Why are Signup Events Being Underreported in Google Analytics?
If you find that the number of Signup events being reported in Google Analytics is less than the number of Signups shown in your Prefinery account, first run through this brief checklist:
- Is your Google Analytics tracker correctly installed? Follow these setup instructions.
- Do you have any Filters applied to your Google Analytics reports? Filters may remove some of the data from your Analytics reports.
- Is the timezone setting the same in both Google Analytics and Prefinery?
- Is your browser blocking analytics trackers? See below for a list of common ways in which browsers block analytics trackers.
In practice, we have commonly seen the Signups reported in Google Analytics to be around 25-30% less than the actual number of people who have signed up for your campaign, as reported in Prefinery. Some common reasons for the data being underreported in Google Analytics are:
- The person is using a browser extension which blocks traffic to Google Analytics, such as an ad blocker,
- The person is using a browser which blocks traffic to Google Analytics, such as Brave,
- The person has enabled an analytics blocking feature in their browser, such as the Prevent cross-site tracking feature in Safari 14,
- The person signs up and then closes their browser window before the event can be reported to Google Analytics,
- The person is using a firewall (or behind a network where a firewall is deployed) which blocks traffic to Google Analytics.
- Prefinery uses a cookie to prevent multiple page views and events from being recorded by the same person.