GA4 Sessions & Total Users Ingesting Incorrectly

Carolyn_S · October 2023

I am trying to ingest Sessions (Sessions and Engaged Sessions) and Total Users into Domo via the GA 4 Connector.

We can get New Users and Events to ingest into Domo correctly.

I have tried to bring the data in alone (no dimensions) and with additional information (2-9 dimensions). I have also tried each metric separately, again with both no dimensions and multiple dimensions. In addition to those I have tried to bring it in with additional metrics to see the affects (IE Total Users and New Users together). I have also tried both of the above approaches with only 1 day of data to 30 days worth of data.

At all variations of ingestion I have never gotten a correct number. The number ingested by Domo ranges from 6 - 16 times higher than the number displayed in GA. The multiplier is also not consistent (one day will be 10.5 times higher and the next will be 15.8 times higher), so I can't just divide every value by a multiplier.

Has anyone found a solution or work around to get these metrics into Domo accurately?

Thanks in advance.

GrantSmith · October 2023

Due to design decisions by Google the exported data won't align with the exact numbers from the UI. It will show you the same directionality of you data however.

Here's some helpful articles on GA4 and sampling:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9371379?hl=en&ref_topic=13384306&sjid=10940583921799305337-NA#zippy=%2Cin-this-article

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9383630?sjid=13151843709790483666-NA

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13331292?hl=en&ref_topic=13384306&sjid=3026562098964627853-NA

sarahdoesdomo · November 2023

I am having the same issue with one of my properties. The data in the UI for sessions, users and engaged sessions does match the data pull from the GA4 connector. I understand there could be some discrepancies, but this issue is only happening for one of my properties. Not all of them. I find that if I limit the pull to 90 days, the data aligns.

@GrantSmith, have any thoughts on this?

jessdoe · November 2023

Is the discrep possibly due to timezones?

Carolyn_S · February 6

I figured out a workaround to this.

I am bringing in GA4 data in multiple datasets. I figured out that there is a unique key that Google uses to join tables in GA that doesn't come through Domo, without that key numbers get inflated very quickly. There are some metrics that can be brought in together with out issue because they come from the same table, but if you have to cross tables thats where issues come in. I found that the "Categories" in the connector are pretty much the tables, so as long as you don't try to bring in data from multiple categories, its accurate. I found that items in the Time category can be brought in with any other fields without issues.

@sarahdoesdomo I hope this solutions helps.

DataMaven · February 26

Total Users - I have not gotten accurate results for Total Users, no matter how I try.

Sessions and Engagement - I will provide screenshots below of the settings I used. If I recall correctly, these are not necessarily accurate when rolled up to the total, but when filters are applied, they are generally quite close, if not spot-on.

NOTE: You can NOT include Geography dimensions with Session data and get accurate results.