How to Audit Google Analytics

Your Google Analytics account is likely collecting mountains of data, but raw data is not always trustworthy. Hidden issues like improper tracking setup, referral spam, or misconfigured event conversions can create messy, inaccurate reports that lead to poor business decisions. We’ll show you a simple, systematic way to perform a Google Analytics audit to clean up your data, find reporting issues, and ensure your team is looking at real insights about performance.

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Start with Foundational Property Settings

Before you get into the fun stuff like events and goals, you'll need to start your GA audit with some quick housekeeping. Checking for the basics is the best way to not just warm up for a deep GA4 dive, but is also one of the easiest ways for beginners and experts alike to get some easy "lay-ups" during a GA4 data audit.

Verify and Standardize All of the Accounts and Property Settings

First and foremost, take a simple glance to ensure everything looks right and organized. Are you managing a ton of properties under just one account? Consider migrating sites you no longer need data on to an "archive" account to simplify everything. Alternatively, if you're using only one GA account and one property, consider whether you need additional users or custom reports setup. A quick checklist could look something like this:

• Are property names clear and easy to find? A solid GA naming convention can be as straightforward as "example.com - GA4 for organization ABC."
• Have you checked the correct time zone and currency options? Incorrect currency settings make finance reports misleading, and you want your data collection times to reset in your organization's time zone.
• Is Data Retention set right? By default, it should now be 2 months, but Google has opened this up to 14 months. If you use this platform heavily, you'll always want maximum retention.
• Are industry settings set up? You never want to have missing benchmark capabilities, so if it isn't set up, take a second to add it.
• Make sure everything is connected, like Google Ads, Google Search, and/or the Merchant Center, to add value quickly.

Ensure User Access Management is Solid Gold

User access for GA4 can sometimes fall through the cracks. Make sure you’re checking the following:

• Are team members set at the correct user levels - Administrator, Viewer, etc.? There are various roles from editor to viewer, but remember to customize permissions carefully to allow access only on a per-user basis when needed.
• It's recommended to have at least two people as Administrators to avoid being locked out for any unknown reasons, such as when someone from the past is the last one with Admin rights and they have left.
• Remove anyone who no longer needs access at the time of your audit, you will be glad for this peace of mind when audit season is hectic with all sorts of work.

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Review Internal Traffic Filtering

You definitely need clean external traffic data. It's simple to fix: ensure everyone internal (like your team or freelancers) adds up and filters this traffic right away. The simplest way is via IP address filtering. Google now makes that easier using their Google Tag settings right under the property section of your Admin panel dashboard. For small businesses, this step is vital, internal clicks can skew conversion rate reports, masking true insights.

Auditing Your Google Analytics Tracking Code

Once the basic configurations are secure, verify your code. Bad data often begins with an install that has issues from the beginning or a very old, outdated tracking tag installation. The first step for auditing this is to find your measurement ID by navigating to Settings > Data Streams, clicking directly through Data Stream, and copying 'G-XXXX.' It is then important to verify the code and check whether you’re getting hits, using tools like Tag Assistant. Navigate to where your tracking code lives on your website. Check the source for any duplicate gtag.js scripts or outdated analytics.js scripts, as these could double your data or split it between multiple properties accidentally.

Here’s a simple way to break it down to see if things look okay:

• Only one GA4 configuration tag must be loaded on each page.
• Ensure there are no outdated script calls like analytics.js, which only exist when someone still needs to be in Google Analytics Universal.

When checking your code or Google Tag Manager content, it's important to ask: Are you now tracking events through tags, via GTAG, or both? It doesn't matter too much as long as there is a standard. You will likely not find consistent tracking across platforms when auditing data. A single "Source" of GA tracking for all sites ensures you and your team understand your data better and know what to do with it using the tools they need later for running reports.

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Verifying Data Streams, Enhanced Event Data and Filters for Cross-Domain Tracking

Start your GA4 platform audit by confirming how various components are structured so everything runs smoothly. For example:

• Enhanced Measurements should also be enabled, allowing you to easily track page views, scrolls, and clicks. It is already turned on by default in the Data Streams option in GA4, but make sure nothing has been accidentally toggled off.

Data Streams

This one’s a bit more advanced. Let me simplify: Check your Data Streams > Configure Tag Settings, then go to Show More section > List Unwanted Referral. Your website's root domain and all your payment sub-domains (or third-party) should be added. This prevents creating a new session when a user returns from PayPal or Stripe, ensuring their journey through the site is seamless and uninterrupted.

Auditing Your Conversion (Event Tracking Setup & Data Mapping)

Ensure Quality Insights from Your Analytics Software

• Start your audit with an event mapping. Bring every single event into the custom events category in Configure > Event. Any old goals you might want to keep in Universal Analytics should get the conversion status within the same page.

Check if the event names follow Google’s naming convention, along with all the custom events that need a name for the parameter, which you can check here: Configure → Custom Definition.

An audit wouldn't be complete without validating all UTM parameters:

• Consistency is key. A good way to audit UTM parameters is to standardize tag campaigns (e.g., have all UTM campaign names be lowercase) and ensure all your links direct where they’re supposed to, resolving any redirects if that has been an issue historically.
• Use your parameters and see what the top sources, top mediums, or top campaigns are in your dashboard and the acquisition reporting tool in Google Analytics. Ensure no messy names like "Email" or 'e-Mail.' These things happen to the best, and all you need to do is create custom channel groups to consolidate everything into less fragmented channels, so your reports look organized.

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Test Everything is Working in Real Time

To understand how all these pieces work on your end, use your own site as a regular customer would. For example, after an event like a submission form on 'contact us,' go through the motions and double-check the Debug View Admin settings and click Debug View. You can verify your work on the 'contact_submit' but also make sure there's no duplicated event.

Use Google Tag to check your setup. The best part is that the Tag Assistant is now built into GA, just navigate again to admin > tag Assistant from the Google Analytics property list in your account. It gives real-time error details to everyone performing an audit of Google Analytics.

Final Thoughts

Auditing your Google Analytics doesn’t happen in an afternoon and requires some effort. Getting comfortable and using the tool right means you’ll know and trust the data when looking for critical answers for your organization. The insights you find here can always lead you and your team to better marketing and strategic ideas based on accuracy of what’s happening online.

At Graphed, our goal is to eliminate a big portion of that hard work for team members. Instead of checking settings every month, we hook directly up with Google Analytics API, allowing all your team members to build reports just by asking simple-language questions. Our goal is always to make your team’s focus switch from being data gatherers and auditors to those who make strategic decisions based on the data they have access to. If on-team reports or manual tasks become too time-consuming, it's time to find an automation software like Graphed!