r/GoogleAnalytics

during 8.14-8.18

I think I’ve found a new one, and I’m curious if anyone has seen something similar.

I work on a large site, with many separate subdomains, and also links to external domains.

What I inherited was a setup with each subdomain having its own property (along with a few rollup properties), which is fine - UA treated links between subdomains nicely, with no need for cross-domain tracking. I’ve had to set this up for a couple of properties with external connections (ecommerce, etc.), which is fine.

However, today I had a doozy. We use Optimizely for AB testing, and the tech responsible loaded a straight a href to another subdomain, but the link was completely unresponsive onClick.

He suspected our tag manager was the problem, so I debugged like mad - however, the tag manager code wasn’t even loading onClick.

After extensive debugging, I happened to notice in the Chrome dev tools network tab that there were calls being made to GA4 that weren’t being triggered by the tag manager, and realised that they were the default ‘exit link’ calls made from GA4, which we hadn’t disabled (though we possibly could have, given we also generate these from the tag manager - not GTM, BTW - but I don’t want to risk doxxing myself by giving too much detail, and I think it’s irrelevant).

When I looked closely at these calls, I noticed that the link URL had a gl= parameter included, which I recognised as being cross-domain tracking, and the link URL ended up being 254 chars long.

When I searched for an answer as to whether this could be a problem, G suggested it might be.

I have never set up cross-domain tracking in GA4 apart from the couple I mentioned earlier. When I went into the admin for this site, I discovered that (on top of the default exit-link tracking, which had never caused problems before) cross-domain tracking was set up in all of the properties associated with the site, with cross-domain tracking set up with various dev environments, etc., which is something nobody would do without very good reason.

I know I didn’t do this, nor any of my admin colleagues.

Is this cross-domain tracking (even of subdomains of the same parent domain) a new setting that Google has enabled by default to be ‘helpful’?

The moment I disabled all of this ‘functionality’ the links started working again, presumably because the link length was reduced.

I’d be interested if anybody’s seen this before, and also wanted to alert the community - if you find unresponsive links, this might be your issue, and it’s a nightmare to debug.

One day near the end of May I clicked on my GA4 bookmark... and discovered that there was absolutely nothing there. I actually inadvertently created a new account in trying to recover it, but aside from that all my data is gone. The tag is still active on my website. I asked for help and people just told me I probably used the wrong log-on or something like that. I checked with my SEO person and she no longer had access either. With a spouse having some severe medical issues, I didn't have a chance to really hunt down what had happened until the past few weeks.

Turns out an old agency that I had worked with briefly about a year ago retained access. I didn't know that because it was under a manager tab that I didn't know to look at. I removed their access, but they had disconnected my analytics account. They also took billing ownership of the account, even though I never gave permission for that and all charges are billed directly to my credit card.

The first support email form I submitted almost 3 weeks ago. I may have not correctly filled it out because I was just blindsided by what had happened. I have no way to see what was actually submitted. I got an email saying they had received it and I should hear back in 3-4 business days. I've gotten nothing and replying to the confirmation email is futile.

After learning that the billing account is part of the problem, I filed to reclaim that too. Again an email said I'd hear something within a few days. It's been 2 weeks.

They haven't closed the cases, but I've heard nothing and it's been much longer than they said. I'm very upset and frustrated that this rogue agency did what they did. I've worked with a lot of small SEO and ad people over the years and never encountered any issues.

Any suggestions? Helpful info about the process or what to expect?

I did create a txt file documenting ownership that I added to my website, should Google actually get around to looking for it.

Is there a decrease in the number of visits readings in Google Analytics today?

I manage 60+ websites and saw a noticeable dip in traffic across the board from July 22nd through August 9th. Has anyone else experienced this or know of anything that may have happened with how GA4 is tracking?

A massive percentage were actively breaking their own conversion match rates with one simple timing mistake.

Their ad platform tags were sending empty data payloads every single day.

The cause was simple: custom tags were firing before the data layer was actually ready.

When you send user-provided data like hashed emails or phone numbers, timing is everything.

If your tag fires too early, the Data Layer Variable returns null, undefined, or an empty string.

This did two things to their ad accounts:

→ Diluted data quality: They were training the algorithm with empty strings instead of real customer profiles.

→ Triggered payload errors: Ad platforms rejected those malformed hits, dropping match quality scores below 70%.

Stop letting empty events break your attribution.

Here is the framework we used to build a bulletproof GTM exception trigger:

1. Create a Blocking Trigger: Set the trigger type to Custom Event (or Page View depending on the setup).

   ↳ Condition: DLV - Customer Email equaled undefined (or used RegEx to match ^$|null|undefined).

2. Attach the Exception: Opened the ad platform tag configuration.

   ↳ Scrolled to the triggering section, looked under Exceptions, and added the new blocking trigger.

Once implemented, if the data wasn't ready, the tag waited. Zero empty payloads.

Fix the sequence before you scale the spend.

I've set up tags and triggers in tagmanager and created an event but after 2+ weeks of tracking I don't see the event listed on my analytics report (Reports>LifeCycle>Engagement>Events). How long do I need to wait before it appears? I know that the event is being triggered, as I've even triggered it myself as a test.

Any advice?

I've noticed a small but consistent increase in visitors coming from AI tools, but I'm struggling to understand the bigger picture.
With regular analytics, I can see where traffic comes from, but it doesn't really tell me how AI discovery is changing over time or whether we're actually gaining visibility compared to others in the space.
I've been trying to piece things together from different reports, but it feels like I'm missing a proper benchmark.
Is anyone tracking AI driven traffic trends seriously yet, curious what metrics people are looking at.

I work for a company that uses an external registration platform for event registration, events being the primary part of our business. This third party system recently updated their system with the ability to send events to our GA4 account. It sends three events, page_view > begin_checkout > purchase. These are obviously super generic, and they apparent are not able to send any other information with the events. No transaction IDs, nothing but an event name.

I have worked with GA for a few years now, but really for very basic reporting. I am working to expand my knowledge into more complex and useful areas of GA, but I really don't know what to do with these events.

Looking at events reporting, because of the generic name, page locations tied to these events are all over the place. I can see some of the from our regi system, but there so much more. Can someone give me some pointers?

Sessions by page is easy, it's sitting right there in GSC.

Revenue by page is where it falls apart for me. GA4 attribution is a mess, the numbers don't match what the store says, and stitching it to organic landing pages turns into a spreadsheet nobody wants to own.

So the refresh calendar ends up built off traffic, which is not the same list.

What's your setup for this?

What AI agent tools can I use to connect to the Google Analytics API and retrieve data through a chat‑based conversational interface, so I can analyze website issues directly by asking questions?

Hi everyone! I've had this problem for a few weeks now, and I can't find any way around it. Basically, the bar at the top where you put your URL in to request indexing is gone. I've tried on my phone, in a different browser, and in incognito mode. None of them work. Is there a workaround I can use? Has anyone else experienced this before?

I am seeing a huge click drop (~40%) in google search console since Aug 10 (3.6K -> 3.5K -> 3.2K -> 2.8K -> 2.3K), I see the rank went down as well.

Strangely, the GA4 (traffic source - Google report) the number does not drop at all (4.5K -> 4.3K -> 4.1K -> 3.9K -> 4.1K, normal week-day pattern), my site is an app landing page, I verify the incoming user to the app using app log, confirm there is no drop.

Is the Google search console data recently has issue? Or is there anything I missed? Any one experience the same? Thanks!

== More data follow up ==

since Aug 10

GSC: 3.6K -> 3.5K -> 3.2K -> (abnormal drop starts) 2.8K -> 2.3K

User acquisition (First user google / organic): 4.0K -> 3.9K -> 3.6K -> 3.5K -> 3.6K

Traffic acquisition (session source google / organic): 4.5K -> 4.3K -> 4.1K -> 3.9K -> 4.1K

If im getting about 3k to 4k users floating in my site daily, is that means good? FYI im not running any kind of AD’s

In my Google Analytics report, there is a referrer source called ‘parity’ with 96 sessions. I’m not sure which website this refers to. Could someone tell me what ‘parity’ represents as a traffic source?

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but...

I have a client who has a subscription-based ecommerce brand who claims the purchase and quiz data doesn't match their actual numbers (they track things internally).

They're updated their WooCommerce last month, finally, after years of using an old version and it subsequently broke a lot of their site and I worked with them and their developer on the fix and I tested their events in the via GA4 and they triggered properly post launch.

What am I missing?

If you've worked with an ecommerce brand that has subscription and WooCommerce, have you seen discrepancies?

Additionally, does GA4 fire subscription renewal purchases for current subscribers?

saw a thread where someone's GA4 tag was silently broken for 2 weeks and only caught it while pulling a report. curious how common that actually is — do you have some kind of monitoring/alert set up, or is it usually just caught by accident when the numbers look off?

Hi everyone,

Is anyone else experiencing issues with Google Analytics Realtime reports?

The realtime data on my websites has dropped drastically, and I can’t find anything wrong with the sites themselves. Everything is working normally, traffic seems fine, and I don’t see any tracking issues on my end.

Has anyone noticed a similar drop recently? Could this be a Google Analytics Realtime reporting issue?

Thanks!

I recently started a new job at a large company with thousands of clients. They dont link GA4 to google ads accounts because they dont see the purpose? They use a 3rd party reporting system linked to the clients CRM to pull leads and then import offline conversions. They said it’s because clients don’t know how to install tracking scripts so it’s easier to just use CRM data.

I’ve worked at several agencies / verticals and have never heard of not using Google tagging and reporting. Everyone just seemed so nonchalant about it, I was in shock.

Can someone explain what is possibly going on here? Why not use ga4 and Google tagging? How is reporting correct? How is Google learning our audience correctly?

I want to track where the “download now” clicks are coming from. how do I build UTM links for playstore and appstore? there is no yt video for the same. how d’yall app company workers do it?