Google Analytics 4 Data Differences

Google Analytics 4 Data Differences

GA4 Data Differences Overview

Comparing the Google Analytics 4 interface to the platform's Site Analytics data set will display differences if they are not filtered the same way between the two platforms. There are a few primary GA4 differences including: profiles, sampling, and filtering.

1) Google Analytics Profile

When viewing data, it's important to make sure the correct profile is being viewed. The integrated GA profile can be seen in the the Domain Settings > Integrations section of the platform.

2) Google Analytics Filtering

When data is pulled into the platform, it is being brought in with the "Session Default Channel Group = Organic Search" filter and Conversion data should be filtered for session_start. When viewing the data in the GA4 interface this same filter would need to be applied when viewing Sessions, which is the default traffic metric brought into the platform. 
  1. You can view this in the Landing Page report under the Engagement menu by applying the filters: (Session Default Channel Group = Organic Search) and (Event Name = Session Start).


  1. Note that if viewing User metric brought in as analytics goal data, GA4 primarily uses the Active Users metric and not the Total Users metric. Active Users are, "Number of distinct users who visited your website or application." Learn more
    1. All the users who have logged at least one event on your GA4 property, the number of distinct User IDs, is the Total Users metric. This metric can be found in Explorations in the GA4 UI, but is not the primary metric used in GA4.

3) Sampling

It is possible that reports in Google Analytics may not display the complete dataset in charts and tables. To determine if unsampled data is shown, look for a green check mark at the top of the trended chart in GA4. If the mark is not green and instead displays a warning sign, Google is applying sampling to the data within their interface.



"In Google Analytics, data sampling may occur when the number of events used to create a report, exploration, or request exceeds the quota limit for your property. When this happens, Analytics uses a portion of the data and then scales up to provide directionally accurate results that are representative of all your data." Learn more. 

4) Live Data Feature

To improve data accuracy, we have implemented a live data feature in our Site Analytics section on the platform. This feature is denoted by the gray line in the chart. The data from the last three days are considered live data and are subject to change. On the other hand, data beyond these three days is considered settled and will not change.

The data isn't settled right away due to the order in which the data is collected in GA4 and then exported from GA4. The export tables are created after GA4 collects all events for the day. The GA4 daily tables can get updated up to 72 hours beyond the date of the table.


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