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Google Analytics 4

Tracking you can check against your own sales.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's free analytics for websites and apps. It records what visitors do, like page views, form fills and purchases, and where they came from. Donut Analytics sets it up so every campaign's clicks arrive labeled, checks its revenue against your own sales records, and fixes what can be fixed.

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How we use it

How we use Google Analytics

  • Every campaign tagged

    Every campaign we run gets UTM-tagged links, so each click shows up in Google Analytics with its source, campaign and ad.

  • Revenue that means revenue

    If tax and shipping are counted in purchase value, revenue and return on ad spend look better than they are. We write the change that takes them out of the value sent to GA4, and keep tax and shipping as their own fields.

  • The events a standard setup misses

    Which featured card or promotion people click, and where it sat on the page. We send these as custom events and register them as custom dimensions, so they show up in reports.

  • Early signals for slow decisions

    When people research for weeks before they buy, we track engaged visits, like someone viewing several pages, as an early signal next to purchases and leads.

  • Consent wired in

    We connect your cookie banner to Google's consent mode. People who say no aren't tracked as report rows, and GA4's consent settings show what share of traffic that is.

  • A backup when an ad tag breaks

    If a Google Ads purchase tag stops firing, we can import the GA4 purchase event into Google Ads instead. The old conversion stays as a secondary action so its history isn't lost, and we mark the gap so nobody reads a tracking outage as a sales drop.

In practice

What a GA4 check-up turns up

Real work, kept anonymous.

  1. 01

    Revenue that never touched the website

    For one client we compared GA4 with their own sales system, day by day. The web tracking was healthy. The biggest share of the gap came from orders that never touch the website, and one setup issue we could fix accounted for part of the rest.

  2. 02

    Long, messy links

    Visitors were landing on pages with long tracking strings in the address bar. GA4's cross-domain setting was decorating links between subdomains of the same site. Subdomains already share GA4's cookies, so one admin setting fixed it. No tag changes needed.

  3. 03

    Which homepage spots earn their place

    For a retailer, we track which homepage promotion slot people click, the large banner or a small tile, so the team can see which spots earn their place.

What it can’t tell you

What Google Analytics can't tell you

  • Sales it never sees

    GA4 counts what happens on your site. A sale in a store, over the phone or in a batch of renewals never reaches it. A Florida retailer we work with makes most of its sales in stores, so we measure its ads with a media mix model.

  • What the ads added

    GA4 splits credit among the channels on the path to a sale. It can't say which sales would have happened anyway. That takes a lift test or a media mix model.

  • People who decline cookies

    With consent mode, visitors who say no send cookieless pings that feed Google's modeling but never appear as rows in your reports. Some detail is always missing.

FAQ

Questions about Google Analytics

Is Google Analytics 4 free?
Yes. Google Analytics is free. Google also sells Analytics 360, an enterprise version with higher limits.
Do I need Google Tag Manager to use GA4?
No. GA4 can run on the Google tag alone. Donut Analytics uses Tag Manager because it keeps GA4, your ad pixels and your consent rules in one container that can change without a site release.
Why don't GA4 numbers match Google Ads or Meta?
Each tool counts with its own rules. Ad platforms credit sales to their own ads, sometimes including people who only saw an ad, while GA4 reads site visits and splits credit across channels. Some gap is normal. Donut Analytics checks which number a decision should rest on before anyone moves budget.
Can GA4 show traffic from ChatGPT and other AI assistants?
Yes. Since May 2026, GA4's default channel reports include an AI Assistant channel for visits referred by chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. It counts visits that arrive with a referrer, so some AI-driven visits still land in Direct.
What should count as a key event in GA4?
The actions that match how you sell. Key events were called conversions in GA4 until 2024. For an online store that means purchases with real order values. For a business where people research first, it can include leads, calls, directions and engaged visits.
How long does GA4 keep data?
Standard GA4 properties keep user-level data for 2 or 14 months, your choice. That setting affects explorations and funnel reports, not the standard reports. For longer history, keep the data in a warehouse like BigQuery.

Pairs with

Guides: Incrementality vs. attribution: what's the difference?How to measure marketing when most sales happen in stores FAQ

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Know what your numbers mean.

Tell us what you’re working on. We’ll build a measurement-first plan for your brand. Email hello@donutanalytics.com or call (407) 394-9720.

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