Scope of this guide
This guide applies only to Google Analytics 4, not Universal Analytics. To solve discrepancy issues in Universal Analytics, see this guide.
If you're seeing discrepancies between your Google Analytics 4 data and the data you see in your Supermetrics reports, follow this guide to solve the issues.
API latency
The Google Analytics 4 API and the Google Analytics 4 user interface are not always totally in sync. Supermetrics communicates with the Google Analytics API 4, which may deliver figures that differ from the ones shown in Google Analytics 4 due to a processing delay.
This can result in data being too low or missing from Google Analytics 4 within the last 24-48 hours. Please wait up to 48 hours from the current date to get the correct data. Learn more about data freshness on Google's documentation.
Historical data retention
Google Analytics 4 has a maximum data retention range of 14 months, but it usually defaults to 2 months.
Note that demographic data (such as age, gender, and interest) always has a retention rate of 2 months, regardless of other settings. Learn more about data retention in Google Analytics 4.
Data sampling
Google Analytics 4 can sample the results it delivers to Supermetrics. This can cause small differences between the values displayed in your Supermetrics report and in Google Analytics 4.
If your query exceeds 10 million rows (or 1 billion for Google Analytics 360 users), split the query to smaller date ranges or decrease the query granularity by removing some dimensions. With these actions, you can avoid your data being sampled. Learn more about sampling in Google's documentation.
Adding dimensions or sessions
Adding dimensions to certain query setups can cause discrepancies. Dimensions can change the granularity of your data, and adding dimensions can lead to data being aggregated differently, which may affect the overall results.
For example, sessions in Google Analytics 4 have no time limit. If a session lasted overnight onto a new date, it is possible for that session to be counted twice in a query when splitting by date.
Comparing a value from manual sums against an aggregated value, such as summing daily values for a month against a queried monthly value, may not always match. Please make sure you use the same fields, filters, and date ranges when comparing data between Supermetrics and Google Analytics 4.
Thresholding
Google Analytics 4 employs data thresholds to safeguard against identifying individual users based on demographics, interests, or other signals. To avoid thresholding, take a look at Google Analytics 4's data thresholds article.
In certain cases, data that shouldn't be thresholded is missing from the Google Analytics 4 API response because the query contains other metrics subject to thresholding. To overcome these missing results, Supermetrics has implemented a solution to show more data on your report.
The following example highlights this solution. Previously, when querying both Total users and Sessions per Default channel grouping, Sessions from Paid Social, Organic Social, Unassigned, and Organic Video channels were not visible as there was no data for Total users for these channels.
Traffic source dimensions
Some dimensions in Google Analytics 4 group data in certain traffic sources. Selecting the wrong traffic source based on the prefix of a dimension can introduce discrepancies. For example, Sessions split by First user source / medium instead of Session source / medium will return different results. Learn more about traffic-source dimensions here.
Field name mismatch
It's crucial to ensure that you're using the right fields. Some fields may have similar names, which can lead to confusion and discrepant data. Here are some tips on how to use the correct fields.
- Carefully check field names: Field names are typically provided in our documentation or the user interface.
- Review field descriptions: Often, field names are accompanied by descriptions.
- Test and validate: You can use Google's Dimensions & Metrics Explorer tool to check the fields in GA4 that correspond to our fields.
Here are some examples of fields with easily confused names:
| Name in Supermetrics | Name in Google Analytics 4 |
|---|---|
| Page path | Page path + query string |
| Page path without query string | Page path |
| Event campaign name | Campaign |
If you still feel confused or uncertain, don't hesitate to reach out to our customer support team.
Validating data
The Query Explorer is Google's own API tool, which you can use to confirm the results shown by Supermetrics. If Query Explorer and the Google Analytics 4 interface match, and Supermetrics shows something different, that indicates a problem. In this case, please contact our customer support team so we can investigate and start solving the problem.
Please be aware that some Supermetrics queries can't be recreated exactly in Query Explorer due to the limitations of the tool's interface. The limitations are:
- a maximum of 1 metric filter,
- a maximum of 1 dimension filter,
- and a maximum of 10k rows of query data results.