4 GA4 Checks You Should Run This Week

Every week, I share a few GA4 audit checks that can help you improve data quality and avoid reporting surprises.

This week on the GA Auditor LinkedIn Page, I shared four GA4 configuration checks that I frequently encounter during audits. They are easy to overlook, but they can significantly impact the quality of your data and the decisions made from it.

1. Check Your Data Retention Settings

Many GA4 users assume data retention affects all reports. It doesn't.

Data retention primarily impacts Explorations, Funnel Analysis, Path Analysis, and other user-level reporting capabilities.

A common mistake is discovering that important historical data is no longer available when an analyst needs it.

What to check:

• Is retention set to 2 months or 14 months?

• Do your analysts rely on Explorations?

• Is BigQuery export enabled for long-term storage?

Remember: once user-level data is deleted due to retention settings, it cannot be recovered.

2. Verify Your Consent Mode Implementation

Consent Mode is no longer just a privacy topic.

A misconfigured implementation can affect:

• Users

• Sessions

• Conversions

• Attribution

• Audiences

• Google Ads optimization

One of the biggest mistakes I see is assuming that a consent banner automatically means Consent Mode is working correctly.

What to check:

• Are consent states updating after a visitor makes a choice?

• Is Consent Mode V2 implemented if required?

• Are GTM and your CMP configured correctly?

• Have you tested both accepted and denied consent scenarios?

3. Review Self-Referrals

If your own domain appears as a referral source in GA4, something is probably wrong.

Self-referrals often indicate issues with:

• Cross-domain tracking

• Payment gateways

• Booking engines

• Third-party applications

• Redirects

The result can be broken attribution, inflated referral traffic, and fragmented user journeys.

Quick check:
Navigate to your Traffic Acquisition reports and look for your own domain appearing as a referral source.

4. Confirm Your Google Ads Link

A properly configured GA4 property can still lead to poor marketing decisions if Google Ads isn't connected correctly.

Without proper linking:

• Conversions may not import into Google Ads

• Audiences may not sync

• Attribution may be incomplete

• Campaign optimization may suffer

What to check:

• Is Google Ads linked to the correct GA4 property?

• Is auto-tagging enabled?

• Are key events imported as conversions?

• Are audiences sharing successfully?

These four checks are only a small subset of the 150+ checks included in the GA4 Audit Checklist.

I've included a visual summary below. You can also read the detailed article here:

https://www.gaauditor.com/blog/ga4-audit-configuration-checks/

If you'd like a more comprehensive review, download the free GA4 Audit Checklist, which covers configuration, attribution, ecommerce, consent, reporting, and data quality.

Download Checklist

Thank you,
Anil Batra
Optizent