Tell us about your GA4 experience

Robin

June 26, 2023 15:30

Community manager

The sunset date for Universal Analytics is right around the corner, so we want to hear about your experience with GA4 so far.

What are some hurdles you're experiencing? What do you like better? Is there something you'd like to show the community that you find helpful?

Let us know in the comments below!

Comments

9 comments

PaperStreet
June 27, 2023 17:23

A hurdle we are experiencing is that CallRail conversions do not seem to integrate with default channel groupings in GA4 and all show up under (Unassigned) within the Traffic Acquisition report.

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Robin
June 27, 2023 18:23

Community manager

Hey PaperStreet,

I definitely understand this is something many have found frustrating. Unfortunately, Google did not make the necessary attribution fields available to us in GA4, and as a result we cannot send our source and medium data to their default channel groupings. That is why custom parameters are required.

Let me know if there is anything you have questions about!

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PaperStreet
June 29, 2023 17:34

We did have another question. We noticed that conversions from CallRail are actually appearing in default channel groupings under the “User Acquisition” report which is tailored to data around first-time visitors.

However, it shows under (Unassigned) in the “Traffic Acquisition” report that includes new and returning sessions.

Any idea why its occurring that way? I know you mentioned the necessary attribution fields were not made available but it seems to be working in some capacity.

User Acquisition: https://prnt.sc/71Xo_7s7rMME

Traffic Acquisition: https://prnt.sc/gLmccdkroJkK

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Robin
July 05, 2023 13:54

Community manager

Hello,

This is likely happening because when there are calls to your website pool numbers, we are able to gather and send the client ID/user ID to google, and then google is able to do the heavy lifting in determining the source of that user. We currently do not have a way to send the session ID to google and it work the same way because the format varies. However, by sending the user ID, google is able to map the source in the user acquisition report for those new callers. This something google is doing on their backend and attributing through their channels, not information we're collecting and sending.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

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Carlos Santiago
July 06, 2023 15:30

It kinda stinks imo. In UA you could very easily look at your website's traffic for the past year on a month by month basis, like:

You can see every month clearly and can then drill down into anything that might be weird.

In GA4, this is impossible(?). You get this instead:

A daily user count for a whole year by default that you can't change to something that's actually useful. It's like they added all these advanced features and forgot to put the basic stuff in there. I am a simpleton and only need to see if graph go up or if graph go down.

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Robin
July 07, 2023 13:22

Community manager

Hey Carlos Santiago,

Thanks for sharing that with us. I'm interested if others have found a way to do this in GA4 similar to UA or if they're also experiencing the same things.

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Ketan Vakil
April 09, 2024 04:30
Has anyone found a way to pass a custom metric?

I would really like to pass a custom "Total Calls" custom metric that increments by 1 each time "first_time_phone_call" and "repeat_phone_call" fires. Ideally 3 custom metrics actually:
- Total First Time Calls
- Total Repeat Calls
- Total Calls (though this one I can easily sum in Looker Studio with a calculated field if I get the other two).
Because the CallRail events are pushed in via the Measurement Protocol (I think), the Modify Events feature in GA4 does not work on them. I think this might be impossible right now but not having a columnar metric to use in Looker Studio against Campaign & Channel tables is super unfortunate.

Any creative workarounds?
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Bryce
April 12, 2024 19:40 (Edited April 12, 2024 19:41)

Community team

Hello Ketan. Google Analytics 4 does work differently than Universal Analytics. As you already know, we need to create custom dimensions and cannot interact with the native events and dimensions that GA4 provides. We would love to be able to do that and our Product Team regularly reviews any updates to Google products as they are some of our most used and talked about integrations. The same limitations apply to other tracking providers and services that integrate with GA4.

We will keep you updated as we further develop our integrations. This is a great feature request and one we will build as soon as the opportunity presents itself. In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to post a similar message in the Google Community as well. You can find it here. Thank you as always for your contributions to our Community.

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Ketan Vakil
April 12, 2024 19:45
Hey Bryce,

Left a message in the other thread too but will here as well. There would not be an out of box native event or dimension to use here. I think the solution has to come 100% from you and I would not know what to request of the Google Community.

In addition to the custom dimensions you are already sending, CallRail could push over 2-3 other custom metrics as part of your optional config:
- total_calls
- total_first_time_calls
- total_repeat_calls
Set those to "1" when they happen and if anyone configures those 3 custom events in GA4 (just like we are adding the other dimensions you push values for), we'd all get nice custom metrics to use in Looker Studio tables. It'll be impossible for any other solution to work since you are pushing data over Measurement Protocol and thus nothing can be intercepted in GA4 rules. Happy to discuss more!
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