Ever see strange things in your Analytics account?
Missing data, anomalies, unexplainable spikes, gaps in the data.
That’s because Google Analytics is inaccurate.
But how inaccurate is it?
To find out, we compared the form submissions in our database with the “key events” recorded in GA4. Looking at the difference, we can measure the gap and see by how much GA4 is underreporting conversions. In other words, we compared Analytics to a better source of truth.
We repeated this 60 times across 33 GA4 accounts to see how inaccurate GA4 is on average. We looked at newsletter signups, ecommerce sales, leads generated, demo requests and all kinds of other conversions, in databases and in GA4.
We also compared traffic in our own GA4 account to traffic captured in the cookie-less analytics tool, Plausible. The levels of inaccuracy vary widely, but here’s the averaged data across those accounts.
🔹For websites WITHOUT a cookie consent banner, GA4 is missing 11.2% of traffic
🔹For websites WITH a cookie consent banner, GA4 is missing 11.2% of traffic
In the video, we explain this data in more detail.
Why is GA4 inaccurate?
There are many ways for visitors to avoid being tracked. If you give them the choice, some will opt to not accept cookies. Some visitors use ad blockers. Some visitors browse in private mode. Privacy is a good thing, but it means less data for marketers.
Does it matter that GA4 is inaccurate?
In this video, I make the case that even with missing data, Google Analytics is accurate enough to do good analysis. There’s plenty of data in there. Definitely sufficient levels to find insights, make decisions and take actions that will improve the performance of your digital marketing.
0:38 How to measure the accuracy of Google Analytics (GA4)
2:48 Our methodology for measuring GA4 accuracy across many accounts
3:26 The average level of inaccuracy in Google Analytics
4:31 Alternate methods of calculating the accuracy of GA4
6:14 Comparing GA4 underreporting for users who do and don’t see the cookie consent banner
7:38 Does it really matter if Analytics is somewhat inaccurate?
8:15 An example of analysis: Conversion analysis for social visitors to various landing pages
You can get the detailed report and input from expert data analysts here on the Orbit blog... [ Ссылка ]
