How to ensure your links are properly tagged

By July 1, 2023, Common Analytics, the older model of Google Analytics, will cease to collect data. To get forward, entrepreneurs ought to be effectively on the best way to migrating to the popular model, Google Analytics 4.

After finishing quite a few UA to GA4 migrations, one concern that seems in nearly all cases pertains to categorizing present advertising and marketing hyperlinks into Google’s newly outlined channels.

Outdated on-line advertising and marketing hyperlinks with UTM parameters are now not being categorized the identical manner. However why? 

On this article, we’ll talk about the widespread causes for miscategorization in GA4 and ideas to ensure your advertising and marketing marketing campaign hyperlinks are correctly tagged and tracked.

Miscategorized hyperlinks in GA4: Frequent causes

Whereas there are a number of causes for miscategorization, typically it’s triggered through the use of a “customized channel” that GA4 now not helps. Different occasions, it is because of invalid values entered into the advertising and marketing hyperlink’s supply or medium UTM parameters.

Whereas GA4 hasn’t modified or added new UTM parameters, they’ve change into stricter in regards to the values they settle for. Failure to fulfill these particular settings will trigger visitors generated out of your advertising and marketing efforts to be categorized as “Unassigned.”

Formatting marketing campaign URLs: What entrepreneurs must know

To know the issue and the answer, let’s assessment the correct format (as per Google’s necessities) for a advertising and marketing/marketing campaign hyperlink.

The URL format have to be (in all lowercase): 

https://www.ourcompanysite.com/?utm_source=supply&utm_medium=medium&utm_campaign=campaing_name&utm_id=optional_campaign_id&utm_term=optioanl_term&utm_content=optional_content

Within the above instance, optionally available parameters are indicated.

When the values of the required utm_source or utm_medium parameters don’t match particular values, the visitors is recorded within the “Unassigned” channel.  

To view the values assigned to that visitors inside GA4 merely add the second dimension “supply / medium” to your channel report.

Coping with ‘unassigned’ visitors

Within the report under, somebody on the advertising and marketing workforce outlined the medium as a “publish,” which isn’t considered one of Google’s outlined values for utm_medium and therefore the visitors is categorized as “Unassigned.”

Under are examples of the place somebody on the advertising and marketing workforce, simply needed to outline the supply however not the medium for varied advertising and marketing efforts or incorrectly assigned an invalid medium.

Chances are you’ll discover that Google discourages utilizing areas within the parameter values and even hyphens (“-“) instead. As an alternative, an underscore “_” is the popular substitute. 

Whereas failing to observe these new suggestions gained’t affect GA4 reviews immediately, with the fixed modifications happening, it might sooner or later. 

The brand new format will change into extra important when your group begins utilizing Google’s BigQuery knowledge warehouse to retailer your analytics knowledge past the 14-month most on-line availability — an inevitable enterprise.

Defining supply and medium parameters

The 2 parameters that GA4 focuses on to categorize visitors accurately are:

• utm_source: The visitors referrer (i.e., google, newsletter4, billboard).
• utm_medium: The advertising and marketing medium (i.e., cpc, banner, e-mail).

So, if you happen to set the utm_source to equal “My E mail Checklist” and the utm_medium to equal “EMail,” GA4 could categorize it as “Unassigned” as a substitute of “EMail.”

In case you’re scratching your head about this, right here’s the explanation. 

In keeping with GA4 documentation, the next standards have to be met for the visitors to be thought of from the e-mail channel:

• Supply (utm_source) = e-mail|e-mail|e_mail|e mail
• Medium (utm_medium) = e-mail|e-mail|e_mail|e mail

For these not acquainted with common expressions (or regex), let’s break this down.

• Observe there aren’t any capitalizations allowed.
• Both the utm_source or utm_medium should include one of many values offered the place the “|” signifies “or.”

Within the instance offered, whereas the utm_medium accommodates “EMail,” having each an uppercase “E” and “M” means it doesn’t equal “e-mail” as per the GA4 specification. (Whereas Google could convert all parameters to lowercase, you cannot depend on them to repair your errors 100% of the time.) 

Having the identify of an e-mail listing as the worth for the utm_source parameter remains to be permissible, offered that the utm_medium equals “e-mail.” (This isn’t perfect, although. The e-mail listing identify is best assigned to one of many optionally available parameters or, at a minimal, made all lowercase with the areas eliminated.)

Additionally, whereas within the instance of acceptable values from Google, it’s permissible to make use of “e mail” (with an area), it’s not advisable and ought to be prevented.

Comparable specs can be found for all 19 GA4 channels. A whole listing of every channel and the suitable values can be found here.

Take note of paid channels

Whereas we don’t have to fret in regards to the non-advertising channels (i.e., natural search, natural social, direct, referral, and so on.), we have to consider all the opposite ones. 

Paid channels require particular consideration. The brand new ones embody: 

• Paid Social.
• Paid Purchasing.
• Cross-network. 

All paid channels with “Visitors is Google Adverts” within the necessities suggest that the utm_medium worth is both set to “cpc”, “ppc” or “paid.” 

The worth of the utm_source should match the positioning worth that Google has decided as a search/social/video web site vs. one thing else primarily based on Google’s outlined listing. 

(Right here is an Excel spreadsheet you can download with the entire listing of the utm_source values Google makes use of and the way they’re categorized.)

For instance, in case your URL has utm_source=blogger and utm_medium=cpc, it would seem as “Paid Social” in GA4. 

If another worth is used for utm_medium past “cpc”, “ppc” or “paid” it would seem as merely “Natural Social.”

The spreadsheet from Google is continually being up to date, so you should definitely obtain the most recent earlier than assuming how any new promoting associate will probably be categorized.

What occurs to ‘unassigned’ marketing campaign knowledge?

Whereas we have to be proactive in aligning all our advertising and marketing hyperlinks to the brand new Google Analytics necessities, what might be executed with the info that has already been captured and reported as “Unassigned” or maybe it was a customized channel you outlined for Common Analytics?

This may be addressed when knowledge is extracted from GA4 or BigQuery by way of Google’s Looker Studio (previously Information Studio) or another enterprise intelligence software. 

Inside these, you possibly can outline your individual logic the place utm_source and utm_medium equal the values you outlined in your UA customized channel and assign it to its personal channel. (Therefore, a customized channel.) 

Dig deeper: MarTech’s in-depth GA4 coverage

Adapting to GA4’s marketing campaign monitoring requirements

Common Analytics and Google Analytics 4 differ in some ways. There are technical causes behind these variations, all with good intent.

Completely different isn’t all the time an excellent factor for entrepreneurs who’re used to the standard strategy of monitoring advertising and marketing campaigns. However one factor we will simply tackle is how our on-line advertising and marketing efforts are tagged to make sure they get categorised into our most well-liked channels. 

Addressing this earlier than your migration from UA to GA4 will assist reduce the headache of the transition and the efforts required to repair them after you might have made the inevitable transfer.