Just getting started with GA. I've read about custom dimensions and metrics, but also about "trackers". They seem to do the same thing and yet I can't find any reference on how they are different, why there are both.
Trackers are the overall objects that Google Analytics uses to capture all tracking activities, be it custom metrics, dimensions etc.
Custom metrics and dimensions are objects that are set on a tracker, to be sent to your GA account.
The syntax is similar to setting custom metrics I suppose, but the sytax for all GA tracking is fairly similar for ease of development.
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I am doing the migration from UA to GA4 on my site, but I need that both properties keep working for some time. My problem is setting the dataLayer, I do not know how to have both of the e-commerce objects without conflict. I know that I can map the variables to GA4 format by GTM, but since the Google documentation recommends setting up GA4 datalayer, and that UA will die soon, I would like to have both dataLayers in my site.
I was thinking of something generic like:
dataLayer.push( {ecommerce: null} )
dataLayer.push( {ecommerce: UA template} )
dataLayer.push( {ecommerce: GA4 template} )
So I will have both objects in my dataLayer. Does that work without conflicts?
You can use the Universal Analytics dataLayer, for example with Google Tag Manager, send ecommerce events as well as to Universal Analytics property also to GA4 property managing the various parameters as expected by this last data collection model: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ga4/ecommerce?client_type=gtm
No conflict can exist because the data is sent to two different systems.
I am confused why the behavior part doesn't show up in my google analytics account, this part is totally missed, does anybody know what should I do?
In Google Analytics 4 there aren't the same Universal Analytics reports. The data model is different and currently the interface has few reports, however you can create them from Analysis by entering the dimensions and metrics you want.
Many of the conversions that my Firebase web app reports to my Google Analytics 4 property aren't showing up in Google Ads.
I have a single-page web app that uses the Firebase Analytics JS API to report custom events for a Google Analytics 4 property, including two events that have been marked as conversions in the Google Analytics "Conversions" page. All of the events reported by the app appear as expected in Google Analytics.
The GA4 property is linked with a Google Ads account that has auto-tagging enabled. I've imported the conversion events using the Ads site with a Count setting of "Every" (rather than "One"), but less than half of new ad-derived conversions are shown in Ads. For example, Analytics reports 55 occurrences of a conversion event two days ago, but Ads reports only 20 occurrences of the event for the same day.
I've used the Google Analytics Debugger extension to confirm that events contain a tid parameter with the GA4 property ID and a dl parameter that preserves the URL's gclid query parameter (using this approach). I've also used BigQuery to view the underlying Analytics events, and I can see that their page_location parameters preserve the gclid parameter and that they have correct value and currency parameters (e.g. 0.5 and "USD").
Are there other factors that affect whether GA4 events are correctly displayed in Google Ads? I'm confused by the way that some, but not all, events are showing up in Ads. I had a call with Google Ads support this morning but they aren't trained in diagnosing conversion-reporting issues.
Are the conversion events not showing up at all, or just not showing up after a couple of days? If it's the former, it's possible that there is a delay before the conversion reporting makes it to Google Ads and gets reported to the console.
As for inspecting the BigQuery conversion events for the correct tracking data, make sure to use the events_ table rather than the events_intraday tables as the summary tables more accurately reflect the count for events logged that day.
Beyond that it looks like your setup is correct since some conversion events are already being reported, but just in case here is a link to the Google Ads help center on all the steps required to make sure the Google Analytics 4 property used by Firebase is correctly linked to Google Ads.
I'm fairly new to Google Tag Manager, in the past I've just fired events straight to Google Analytics. What I'm wondering is this; is it possible that, if you use Google Analytics alongside Google Analytics tags in GTM, can you get duplicate data in Google Analytics?
For instance, let's say I have a Pageview tag in GTM, as well as GA on the webpage as normal. Would this count as two pageviews? (ie. one from standard GA, one from the GTM tag)
I've looked around for an answer, but maybe it's just a stupid question!
If both track to the same property you'd get two pageviews in that Ga property.
However there is a good chance that both pageviews would end up in different sessions; GTM creates a random name for the Google Analytics tracker, while the tracker within the page would track to the standard tracker (t0; read about naming trackers here), unless configured otherwise.
IMO it is not a good idea to mix GTM and inline trackers with the same property, since it's hard to be sure that both use the same configuration. And yes, your pageview will be counted twice.
I am curious if Google Analytics Content Experiments supports targeting based on the traffic source, in particular, certain Google Adwords campaigns.
For example, I have two Adwords campaigns pointed to the same destination url but would like a Content Experiment to only run for one of these two campaigns.
Even targeting the experiment based on the referring url would be helpful but I don't see an option to do so when setting up the experiment. Does anyone know if this is possible through the set up, or if I would need to create some kind of gateway that my campaigns funnel through and then get routed to the experiment URL based on the source?
Thanks!
Google does not currently provide this function by default.
I'd try https://www.optimizely.com/ (easier) and/or patching up custom bucketing code (more difficult)