GA4 Issues: What Can You Do About Them?

UPDATED: 1/28/25 Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is here and there are….some problems. That’s true for those who are new to Google Analytics and also those of us were fans of the prior version of the platform (Universal Analytics). Let’s take a look at some problems and see what we can do to address them.

Why Does GA4 Seem So Bad?

Google Analytics 4 works on an entirely different data model compared to Universal Analytics. With GA4 everything is an event. This is a more “flexible” data model that can also be more complicated for non experts to work with. It also seems to have been done at least partially to help Google prepare for a world where user privacy concerns (and lawsuits) are increasingly a reality.

Don’t believe me? Check out the initial announcement from Google about GA4 and do a quick scan for the word “privacy.”

Does GA4 Have to Be So Bad?

Personally, I like GA4 much more than I used to. But that has taken a long time because the platform is complicated and some common functions are handled much differently than in UA. One thing that helped me was finally getting a solid configuration for my GA4 property.

Before we get to those GA4 problems, here’s a link to a 10 step setup and configuration tutorial. 

Now, on to five (5!) big GA4 problems! First up is the departure of some key metrics that many have come to rely upon.

GA4 Problem #1 – “Missing” or Different Metrics

As we’ve said, GA4 has an entirely different data model as compared to UA. Instead of being based on sessions and pageviews like in Universal Analytics, the GA4 measurement model is based exclusively on events.

Since the data is collected and processed differently, some once-familiar metrics are now gone or changed.

Chief among those changing metrics is a completely new concept of bounce rate.

New Bounce Rate in GA4

In Universal Analytics, your bounce rate is your percentage of single page sessions. Google Analytics 4 did not even have bounce rate when it first launched, but the metric was late added after much outcry. Today, the GA4 bounce rate is the inverse of something called the engaged session rate (“engagement rate“).

I’ll try to explain that in a minute, but first let’s see an example of how extreme this change is. The UA bounce rate on this site for the first half of 2023 was 86.39%. That’s a lot of single page sessions! As you can see below, the GA4 bounce rate during the exact same time period was 23.79%. Fundamentally different.

What is an Engaged Session in GA4?

An engaged session is a “session that lasted 10 seconds or longer, or had 1 or more conversion events or 2 or more page or screen views.” It’s not an altogether unhelpful metric, but it’s certainly different than bounce rate

You can see this “Engaged sessions” metric in the GA4 Traffic Acquisition report below. You can also see related new metrics like “Average engagement time per session” and “Engaged rate”. Again, these aren’t useless or bad metrics, you just can’t compare them to historical benchmarks from a time before GA4.

Conversions Are Counted Differently in GA4

In GA4, the default is for a conversion to be counted each time a conversion event occurs. Remember, GA4 is “event-based”. So if your visitor downloads the same PDF two (or three) times, that will count as two (or three) conversion events. Google says this is an improvement, but it seems to me like it would lead to inflated conversions in most situations.

UPDATE: Google has updated GA4 and allows you to change your conversion counting method from “Once per event” (the default) to “Once per session” (the same way they were counted in UA). If you want to do that, look for the “Counting Conversions Section in Google Analytics 4” in this GA4 conversion tracking resource.

Check out the embedded video for a comparison of basic metrics and reports…or keep on reading below.

Why New and Different Metrics Are a Problem

For some people, different metrics aren’t a problem. If you’re not going to miss the old bounce rate, for example, you probably fit in this category. For some of us, though, there is comfort in our workflow using all of the “regular” metrics that were always available in Google Analytics. Without that functionality, GA in general becomes less functional for easy use. You’ll also likely need to re-educate any internal stakeholders who get reports on digital performance. That’s especially true if you don’t make changes to the default GA4 conversion counting method.

What To Do?

Well, there are a few options.

1. You can customize your GA4 conversion tracking approach as detailed above if you want a session based method of conversion counting.
2. You can supplement your GA4 based analytics setup with another platform like Microsoft Clarity or consider a switch from GA entirely.
3. If you’re totally over GA4 and want to start with something new, the Piwik PRO platform is a good one. Not only does Piwik PRO still give you bounce rate (with the same calculation as UA), but as you can see in in the reporting section below it provides good options for those of us who became accustomed to the reports available in UA .

If you’re interested in checking it out for yourself, you can try the free Piwik PRO Core plan: https://piwik.pro/core-plan/. Or to learn more about the company behind the product, visit https://piwik.pro/.

GA4 Problem #2 – “Missing” Standard Reports

Not only are some of the metrics different but many of the familiar reports from Universal Analytics are not available in GA4.

Why is that?

As far as I can tell, a big part of the reason comes down to development philosophy. Universal Analytics was built as a comprehensive suite of pre-made reports that can be used out of the box to analyze online performance. Sure, it’s possible to export data from UA, but there’s a ton of functionality within those standard reports. GA4, on the other hand, seems built more as a tool for collecting lots of data with much of the analysis taking place outside of the platform. The GA4 reports that exist are limited and sometimes bulky. Instead, many users are building their GA4 reports in Data Studio or exporting their data to BigQuery for further analysis.

A Standard Report Comparison Example

In UA, there are no less than 30 standard reports within the Acquisition reporting bucket. If you take away the 11 specific to Google Ads (that we don’t all use), you still have a large number of useful reports that we can use. You can see them highlighted in the blue box below.

This comprehensive suite of traffic reporting options made Universal Analytics useful out of the box for many users.

If we look at the same reporting area in GA4, there are only 3 acquisition reports initially available to us. You can see them highlighted below.

Fortunately, there is a solution. You can create your own custom reports.

What To Do?

As mentioned, GA4 can be customized. That’s option #1 in terms of what you can do.

1. Customize GA4 built in reports. For example, you can create your own source / medium traffic report and your own campaign traffic report to see your UTM tagged data. There’s some extra work to do, but you can get moderately close to replicating some of the old favorites from UA. You can also use Explorations to create reports like a Path Exploration.
2. Piwik PRO also shines in standard reports. As you can see in the screenshot below, there are 6 standard reports available within the Acquisition reporting bucket. The image below shows the “Channels” report, where we can change to a Source / Medium view with a single click (check the arrow). And look at what we find the green box! The return of the Bounce rate metric! This a clear win for me. Although, it’s perhaps eclipsed by how easy it is to set up conversion tracking. As you can see in the red box, I’ve set up conversion tracking for a form submission that lands on a thank you page.

GA4 Problem #3 – Some Basic Conversion Tracking is Harder in GA4

In some ways, GA4 makes custom tracking easier than UA. Events like external link clicks and scrolls can be tracked quite simply in the new platform, while that same kind of tracking in UA requires setting up tags and triggers in Google Tag Manager. But one of the most basic and most important conversion actions – a successful submissions of a contact form – can be more complex in GA4.

Setting Up Conversions in Universal Analytics

In Universal Analytics there were 4 types of goals (conversions) you could create:

1. Session Duration
2. Pages / Session
3. Destination
4. Event

The first two were quick and easy to set up within UA, but are only mildly helpful. It might be interesting to see how many people view 3 or more pages during their session, but that won’t typically help you understand much about why they are (or not) buying or filling out your contact form. The destination goal, however, is both quick to create and can be quite helpful. You could, for example, track visits to a Contact page as an important conversion action for someone likely looking for how to get in touch. Or you could track visits to a “thank you” page, that a visitor automatically lands on following a form submission. These destination goals took all of 30 seconds to create in UA.

Event goals were also quite effective, but they are more complicated to create. To create an event goal in UA, you need the help of Google Tag Manager to track “events” like button clicks, downloads, and scrolls that don’t cause a new page view. Personally, I used only Event and Destination goals in the Root and Branch UA property. Here are two examples below, with a click-based event goal and a page view based destination goal.

Setting Up Conversions in GA4

Unlike UA, the data model in GA4 is not based on sessions and pageviews. That means that 3 of the 4 “easy” conversions to create in UA no longer exist. Calculated metrics like Pages / Session and Session Duration simply don’t exist in GA4, and a destination goal based on a view of a specific page is now a more complex endeavor.  That’s not much of a problem for Session Duration and Pages / Session goal types, but not having easy Destination goals is a loss.

UPDATE: This actually isn’t a meaningful problem in my view. GA4 has a built in event creation tool that you can use to create some simple custom events that replicate the same functionality as the old “Destination” type Goals in UA. This was not something I realized for the first year or so of working with GA4.

What To Do?

1. With GA4, you can either use the built in event creation tool or you can use Google Tag Manager to create more sophisticated custom events.
2. To mimic a “destination” goal, create a custom event using the built in event creation tool that is based on the “page_view” event. When the page_view is equal to the URL of your thank you page, you can fire a new event called generate_lead or form_submission or whatever you like.
3. Once you’ve created the custom events, you can mark them as “key events” (what Google Analytics now calls conversions, as of Spring 2024), and your new custom event will be treated as a conversion.

And if you’ve already decided to move on from GA4, you can use Piwik PRO for this With Piwik PRO, it’s straightforward to create a destination goal. It’s also pretty easy to track other types of goals as well.

Here are 3 goals I’ve created in my Piwik PRO account to track activity on the Root and Branch site. As you can see, we’re tracking form submissions (based on visits to a thank you page), file downloads, and clicks to YouTube.

Setting up the form submission goal is as simple in Piwik PRO as it is in Universal Analytics. You can see the entire process in the image below. All form submissions on the Root and Branch site go to a landing page that includes “thank-you” in the URL. I simply create a goal type based on “Visit page with URL” with a condition where the URL contains thank-you and I’m all done.

#4 – Google and Privacy Concerns

It’s not a surprise that privacy has been a major issue in the world of digital marketing and the world at large. This is perhaps best exemplified with what’s happened with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) since it went into effect in the European Union on May 25, 2018. This legislation has brought certain European countries into conflict with Google (specifically Google Analytics).

And one can read that subtext into the GA4 story.

What Does Google Say?

In its March 16 press release, Google says that Universal Analytics was based on a methodology that “is quickly becoming obsolete”. And it’s true that GA4 introduces a number of enhancements and upgrades relative to its predecessor. It’s also true that Universal Analytics was getting into hot water with some governments over the issue of privacy.

In that same linked press release, here is what Google says about privacy in both UA and GA4.

And though Universal Analytics offers a variety of privacy controls, Google Analytics 4 is designed with privacy at its core to provide a better experience for both our customers and their users. It helps businesses meet evolving needs and user expectations, with more comprehensive and granular controls for data collection and usage. Importantly, Google Analytics 4 will also no longer store IP addresses. These solutions and controls are especially necessary in today’s international data privacy landscape, where users are increasingly expecting more privacy protections and control over their data.

According to Google, GA4 has “privacy at its core”. So it’s possible that the platform has been designed to address potential conflicts with GDPR and get Google out of any privacy-related hot water with the EU. But that is an issue that remains to be settled. And I’ve yet to see Google documentation that outlines the specific implementation steps that will ensure 100% compliance with GDPR.

What To Do?

As usual, there are a few options here.

1. Do nothing. If your analytics infrastructure isn’t GDPR compliant, you can choose to not make any changes and roll the dice. That’s not recommended here.
2. If you’re especially worried about privacy and compliance, you might choose to do away with analytics altogether on your website. That’s not recommended if your web analytics help you make smart decisions about your business.
3. You can use GA4 in conjunction with Google Tag Manager and work to make your implementation GDPR compliant. If you’re continuing to use Google Analytics, it’s worth understanding things like how cookies work in GA4 and consent mode.
4. You could choose to use a platform like Piwik PRO that was built with privacy compliance in mind. I admit to not being a data privacy expert. Far from it. But the Piwik PRO platform has a built-in “Consent Manager” feature designed to help you stay compliant. It allows web visitors the ability to grant consent to tracking. And data is anonymized so you can respect privacy preferences while still getting access to valuable insights. Check out Consent Manager below.

Within the main menu, you can toggle to “Consent Manager” as the third menu item below “Analytics” and “Tag Manager”.

From there, you can choose which type of form and privacy notification you’d like to display on your site. Each of the two form options (either a form with list of multiple consent options or a single form with one consent type like the one shown below), can be configured with custom styling and text.

Then, within the main “Privacy” settings, you can easily turn the consent form on or off using the toggle button shown below. Pretty straightforward.

For organizations that are focused on privacy, a solution like Piwik PRO provides both ease of use and peace of mind.

Some Other GA4 Problems! [With Solutions]

Here are some other problems that I’ve run into with GA4. Fortunately, many of these have solutions once you understand what’s going on.

Users in GA4 are confusing

Did you have know that Users are calculated differently in GA4 compared to UA? In GA4 you need to know about New Users, Active Users, Total Users, and Returning Users. And unlike in UA, Active Users (not Total Users) is the primary User metric. Check this explainer of GA4 users to get it all straight.

There are no Views in GA4 Account Structure

The Universal Analytics account structure was based on an Account, a Property, and a View. The View level was where you saw your data and set up goals. In GA4 there are no Views. The GA4 account structure has an Account and a Property, which one or more “data streams” in the property. The good news is that you can use filters in GA4 to replicate much of the functionality that Views had provided in UA.

GA4 Does Not Have the Previous Page Path Dimension

Universal Analytics had a dimension called previous page path you could use to see what page a visitor was on before they completed an important action. Fortunately, GA4 has the page referrer dimension which replicates this same functionality.

GA4 Explorations Are Not Intuitive

These “advanced reporting” features are weird at first. But once you know how to look for the dimensions, metrics, and segments that you need, they can be quite helpful. Here’s a guide to GA4 explorations.

Campaign Tracking in GA4 is Not Intuitive

In Universal Analytics there was a nice “Campaigns” report to track all your UTM tagged traffic. Not so with GA4. In fact, dimensions for utm_content and utm_term weren’t even available until well after GA4 was released. The good news is that you can create your own campaign tracking report without too much trouble. It’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing. Check this explainer of UTM parameters in Google Analytics for the scoop.

How to Track Internal Link Clicks

Google Analytics will automatically track external link clicks with the enhanced measurement click event. However, you need to do custom work to track internal link clicks. Check out the previously linked article for a guide to doing that quickly with the help of Google Tag Manager.

BigQuery Integration is Hard to Set Up

Like me, you’ve probably heard that the free Google BigQuery connection is one of the big pluses in GA4 over UA. And this does sound good! With UA, you needed to pay for a Google Analytics 360 account to get this same functionality. The problem is that it’s not easy to set up if you aren’t somewhat compete tent with Google Cloud and BigQuery. This GA4 plus BigQuery explainer provides the highlights and has an embedded step by step video walkthrough if you want to set it up for yourself.

Wrapping Up

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GA4 is not perfect. And I no longer think that it should be foregone conclusion that all websites should have GA4. It can be an annoying time waster if you’re not committed to using the data to help make better decisions.

But if you are going to use GA4 for more than just data collection, then it’s still a worthy tool to consider. But you need to make sure you understand what the most important interaction (or interactions) your visitors can take on your site, so you can streamline your analysis to focus on conversions. And it’s probably also worthwhile to think hard about adding a tool like Microsoft Clarity to help fill in some of the gaps that exist in the GA4 tool.

Here’s a setup guide for Clarity if you’re interested. Best wishes.