Thanks for reaching out and also for sharing your Site Health information. I’ve checked your site manually and also by running it through a tagassistant.google.com scan. I can see a Google Analytics 4 tag firing normally and also a Google Tag Manager container snippet, both which seem to be firing fine. I don’t however see your Universal Type Analytics snippet placed via Site Kit. The plugin uses a Universal Type snippet to popular the dashboards (which also placing a Google Analytics 4 property)
So we can determine more on this can you share the below:
- When you mention you “get an error in Analytics about Analytics/Ads data discrepancy” can you share more on this?
- What are you using to determine your Analytics is not firing? (ie. Are you checking the your Analytics real time report.)
- Do you recall any changes made to your site from when you mentioned Analytics stopped recording?
I also noticed in your Site Health information the below:
analytics_use_snippet: yes
This indicates that you have allowed Site Kit to inert your Universal Type analytics snippet. I don’t however see this when checking your sites source code. As you’re using Optimisation and other plugins I’m wondering is there a possible conflict. Once we have the above information we can troubleshoot this further.
Thread Starter
vekman
(@vekman)
Hi James
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. To answer your questions:
1. Here’s the message I have in Analytics dashboard: “The Ad Destination URL https://www.kirsinurmiphotography.com/hinnasto/vauvakuvaus from the AdWords account Google Ads – http://www.kirsinurmiphotography.com:7872334015 has accrued a significant number of clicks but a lower-than-expected number of sessions”
2. I have used the real time report to test, it doesn’t show sessions when I visit the site from different browser or mobile phone (I don’t have any internal traffic filtering in place, so should record traffic from the same browser too). Also, I have seen the acquisition reports, and I don’t see any traffic from Google Ads, although I have had campaigns running and lots of clickthroughs to the site.
3. I don’t recall any significant changes. One incident we did have, when the client did edit some pages and edited them with native WP editor instead of Elementor they are built with — I reverted the changes back. The WP-optimize plugin was only installed after this traffic problem started, to clear the databases. It didn’t perform any optimizations, and I have now removed it.
Yesterday I added the Google Analytics tags (both GA4 and the older) to Tag Manager container. It seems some of the traffic is now recorded, but for Google Ads for example, yesterday Google Ads dashboard shows 10 clicks to site, GA shows 4 visits. Interestingly, in Google Ads, I can see the remarketing campaign had 4 clicks, and the regular keyword-based campaign had 6 clicks — so is it only recording the returning users?
Many thanks for the speedy response.
In relation to the “The Ad Destination URL…” message this isn’t something we’d be equipped to answer here in the Site Kit forums unfortunately. The product experts at the Google AdWords Help team should be able to assist better than we can here.
While I’m unable to assist with Google Ads queries I can however ensure your site is being tracked via Google Analytics, in particular if you’ve placed your snippets via Site Kit. As you’ve since added your Google Analytics tracking via Google Tag Manager and not the Analytics module within Site Kit which you had placed previously, for testing purposes can you temporarily disconnected Google Tag Manager within Site Kit? After going so please revisit your Analytics settings within Site Kit (Site Kit > Settings > Analytics > Edit) and then allow the plugin to insert both your Universal type Analytics property and your Google Analytics 4 property snippet on your site.
Let me know after you do so and I’ll check the snippets on your site. We can then check your Analytics real time report once more.
Thread Starter
vekman
(@vekman)
Hi James
I have done as you suggested: disconnected tag manager, and re-connected Analytics (the GA4 snippet didn’t come available until I did that). Now both universal and ga4 snippets should be inserted.
Thread Starter
vekman
(@vekman)
Hi again
I think I cracked this finally. The problem seemed to be with Site Kit plugin installations, that had been done a while ago, and where I had Tag Manager connected. Even if the Tag Manager container included the GA Universal and GA4 tags, they didn’t fire for some reason.
The solution was to not just reconnect the Google Analytics and Tag Manager inside the Site Kit, but completely reset, delete and re-install the plugin. Then connect the Analytics (after which both tracking snippets were good), and then connect the Tag Manager, which successfully switched the tracking cookie from Analytics module to the Tag Manager module within Site Kit.
I can see this same problem with multiple websites, so I don’t think it’s related to any specific changes I have made (since I haven’t done any bulk changes affecting all these websites). It could be due to some other plugins breaking the Site Kit installation. These are the plugins used on all sites affected: Elementor, Elementor Pro, Neve Pro addon, The SEO Framework. The theme used for every site is Neve.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by
vekman.
Hi @vekman,
Thanks for the update and sharing your findings. Great to hear that the plugin is now working for you.
I’ll also put some time aside to check for any possible issues relating to setup after already adding a GA4 and Universal Tag prior to Site Kit setup. In order for me to reproduce can you confirm whether you had Site Kit setup in advance of adding a GA4 and Universal Type tag within a Tag Manager container?
Hi there,
I’ve performed some testing today and while I wasn’t able to reproduce any non recording of data I did find some potential GA4 related improvements, which require further testing. You’ll find out more below:
https://github.com/google/site-kit-wp/issues/3998
Thanks for sharing your experience. If you happen to have any further queries be sure to get in touch.
Thread Starter
vekman
(@vekman)
Hi @jamesosborne
Great to hear this led to discovery of some potential issues. To answer your queestion about the order of setting up Tag Manager vs Site Kit — I think initially I had Site Kit setup, then Tag Manager.
Thanks for your continuous support and all the best!
