A marketing analytics agency that actually listens

The short answer is that GA4 has its own method in measuring site traffic that differs from other platforms. Google Ads and GA 4 should be similar but you should expect 10-15% difference between these two platforms. Another key factor: GA4 does not provide real-time data. Unlike Google Ads, which generally updates data much more quickly, GA4 has a processing delay that can extend up to 72 hours.

Events represent user actions that you want to track, but they aren’t necessarily tied to your core business goals. Examples of predefined events in GA4 include interactions like clicks, first visits, and session starts. Key events, on the other hand, are directly aligned with your business objectives, such as form submissions, purchases, or email sign-ups. These events are crucial for measuring conversions and can be pushed from GA4 into Google Ads to help optimize ad targeting and improve the algorithm’s performance

The idea of engagement is becoming increasingly more important when measuring success of your site traffic, this is not solely determined by Google but is reflective of shifts in user behaviors. Engaged session have become the marker of success for Google. It is a blended metric that will count engagement after 10 seconds on a site, 2 or more page views, or an event occurs.

The main causes of data discrepancies are cookie opt-outs and private browsing. When users browse in private or incognito mode, their browser doesn’t store cookies. Since GA4 relies on first-party cookies to track user sessions, this prevents proper tracking, leading to disruptions in data collection.