GA4 (Google Analytics 4) Issues for people like us?

I'm surprised others haven't mentioned these issues with GA4

[OldFaces]

Hey all -

Perhaps this post should be in 'Website Analytics - Tracking and Logging' but I'm afraid if I post there it would be overlooked. Also, since detailed 'real-time' analysis is necessary for folks like us, I thought it might be okay to share here?

I know changing analytics is always a bit of a challenge - remember urchin? :c) I've just started playing with GA4 and see a few concerns that I'm surprised I can't find others discuss. Full Disclosure: I'm only a handful of hours into GA4 so maybe it's truly just my ignorance about this new product and I'll look back in a week and grimace at my own post. :c)

1.) Real time shows "Views by Page title and screen name" and not "URL" by default. Are Page Titles really more valuable than URLs for most?

2.) Custom Reports / Explorations don't allow for 'today', and only begin 'yesterday' backwards. I have custom reports that show Google > landing pages (urls) for two primary sections broken down by hour of the day. I also have a custom report that shows affiliate links with the same. Now I can't know performance until the following day? Eh.. these reports are how I can tell when traffic fluctuates immediately (read when algo changes 'hit'). I'd assume most of us use reports that show hour versus hour of previous day last week right?

3.) Custom Reports / Explorations don't allow to copy from the 'row'. So if you set 'Landing page' as a row then you need to manually type into a browser the URL instead of an easy copy/paste.

Anyway, maybe I'm alone and just stumbling in the dark a bit - will continue to invest time to familiarize myself.

[CommandDork]

Ya, the more I dig, the less I like GA4 - it's pretty terrible. Too bad MS Clarity is TOO limited right now, but they offer some interesting bits. Just not enough to make it a one-for-one replacement.

[FranticFish]

And just discovered there is no ability to send automatic emails via GA4

I was considering that a possible plus over Matomo (self-install) where you need to be able to run shell scripts AKA scheduled server tasks to automate reporting. Rare to find a shared host that allows this.

I have been setting up GA4 data collection on all sites I have input/oversight on as standard before I roll up my sleeves next month and start really trying to dig into the details. The first site I looked at the reports for, GA4 did get my location but had me down as a mobile user. I'm desktop, and I NEVER use my mobile to search, to read email, or do anything other than make calls and take photos. When it comes to traffic analysis IMO Device is up there with Channel as a vital pivot. Not exactly a great first impression :)

I do think Google will probably come good on this in time. But it's really made me think about other options. For instance, Matomo have a feature where you can import your GSC data and archive it permanently, rather than the rolling purge that UA has. Again, not tried it yet to see if there's any devil in the details (if all they can work on is the CSV exports from GSC then it won't be much cop), but on the face of it that seems like a cool feature.

[Mark_A]

I have other work to do which means I am always behind the curve with things like this. We started running GA4 alongside UGA some time back but I couldn't get on with it because I couldn't find a way to display sessions including "today"! .. still have that issue. Now reading copious info on it, resenting the amount of work Google is forcing on us for it seems their benefit. Also getting contradictory messages, when I talk to my Google Advisor they say the transition work has been done on my account and I don't have to do anything else, Yet when I log into Analytics I still get that massive countdown clock!

[CommandDork]

Ya, I've been seeing that countdown clock for months now - even as all my properties have all been shifted over to GA4 for some time. I think it's a generic message so no one can complain "they didn't know" about the upcoming switch.

[chewy]

I recall when switching over from Web Trends to GA - this felt like a huge gift, and the 15+ years only made things better (well until it didn't) but even then we were all able to benefit from critical data pretty-much from the jump (well, maybe with a bit of help!)

Having spent a few dozen hours with GA4 across quite a few sites, I do not feel optimistic that I'll be able to pull the kind of insight from GA4 that I can do with UA. And I know for a fact that my clients are extremely unhappy with this.

Will a year or more improve my knowledge and get Google to improve the product? Is Google listening and does it care? Who knows.

But I can tell you I am quite surprised that there hasn't been some sort of public uprising to tell the big G that cutting off UA (including access to our own data) on 7/1 is unacceptable.

[Mark_A]

I think that has resolved it.

Still annoying I can't seem to watch today filling with sessions as it goes by.
I see a little summary "pages by the minute" it seems to be which is hard to follow.

[RareBit]

You can still access your UA data after the 1st of July. (until July 2024)

[vphoner]

I switched to GA4, and maybe its just a coincidence, but my traffic is fading fast. And I am measuring traffic by looking at my log files, not Google Analytics. Hope this is not ruining what little traffic I have. I have been decimated by google in the last two to three years. Seems like only the big sites and corporations survived as usual.

[Samsam1978]

I'm thinking of just removing analytics all together, GA4 is useless to me, too complicated to operate

[CommandDork]

Same here. Wish there was a viable, uncomplicated alternative. UA was perfectly fine for everything I needed. GA4 is too stripped down, no doubt a paid version is coming from G.

[CommandDork]

Bye-bye useful Google Analytics, you have been a good friend...

[OldFaces]

So it ended up taking us (team of 3 devs) five weeks to accomplish the same reports that we had in Universal and dive deeper to start collecting and reporting with actionable data. Essentially, we only use GA4 for Explorations and data collection. We ended up using BigQuery and Looker to generate reports we need.

My key problems with GA4 are:
- 24 hour accurate reporting delays
- Checkout the ios Analytics app and compare today versus same day last week. Just inaccurate data in the chart (look at Sessions) AND a 12 hour delay.
- max data retention of 14 months (yeah....14 months of data is all they'll keep.)
- the inability to display full URLs in realtime and then copy/paste those URLs into a browser

For scheduled emails we ended up scheduling queries against BigQuery, connected a google spreadsheet (gdrive), and used an appscript to convert to csv and send via mandril.

Yeah.

PS - we used Google Tag Manager previously, so all event tracking we ended up using GTM.

Also, will be interesting to see impact to page latency when we remove Universal tracking.

[muniz900]

Sorry guys, I didn't understand one thing, but starting tomorrow (July 1st) I have to remove the old code and add a new code? I made the switch from GA3 to GA4 a year ago still keeping the same code. Thanks for help me

[goodroi]

Starting tomorrow, UA reports will not process new data & only GA4 will process new data. If you are already running GA4, you don't need to change anything for tomorrow.

GA4 has many shortcomings. As webmasters get more familiar with it they realize they need to make adjustments. For example GA4 has different data retention (14 months compared to UA being unlimited). If someone is running GA4 straight out of the box, they likely will want to make changes & adjust how they operate. Some people are adding in Looker Studio (aka Data Studio) & BigQuery. There are other alternatives that can be considered.

[chewy]

Product seems like it might be ready for Alpha testing.

Sure hope this devil starts to evolve.

I expect the team will be getting lots of change orders once everyone gets it about how much work needs to be done.

Maybe start a thread listing shortcomings of much needed features in GA3 that need to be restored in GA4?

[OldFaces]

With universal analytics gone there's no way to check today's hour v hour same day last week from iOS analytics app (GA4 12hr delay + chart is inaccurate until following day). Looker isn't mobile responsive. I found a Looker mobile app but can't get a QR code..lol

There goes mobile health check ability.

[OldFaces]

Good idea Chewy about starting a thread with a list of shortcomings. I started a post in Analytics Help forum...I don't really like Google's help forums - full of people who are like robots repeating generic answers - but I did share the link with [e-mail]

[Mark_A]

Sorry if this has already been posted but what was the issue with UA that meant it had to be replaced?

[Mark_A]

UA still seems to be working :)

[CommandDork]

Got a survey prompt when I logged into GA4 this morning. Filled it out honestly with the hopes that it makes a difference in brining some of the UA features into GA4.

[OldFaces]

Oh nice at least Google is listening a bit to even provide a survey. I am surprised Universal is still processing so I assume that's due to the horrible release of GA4.

[peakminute]

GA4 is terrible, I'm probably stay with plausible analytics and GSC

[OldFaces]

Hey all - just a quick update as of 8/1. Yesterday I heard from a Product Manager in Google's GA4 team responding to a feedback email I had sent re: GA4. Anyhow, I provided the details they needed and also suggested another area that I really need enhanced (brought back to Universal standards at least) and they forwarded to a colleague who then reached out to me requesting more details.

Here's the gist:
- Yay Google IS investing into acting on user feedback with GA4! This brings me hope....I've been losing a lot of faith in Google products recently because of very obvious reasons.
- The two points they are working on:
- GA4 mobile IOS app when comparing today's data versus last week same day's data is inaccurate/misleading. The line charts are rubbish and fix themselves the following day. Of course the delay in reporting is a huge issue.
- GA4 realtime reports to give total quantity of VIEWS and the page URL that is easy to copy/paste.

[Samsam1978]

I just want to quickly compare traffic on a blog post between this week and last week. Or this month and last month. And then type in a different post URL to see how this compared to the other post. This took 10 seconds in UA. Now, I have no way of doing this and wondered where this functionality is in Google Analytics 4 I can't find it. I only use it a few hours a week. I also got a survey sent to me my Google and put on there please don't make us move over its too complicated, but they have. Wonder what other feedback they had.

[dolcevita]

For me, the biggest frustration is that the statistics are not calculated in real time.

For example, if I want to see the actual number of visits for today, I have to wait 10 to 12 hours for GA to show the actual number of visits.

It's very frustrating if I compare it to the old analytics where everything was in real time. I wonder why GA4 is so slow in calculating visitors?

[chewy]

Thanks all for your comments.

How many folks thinks this behavior sort of makes "sense" - at least in a strategic, please-the-stockholders type of sense?

The Big G is always going to move the cheese. If you think otherwise, give it a few years.

How much of Big G's business model is to give away excellent data, and then as people get used to it, cut back on it, slowly so that nobody notices - and then figure out a way to charge for the services they just took away? Sometimes breaking promises along the way... Seems this is somewhat predictable too, am I right?

It was stunning to see Google Organic Keywords drop from what seemed like 100% visibility to something now like 1%. Yes I know the workarounds, but they will never be as simple, clear or as powerful as the original version.

Then it started happening with AdWords; they increasingly cut back Search Query Report details in such a way as it became increasingly difficult to optimize using negatives, then they promised that x type of matching was better than y type, (but it was really worse - and it did not perform as advertised) but few could actually understand the difference because the keywords they were paying for were suddenly increasingly invisible, so what the hey, why follow all these cool recommendations, and hey, why not use automatic bidding and this newfangled broad match.... Right?

Does anyone else's view go anything like this?

Google's regular use of giving us a useful feature, that ultimately most come to depend upon, and then 'whoops' the rug is pulled out from us - this happens so regularly and predictably that this is verging on anti-competitive behavior? So much so that this needs to be investigated / stopped? Will anyone listen? Are there class-action suits a-forming?

This just feels like the little guy is getting drummed out of the game in favor of the big dudes.

Heck, why can't Google just keep on making billions of dollars on actual keywords instead of foisting upon us this new (improved) "keywordless" search?

Like the Labor Movement, will the workers organize and rise up to reclaim the rights they once lost?

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

-C

[OldFaces]

No its not. And I'm not bullish on Google with current CEO. You know they've done a great job with focusing on profit at a cost to their brand and service. Search sucks, analytics is a mess, they charge for things that were going to be free forever, they have continued outages which they don't report (Universal and AdManager have failed numerous times and it's a pain to get them to update their dashboard)...

I've thought a bit about how they've monetized and focussed on profit (think everything above, the number of ads in search, youtube, etc.). What I had not done before tho was think about their focus on profit through cost cutting. I think their mantra of indexing the internet is over...and this explains why indexing has become a concern for the common webmaster and not just those with large sites.

It's sad.

[chewy]

Anyone found any templates that they like yet? Share if you can.

There's one that is supposed to mimic UA and it sort of does, from a look and feel standpoint (sort-of) - but when you try to drill down on something, nothing doing. And there really isn't much there beyond a basic summary which as I said "looks" good. I'm still quite unimpressed.

There's another set of them which look pretty good, but they are merchandised by a foreign country - and my debit cards will not work in that country as apparently it is famous for credit card fraud.

The rep offered me to pay via PayPal but after three follow ups, I still do not have an account to send the money to.

So that's two out of two that fail. Where are the good ones?

[OldFaces]

Hey Chewy! Do you mean templates for GA4? I'm using GA4 so little in comparison to my bigquery/looker setup. For looker I use databloo if that helps. The layout is a mirror of Universal and has comparison which is nice.