GA4 Attribution Error: Recover Lost Conversions with BigQuery
Author: Balazs V. PH.D
Event attribution has changed in many Google Analytics 4 properties, leaving many GA4 and BigQuery users scratching their heads around the “sudden drop in performance” for all their campaigns.Many people from the digital analytics community – myself included – noticed that some channel or campaign oriented attribution reports suddenly showed a massive change sometimes in June or July, typically with a huge drop of conversions (or “events of interest”) mapped to marketing channels and campaigns.
Mysterious GA4 Conversion Drop
The date of change seems to vary by company or even by property within a company, but in general what happens is the loss of conversions / events of interest (purchases, sign-ups, form fills etc) that are mapped to marketing channels. For instance, if 60% of purchases used to come from GoogleAds, now from a certain point in June or July only 4-5% of purchases will come from there and the rest of them appearing as direct traffic.
It is not certain if it’s a feature (an “enhancement”) or a bug. Some people in the community seem to have managed to get it confirmed by Google support that it is something they are working on to resolve. Needless to say, this leaves many marketing teams puzzled.
Fix GA4 and Google Ads Conversion Errors with BigQuery
Fortunately, there is a solution – the power of BigQuery after all is the ability to process the raw data, and there is a way to calculate a field that attributes the right campaign to each event. Those who experience this issue in GA4 might need to consider starting to leverage the BigQuery export (if you / your team have not set it up, today is the best day to start).
In addition, this seems to also impact Google Ads if conversions (that are driving the campaign optimization) are imported from GA4. I have to investigate this a bit more, but it is a good idea to double check to see if GA4 imported conversion volumes have been stable throughout June and July. Those who use the native Google Ads tag for tracking conversions, will not be affected.
Key Takeaways of GA4 Attribution Error
GA4’s recent changes have led to a drastic decline in conversion attribution for many businesses, causing significant challenges in evaluating campaign performance. This blog explored the issue, providing insights into its potential causes and consequences. By using BigQuery, marketers can regain control of their data and accurately attribute conversions. To ensure ongoing data reliability, staying informed about GA4 developments is crucial.
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