, where real-time and intra-day data are more promptly available, the real time stats very often don’t reflect the actual stats that are available the next day, rendering GA real time data ineffectual.

Cross-device analytics

Tracking users across multiple devices is a highlighted feature of GA4, but it has its practical and privacy-related challenges:

• Privacy concerns and data collection: Effective cross-device tracking requires users to log in or be identified consistently with user IDs. This requirement can pose compliance issues with privacy laws like GDPR, making it difficult for some businesses to implement.

User behavior and privacy

Navigating the intricacies of user behavior and privacy settings presents unique challenges in accurately capturing data with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). With increasing numbers of users opting out of cookies and using ad blockers and privacy tools, business owners may discover that they are missing 1/4 or more of their data.

Cookie consent and rejection

With stricter privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA/CPRA, users have the option to reject cookies. This choice significantly affects GA4's data collection capabilities. When cookies are not accepted, GA4 cannot legally track user interactions, leading to gaps in the captured data. And ultimately compliance with GDPR is your legal liability. This results in underreporting of user metrics, potentially skewed analysis outcomes, and increased costs to ensure legal compliance.

Use of ad blockers

Ad blockers are widely used and can prevent GA4's tracking scripts from executing. This not only leads to missing data but also creates a bias in the data set, as certain demographics are more likely to use ad blockers. The result is an incomplete picture of site traffic and engagement, complicating efforts to optimize marketing strategies.

Browser privacy settings

Enhanced privacy features in modern browsers allow users to block scripts and cookies often by default. These settings can stop GA4 from accurately tracking user interactions, affecting the quality of the analytics data. Such disruptions can lead to incomplete session data and inaccuracies in user engagement metrics.

User deletions of cookies

Deletion of cookies by users can severely impact long-term tracking and analysis in GA4. When cookies are cleared, any accumulated data regarding user preferences, behaviors, and engagement are reset. This disruption makes it difficult for GA4 to provide accurate insights into user retention and engagement trends over time.

Strategies for improving data accuracy

Event tracking configuration

Effective management of event tracking in Google Analytics 4 is crucial to mitigating data inaccuracies:

• Establish regular tracking audits: Schedule regular checks using tools specifically designed for GA4, such as Google Tag Assistant. These checks help ensure that every tracking tag is accurately firing across your site and capturing intended interactions without fail.
• Create a data taxonomy document: Develop a comprehensive data taxonomy that details each event you track, its triggers, and expected outcomes. This document should serve as a control measure to prevent and quickly correct discrepancies in how events are recorded.

Data sampling

Data sampling is unfortunately part of GA4’s approach to handling large-scale data analysis. However, it can lead to inaccurate insights. Here are effective ways to manage sampling:

1. Adjust report settings to minimize sampling: Learn how to tweak your GA4 settings to limit data complexity, which can trigger sampling. Focus on creating more focused data queries and using default reports where possible.
2. Upgrade to Google Analytics 360 for un-sampled data: For businesses that require the most accurate data possible, investing in Google Analytics 360 provides access to unsampled reports, albeit at a significant cost (starting at around $150,000 per year).
3. Regular data validation: Cross-reference GA4 data with other non-sampled sources, such as direct SQL queries on your databases, to validate the accuracy of sampled reports.
4. Educate stakeholders on sampling impacts: Ensure that decision-makers understand the implications of sampled data and consider this when making data-driven decisions.

Real-time data limitations

Real-time data in Google Analytics 4 provides immediate insights but is often limited by sampling and processing delays. There’s really not much you can do about this:

1. Educate on limitations: Conduct training sessions or provide educational content for GA users to understand the strengths and limitations of real-time data. Emphasize the importance of corroborating real-time insights with historical data for critical decision-making.
2. Consider upgrading to GA 360: Google Analytics 360 ofter quicker access to data than the free version. However, be aware some users have reported the real time data still doesn’t match actual data recorded the following data.
3. Supplement with robust tools: Consider other tools like Ziplytics to help fill in the data gaps. Ziplytics is built on a modern tech stack that enables us to offer more accurate, non-sampled, real time data.

Cross-device analytics

Cross-device tracking is an incredibly useful tool to understand comprehensive user journeys. However, managing this feature with GA4 and maintaining compliance with privacy laws can be tricky for many businesses:

1. Promote user engagement across devices: Encourage users to login on their various devices to providing seamless experiences and incentives for multi-device engagement. This increases the likelihood of capturing logged-in sessions across different platforms.
2. Anonymous ID integration: Consider utilizing an anonymous ID to limit the ability to track certain events to a given user to more easily manage compliance with privacy laws like GDPR.

Cookie consent banners

Effective consent banners are crucial for compliant data collection in GA4. Here are strategies to refine your consent mechanisms:

1. Engage with clear messaging: Develop consent banners that are straightforward and communicate the user benefits clearly. Avoid technical jargon to ensure that all users easily understand the implications of their choices.
2. Optimize placement and timing: Experiment with the placement and timing of your consent banners. Immediate pop-ups might annoy users, while delayed pop-ups may increase the likelihood of consent but lack early user behavior in GA because of the delay.
3. Try Ziplytics for easier compliance: Ziplytics simplifies compliance with privacy laws by utilizing cookie-free technology, so you can track data more accurately and get rid of the cookie banner!

Use of ad-blockers

1. Consider asking users to whitelist your site: Consider encouraging users to whitelist your site by explaining the benefits and necessity of your content or services. Highlight how supporting your business can enhance the content they enjoy.
2. Acceptance and strategic shift: Recognize that ad blockers are designed to block ads and unwanted additional scripts running in the background. Some data loss is inevitable if you’re using front end tracking tools like GA4 or Ziplytics. However, you can prevent losing with Ziplytics by serving our analytics snippet through something called a “proxy”.

Browsers with privacy features

1. Implement fallback tracking options: Develop robust fallback strategies such as server-side analytics to capture data when browser privacy settings block traditional tracking methods. This is typically pretty time intensive and requires software developers to complete. Ziplytics like many other analytics platforms has an API that allows you to submit events server-side.
2. Multi-Channel Engagement: Diversify how you collect data by engaging users across various platforms—social media, mobile apps, and newsletters—where privacy restrictions may be less stringent.
3. Start a 30 day trial with Ziplytics: The use of ad-blockers and privacy friendly browsers has resulted in less accurate site data for many business owners. Consider using Ziplytics and serving the script through something called a “proxy”. The analytics work the exact same but won’t be flagged.

Users deleting their cookies

The deletion of cookies by users presents a significant challenge for maintaining reliable analytics. Implement these strategies to lessen the impact:

1. Persistent User Identification: Consider utilizing more persistent identification methods, such as leveraging authenticated sessions, which are less affected by cookie deletions. For example, you could trigger server-side code to submit events to Ziplytics, GA, or another analytics platform.
2. Enhance User Education: Develop educational campaigns that inform users about the benefits of cookies in enhancing their website experience. Transparency about how cookies improve personalization and functionality may reduce their deletion rates.
3. Explore Ziplytics: For businesses experiencing challenges with cookie deletions or more generally just inaccurate data in GA4 you may want to consider another platform. Ziplytics is a cookie free, privacy friendly, modern alternative to Google Analytics. Our cookie free algorithm is unaffected by users deleting their cookies. Start a 30 day free trial, no credit card required.

Conclusion

As we've explored, Google Analytics faces significant challenges that can lead to data inaccuracies, such as issues with real-time data reliability, cross-device tracking, and the impacts of ad blockers and cookie rejections. These problems are exacerbated by increasing privacy regulations like GDPR, which restrict how much data can be collected. This environment poses a fundamental challenge to Google Analytics, which relies on broad data access to build comprehensive user profiles for ad targeting (hence the “free” analytics).

For businesses looking for more accurate and privacy-compliant alternatives, Ziplytics offers a solution that prioritizes data integrity without compromising user privacy. This shift can enhance both the accuracy of your analytics and your compliance with modern privacy standards. Start a free 30 day trial, no credit card required.