Genius Division

You can't rely on GA4

Google Analytics used to track everything. Then GDPR arrived, Google had to rewrite it, and we got GA4.

GA4 can’t see what the old one saw. So it fills the gaps with machine learning, algorithms and educated guesses, then hands you the result as though somebody counted it.

The clearest example is “direct” traffic. Open your analytics and you’ll find a big slice of people who apparently typed your web address in from memory. Most of them didn’t. Direct is largely where GA4 files the visits it couldn’t work out.

None of this means ignore your analytics. It means stop reading the numbers as a measurement and start reading them as a direction of travel.

The number that actually matters is how many enquiries came in this week. You can count those by hand.

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