Our team helps businesses optimize their digital performance every day. And too often, we run into the same roadblock: a faulty Google Analytics 4 (GA4) setup.
The result? Unreliable data, campaigns that are hard to optimize, and sometimes a completely unclear view of return on investment.
“85% of digital marketing investments are wasted due to inaccurate tracking.“
(Source – Deloitte 2023)
Here are 3 concrete signs that your GA4 tracking needs a serious review — and more importantly, how to fix it right away.
01. Your Numbers Don’t Match Across Platforms
GA4 reports 800 conversions.
Shopify shows 2,000.
Meta Ads claims 60.
Who’s right? It’s hard to tell.
These discrepancies often come from improperly installed tags, incorrect triggers in Tag Manager, or differing attribution windows across platforms. The consequence?
You end up making decisions based on skewed data, and losing trust in your reports.
How to fix it :
- Activate DebugView in GA4: This tool lets you monitor events triggered on your site in real time — as if you were looking over the user’s shoulder. Start a debug browsing session (via Google Tag Assistant or GTM), perform key actions (add to cart, proceed to checkout, purchase), then check if the correct events are being logged.
- Scrutinize your triggers in GTM: Open the preview mode, go through critical user journeys, and observe the triggering conditions for each tag. A single undetected click or a modified CSS class can make all the difference.
- Align your attribution windows: Each platform attributes conversions differently. GA4 favors the last non-direct channel, Meta Ads uses its modeled 7-day attribution, etc. Harmonizing (or at least understanding) these attribution logics is crucial to make valid comparisons.
02. A Large Share of Your Traffic Is “not set” (Unattributed)
You notice many sessions in your GA4 reports are listed under the source “not set,” even though they should clearly be attributed to a campaign, newsletter, or social post. In this context, it becomes impossible to know whether your campaigns actually drove traffic, making it hard to tell what’s working.
Note that a portion of traffic will always escape tracking, especially now that most websites allow users to block tracking. So it’s virtually impossible to have zero sessions under “not set.”
That said, there’s a relatively simple way to limit this data loss: UTMs.
UTMs are small text snippets added to the end of a URL that tell GA4 (and other analytics tools) where a click came from. For example, if you send out a newsletter, a link with well-configured UTMs will indicate that the user came from your fall email campaign sent via Mailchimp.
Without those tags, GA4 is likely to classify the session as “direct” or “not set,” which means losing a key opportunity to understand the performance of your channels.
In practice, just add these three basic parameters:
- utm_source (e.g., newsletter, facebook, linkedin)
- utm_medium (e.g., email, social, cpc)
- utm_campaign (e.g., fall2025, product-launch, bfcmsale)
To go further, you can add:
- utm_content to differentiate between versions of a campaign
- utm_term to track specific keywords
But be careful: consistency is critical. A channel labelled “Facebook” in one campaign and “Facebook” in another will be treated as two different sources. That’s why it’s essential to adopt a clear, consistent, and shared naming convention across your marketing team — or with your agencies — if you want to build a robust data governance system and enable smooth cross-agency collaboration.
By standardizing your UTMs, you regain visibility into your marketing efforts. You’ll finally know what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus your budget.
03. Your Monetization Reports Are Empty (or Nearly So)
Your online store is making sales… but GA4 isn’t showing those numbers.
That’s frustrating — and often a sign that your key events (like purchase, add_to_cart, or begin_checkout) are misconfigured.
They might be named incorrectly, not triggering properly, or failing to send the required parameters to GA4 (such as value, currency, or transaction_id).
Without these details, your monetization reports remain empty or incomplete. GA4 simply can’t track your sales accurately.
The impact:
- You won’t see revenue in your dashboards
- Your average order value (AOV) and return on ad spend (ROAS) become impossible to calculate
- And your campaigns become much harder to optimize
As mentioned earlier, it’s crucial to:
- Test your events using GA4’s DebugView mode
- Ensure each tag contains the required parameters
- Follow Google’s recommended naming conventions for e-commerce
A rigorous implementation — ideally using Google Tag Manager and server-side tagging — ensures accurate tracking.
Not sure about the quality of your tracking?
If you suspect poor implementation or if some numbers seem inconsistent, Bloom offers GA4 configuration audits.
Our experts thoroughly review your data collection, identify errors, and provide concrete recommendations to make your tracking reliable.
Take Back Control of Your Data
Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool… if it’s properly configured and governed.
A poor implementation doesn’t just distort your reports — it prevents you from making smart, informed decisions.
We believe solid tracking is the foundation of every high-performing digital strategy. Take the time to review your GA4 setup — or reach out if you’d like to do it with the help of professionals.