Comments on: How Sampling Works in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 08:14:46 +0000

In reply to Mahdi. Hi Mahdi, in the free version sampling occurs in advanced reporting when the data exceeds 10 million in event counts (and the report is not a standard report). It doesn't mean there is a hit/event limit, it is that Google applies sampling in this case.

By: Mahdi

Mahdi — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 06:53:03 +0000

Hi Paul,
You mention this in this section: ”Google Analytics 4 is also free (there will be a paid version as well) and has no hit/events limits. This is really great if your company has a high number of daily users on the site and/or app and triggers loads of events”.

Why is the data shown sampling in the event reports with a sampling rate?!

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 08:45:36 +0000

In reply to John Contreras. Hi John, this is purely for event parameters. 25 per property is the limit for user properties in GA. This is for GA4 free version. If you are on GA360, both limits are currently set to 100.

By: John Contreras

John Contreras — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 06:31:01 +0000

Hi Paul, is the limit of 25 event parameters per event the result of the sum of the number of event parameters plus the number of user properties of the same event?

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 08:16:09 +0000

In reply to M. The +/- 11 million events are an estimate of the total (100%) event count which is based on 90% of all data.

By: M

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 20:18:32 +0000

Hi,
I have a question regarding the sample exploration report you provided (the 4th screen shot with the event count and sample rate of 90%).

Where the event count total is listed, is that the total for the 90% of the data that was used? If so, how do you get the real total for all the data? Or do I assume the real total is 10% higher?

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 14:41:28 +0000

In reply to Ryan. Not sure Ryan as I have limited knowledge of R in this respect. Maybe you want to send a quick note to Mark Edmondson as he might be able to troubleshoot here.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 18:05:33 +0000

In reply to Paul Koks.

So ive noticed a few discrepancies b/w big query and the R package. Im not sure if this is because my sql command is incorrect (most likely) or due to a limitation of R or the API version thats being used.

Ex: total number of pageviews
R: 7th row is “(other)” w/aprox 150k pageviews (not good)
BQ: Same time frame but I dont see an (other) row and total number of pageviews is off (pretty decent amount)

Right now my plan is to use R for ad hoc requests while I continue to set up BQ. For me (no bq experience) its easier to use R to pull the data and quicker then the GA4 UI

Here was the BQ query I used
SELECT
device.web_info.hostname,
event_name,
COUNT(*) AS event_count
FROM `[table]*`
WHERE
event_name IN (‘page_view’)
— Replace date range.
AND _TABLE_SUFFIX BETWEEN ‘20221015’ AND ‘20230115’
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY event_count desc

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 08:14:30 +0000

In reply to Ryan.

Hi Ryan,
I agree that in some cases you can run into challenges the more granular you get within the GA4 UI. Let me know how BigQuery works out for you.
You might also want to ask yourself how granular you want to get at the user level (instead of creating an aggregated or partly segmented sequential analysis).

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 17:26:22 +0000

In reply to Paul Koks.

Hey – me again (ryan) w/an update:

I’ve found button tracking difficult via GA-4. If I try to use report explorer and drill down to a cta click by page – button – date GA4 wont show any data (low traffic page relative to rest of the site).

I have been able to pull the info via googleAnalyticsR I have not tested big query yet.

Still slightly concerned about reporting functionality of GA-4 for very specific tasks. Next step is to compare R output against BQ