How to resolve unassigned traffic in GA4

Unjustified traffic in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Merchants can let their heads scratch and wondered where these visits come from. Here is why this happens and how you can solve it to get clearer information about your site’s performance.

What is the unjustified traffic in GA4?

United operation in GA4 concerns visits to websites that cannot be divided into any of the predefined Google channel groups.

These channel groups are designed to organize traffic sources based on shared features such as the origin or medium of operation. Examples of default channel groups include:

• Associated entities.
• Sound.
• Cross-Síť.
• Drive.
• Display.
• E-mail.
• Mobile notifications push.
• Organic search.
• Organic shopping.
• Organic social.
• Organic video.
• Another one.
• Pay search.
• Paid shopping.
• Paid social.
• Payed video.
• Recommendation.
• SMS.

Google uses specific channel rules to a group of traffic sources with similar characteristics. For example:

• Resources of operation as Google / Organic, DUCKDUCKGO / ORGANIC and Bing / Organic Share the medium “organic” and are grouped under the Organic Search channel.
• Resources like Google / CPC and Bing / cpc Share the “CPC” media and place them in a paid search channel.

These rules allow logically a grouping of similar sources of operation, which makes it easier to evaluate the performance and understanding of the assignment.

These resources often include:

• A vice -defined origin.
• Unspecified media as (not set up).
• Or unique attributes.

As a result, they cannot be categorized in the default channel groups; GA4 marks them as unjustified operation. To better understand and analyze these resources of traffic, we need to create our own channel grouping or manually check the data. However, this relies on understanding your resources of traffic, cooperation and flexible access to the management of channel groups.

You deeper: Channel Groups: We start with Google Analytics 4

Direct operation vs. unjustified

The common assumption is that direct operation and unjustified operation are the same. Although this is not the case, sometimes direct operation can be monitored under unjustified randomly, if and when GA4 cannot successfully categorize the source due to incomplete or missing information.

They have a key resolution in GA4, which means they are monitored separately, but both can be “resolved” using UTM parameters.

Identification of undetected traffic in GA4

Navigation can be found on navigation Acquisitions> Acquisitions of operation. Set the filter to “a group of primary session channels (the default channel group)”.

Repair of unjustified traffic in GA4

If you are worried about unjustified operation or want to maximize the clarity of your data, you can work on its reduction as much as possible. I say “as much” as possible, because this cannot be completely excluded because of many influential variables that are outside our control.

Ensure the correct brand coverage

If web pages lack correct marking, such as missing GA4 tracking code or incorrect implementation, GA4 cannot accurately attribute traffic sources.

If you see the “container quality notification: needs attention” in Google Tag Manager (GTM), follow the following steps:

• Click the “Show 1 number” link (or similar) to open the container diagnostic window.
• Check the message about the non -responded pages and click “See a non -toagenated pages” for a detailed list.
• Use a Summary Message on Brand Coverage that contains cards as:
  • Included pages.
  • Not marked.
  • No recent activity.
  • Tagged.

The report of the brand coverage has certain restrictions. To identify the tracking code on the page, as such as such an audit of your brands using a third-party tool, such as a web scraper or crawling tool.

The message is also susceptible to false positives and false negatives and can propose the designation of irrelevant aspects.

Address slowly disturbing marks

You should focus on your GA4 configuration marks as soon as possible with each page load. The best practice is to leave it fire immediately after full charge and in front of any other brands.

How to do this will vary depending on your magazine and how many brands you have, but in general you should focus on:

• Improve the overall speed of the page load, especially on mobile devices.
• If implemented via GTM, insert the GA4 or GTM container marks above to section.
• Set the GA4 configuration brand to start all pages and fire in front of other GA4 events.
• If you are implemented via GTM, reduce the size of the GTM container by removing unnecessary marks, triggers and variables. If possible, use built -in variables.
• Consider using the server marking to further accelerate the process.

Implement UTM parameters

UTM parameters are a great solution to an unjustified problem, especially if your united is incorrectly categorizing the operation from paid social and paid search campaigns.

Before creating any parameters, you must create a defined naming congress process for your campaigns. This prevents any erroneous or repeated use of parameters, which can lead to poor data from which performance can be assessed.

Development of conventions naming UTM

Google has clear instructions About how it classifies and creates its default channel definitions (which are not edited). UTMS should use:

• Lowercase letters.
• Clear separators such as dashes or underline.
• Descriptive names that identify the source, medium, campaign, term and content.

You are weeping these UTM to obtain the visibility of this traffic on the GA4 instrument panel and to announce it later. Make sure your team follows this structure for reliable data analysis.

• Consistency: Maintain uniformity when named conventions in all campaigns using lowercase letters and the same separators to avoid inconsistencies in the analysis.
• Descriptive values: Clearly indicate a source of operation (eg “Facebook”, “newsletter”) and details of the campaign (eg “Summer-Sale”, “Launch Products”) in UTM parameters.
• Different parameters: Assign specific values ​​for “source”, “medium”, “campaign”, “term” and “content” to the data segment exactly in GA4.

You deeper: 5 GA4 problems and why are a good thing

Should I take care of unjustified traffic?

Unbalanced traffic can cause concern and choose questions from single parties and higher stakeholders about what it is and how to “solve” it. As I mentioned, it is not entirely possible to eliminate it completely.

The first step is to understand if you should worry about the levels of unjustified traffic you have.

I turned to my colleagues SEO professionals at Slack Groups to find out what percentage of operations they see at Google Analytics Key has charged websites with considerable operation over the last 90 days.

Of the 55 websites analyzed, the average percentage of unjustified operation was 4.08%, with 17.37%high and a low 0.38%.

Unbalanced traffic is a problem when it represents a significant part of the overall operation. This is in relation to how much traffic you receive and overall users’ activities. From my experience, it should increase the flag on the business website if the unaccounted operation:

• It ranks among the 5 best starting groups of channels in terms of sessions.
• It is more than 20% of your total operation on the website.