Fixing Data Gaps in GA4 eCommerce Reporting

Digital Analytics Insights by Optizent

Author

Anil Batra
February 08, 2025

In partnership with

If you're relying on GA4 to track your eCommerce performance, but the numbers don’t add up, you’re not alone. Data gaps lead to missing transactions, duplicate conversions, and incomplete user journeys.

Here are some of the most common GA4 tracking issues and how to fix them:

Missing Transactions

It is quite possible that orders shown in GA4 are missing certain orders. This happens because GA4 tags are blocked by some browsers, ad blockers, firewalls etc. Howvere if you see a discrepancy of 2% or more then here some things for you to check:

  • Ensure purchase event is firing after the required values are present. If you are using data layers then the event should fire when data layers are available, not before that.

  • Check if there are any other tag firing conditions that might be blocking the purchase tag under certain conditions.

  • If you are using server-side tracking then verify that there is no rule on the server-side tracking that’s preventing the data from going to GA4.

Duplicate Transactions

To see if you have this issue, create an exploration with Transaction ID and Event Count. If you see more than 1 event count for any of your transactions then you have a duplicate transaction issue. As a result you revenue numbers are inflated.

Duplicate transactions generally happen when:

  • Multiple “purchase” events are firing in your code.
    This could simply be a mistake by developers or you might have two or more processes sending “purchase” events. GA4 is suppose to filter out duplicate transactions but that does not happen all the time.

  • You might have a plugin or an integration that is also sending “purchase” event in GA4. So make sure to check them as well.

  • A purchase event is fired when a user reloads the order confirmation page. To avoid such situation, you can either ask your developers to push purchase event in the data layer only one time or you can control it by storing and reading values from the local storage.

UTM Parameters Getting Stripped, Leading to Incorrect Attribution

This problem can happen when

  1. You send you ad traffic to a page that is not part of the GA4 property that you are tracking rest of the data in. So when a user moves from the landing page to your main site, all UTM paramaters are lost.

  2. An automatic redirect happens from the landing pages to your main site. This automatic redirect might be stripping the UTMs.

In either case, make sure to pass the UTM paramaters from landing page to the main site.

Data Sampling & Thresholding Messing Up Reports

Sometimes GA4 applies sampling and thresholding, which causes incomplete data to be shown in the report.
To fix this issue, reduce filters & segments to minimize sampling and thresholding in the GA4 reports. You can also export the data to BigQuery, which will likely give you the complete data set.

Hope this helps you fix GA4 tracking issues and get accurate eCommerce insights.

If you see some other issues with your GA4 eCommerce reporting/setup then send me an email and I will be happy to look into it.

Do You Know?

  • If you don’t sell products/services on your site, you can still use GA4 eCommerce Reports for tracking other types of online activities such as pdf downloads, form fill or any other types of conversion.

  • GA4’s Predictive Metrics can estimate which customers are most likely to make another purchase?

  • For eCommerce events, you can add 27 item-level event paramaters to further analyze eCommerce data.

Top 5 GA4 eCommerce Reads

Stay ahead with this week’s handpicked selection of must-read articles. Dive into insights, trends, and actionable strategies in Digital, Web, and Marketing Analytics. From practical tips to in-depth case studies, these posts will keep you informed and inspired.

  1. ARPU, ARPPU, eCommerce Revenue and Average Revenue In GA4
    GA4 provides several revenue metrics and sometimes they can get confusing. In this post I will provide a simple explanation of these metrics.

  2. GA4 eCommerce Tracking, Reporting, and Analysis
    A comprehensive guide covering GA4 eCommerce events, parameters, implementation, and reporting.

  3. GA4 eCommerce Purchase Event: Parameters and Setup 
    Detailed explanation of the GA4 purchase event, its parameters, and how to implement it.

  4. 5 GA4 eCommerce Reports for Effective eCommerce Tracking and Performance 
    Overview of key GA4 eCommerce reports, including purchase path exploration and eCommerce purchases report.

  5. eCommerce Report in GA4 Not Showing Revenue? Here's Why.
    Troubleshooting guide for common issues with GA4 eCommerce reporting, including currency-related problems.

Training, Courses and eBooks

  1. Become a Digital & Web Analyst - A course that will get your team members learn Digital, Web and Marketing Analytics the right way. If you are a managing a team of analysts then this is a course you should enroll them in.

  2. 13 reasons why you must integrate BigQuery with GA4 (Free eBook).

If you have any questions then do not hesitate to send that to me. Your question will be answered in one of the newsletters.

Thank you,
Anil Batra
Founder Optizent.com

Whenever you are ready, there are two ways I can help you:

  1. Join All Access Digital Analytics Pass - This pass give you access to all of my 20+ online courses including Become a Digital, Web and Marketing Analytics Program, Implementation Mastery Program and Digital Analytics Blueprint to start and enhance your career.

  2. Agency and Consulting Services - My team and I are ready to help your organization with all your Digital Analytics requirements. We works with leading tools such as GA4, Google Tag Manager, Piwik PRO, BigQuery, Looker Studio, Amplitude, Adobe Analytics to n

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