How can I validate my Google Analytics 4 data?

Introduction

By following this guide, users will be able to validate that GA4 is receiving the correct data.

When setting up tags within Google Tag Manager, we will need to test that GA4 is receiving the correct data. This means confirming that the data received in GA4 matches the data that we expect to be received. 

There are a variety of tools that one can use to validate tags which include a range of platform-specific tools, and also Google Chrome Extensions. For this document, we shall focus on the platform-specific tools. However, a list of Google Chrome Extensions has been provided in the Appendix of this document. 

A very detailed review of the GA4 DebugView can be found in this A Guide to DebugView in Google Analytics 4 article.

Time Required

1 hour

Tools and Equipment Required

• Internet access
• Google Analytics account

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On this page:

  Validating data received using DebugView

  Appendix

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Validating data received using DebugView

• If you haven’t checked whether the Google Tag Manager tags for GA4 are working correctly, follow How can I validate Google Tag Manager tags? first to confirm that they are indeed working well. 
• Go to your Google Analytics 4 property.
• At the bottom left of the screen, click on the cog wheel icon / Admin.
• In the middle panel of options under Property scroll down, and locate DebugView.
• Click on DebugView.
• Leave the current tab with DebugView open, open a new tab on your browser, and go to your Google Tag Manager (GTM) container.
• At the top right of the GTM container, click on Preview.
  • Note, that if you do not see Preview as an option, you likely do not have sufficient permissions to the GTM container. 
  • Please ask the owner to provide you with additional access to continue these instructions. 
• A new tab will open up with a pop-up window within it that prompts the user to enter the URL you want to check your GTM container contents.
• Enter https://booking.zerolatencyvr.com/book-now.
• Click Start.
• A new tab will open up showing the webpage of the booking portal.
• Select the location of the venue’s GTM container you would like to debug. 
• Recreate some of the booking process, until you've added a product to cart. This is to help test some data. Alternatively, if you are testing for a specific event, such as a purchase, carry out that action from within the tab that opened up. 
• Go back to your Google Analytics 4 tab on your browser. 
• When the page is loaded again, give it a few seconds, and you should see a list of events in the middle of your screen shown as a timeline as shown below.

• To view the data being sent to GA4 for a specific event, click on the event name. 
  1. In this example, we shall look at select_venue.
• This will open up another panel, with a list of parameters sent with that event. Parameters are the additional pieces of information sent with the event similar to what can be observed below.

• To view the value of a parameter, click on the parameter name. This will open up a section just below that will display the value for that parameter. 
  • Below is an example of how it looked like after clicking on venue_country.

• If you are reviewing e-commerce activity, an additional tab may appear titled Items at the top next to parameters. You may click on it, and then click on an individual item to see the item-level data such as can be seen below.

• Check any relevant and applicable parameters for the event to validate that the implementation is correct.

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Appendix

• Google Analytics Debugger
  • This extension writes all events being sent to Google-owned properties (GA4, Google Ads, other gtag implementations) within the web browser console. 
  • This can be left enabled, so it's it's right by your side, whenever you need it.
• GTM/GA Debugger
  • This tool can be used for GTM/GA4. It isn't perfect, but offers a cleaner user interface, which is especially useful for e-commerce events.

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Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4
GA 4
GA4
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