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Here’s How You Can Fix One of the Most Annoying Things About Google Analytics 4
Since its launch a few years back, GA4 has had some ongoing issues with users. One of the most notable being data being allocated to (not set). In this blog post, we’ll break down some of the most common reasons this pops up and how to reduce or eliminate it from your data.
What is (not set)?
If you’re not familiar with what the (not set) is, this is a name that GA4 uses when it hasn’t received info for a dimension. While it might not seem like a big deal, seeing (not set) in your GA4 reports can signal that something isn’t set up correctly, or worse, it can skew your reporting.
Why Does It Show Up in Analytics?
There can be several reasons as to why you are seeing (not set) show up in your analytics reports, including:
- Ads and analytics are not properly linked – When the two accounts are not linked together, GA4 isn’t able to associate ad clicks with campaign data. As a result, you may see (not set) show up. It’s essential to link your Google Ads and GA4 profiles so that you can import data from ads on one platform while also sending information over to boost and better understand your campaign performance. By not linking it, you are at risk of missing out on some data, but also seeing (not set) come through.
- Auto-tagging is not enabled – When you turn off auto-tagging in Google Ads, GA4 can’t receive the necessary tracking parameters to attribute traffic correctly.
- Manually tagged URLs with incomplete or incorrect UTM parameters – If you decide to manually tag destination URLs with UTM parameters instead of using the auto-tagging, (not set) can appear for URLs with incorrect parameters.
- Session source/medium not reported – (not set) will also appear for sessions where the automatically collected event session_start is missing. This can happen if your GA4 configuration tag trigger isn’t set to use the “initialization” trigger type.
- Landing page missing an event – If a landing page doesn’t have the page_view event, (not set) can appear.
- Combining content group dimensions with automatic events – If you see (not set) show up for the content group dimension when looking at events like session_start or first_visit, that is expected. These automatically collected events don’t support the content_group parameter, so GA4 has no value to assign to it, assigning it as(not set).
- Registering a user ID as a custom dimension – If you use a custom defined User ID dimension, (not set) can appear.
- Custom parameters – For an event that has custom parameters, you might notice that (not set) shows up as a parameter value during the first 24 hours after you register it. However, after 24 hours, you should start to see those values.
How You Solve (not set) in Google Analytics
When it comes to fixing (not set) in GA4, it really all comes down to where you are seeing this show up in the reports and dimensions. Some of the solutions include:
- Landing pages – While you can’t get rid of this issue completely, you can minimize the impact to some extent. Extend the default session duration for more than the default, which is 30 minutes. To find this, you’ll go to GA4 > Admin > Data Streams > Select web data stream > Configure tag settings > Show all > Adjust session timeout.
- Source/medium – In this scenario, you might just want to use fewer audience triggers and not log an additional event when the audience refreshes.
- Campaigns – The solution if you are seeing (not set) under session campaigns is to tag the utm_campaign parameter along with the source and medium.
- Google Ads – There could be many reasons you see (not set) in Google Ads; therefore, there might be a few solutions, such as:
- Linking Ads and your GA4 account
- Enabling auto-tagging
- If you have multiple Google Ads accounts, link them all to your GA4 account
- Page title – To solve (not set) showing up, you want to ensure that the page title is being set correctly and the GA4 tag loads after the title is loaded.
- Content group – If you are seeing (not set) show up here, it means that pages don’t have a content group setup and therefore can’t get that information.
- Custom dimensions – The main reason you are seeing (not set) in custom dimensions is that they are not retroactive. If your date range is outside the period that you registered, then it won’t have values to show.
In GA4, there can be many unknowns, and while you may not know how to eliminate every instance of (not set), understanding where it appears and how to reduce it puts you in a better position to create more trusting data, making decisions based on it.
