[David]

In GA4, ‘currency’ does not seem to be provided in the same way as in UA. So, you might need to set it up manually as a custom dimension to track it. The old APIs (Universal Analytics) will continue to function after July 1 but Google will gradually deprecate them, so it’s good you’re moving now. Overall, some tweaking might be required to get all your desired data.

[David]

It sounds like you might be having issues with how sequences are interpreted in your Analytics platform. Your current segment might be looking for sessions where event_one and event_two happen at the same exact time, rather than sequentially during the same session. The solution to your problem lies in using ‘Sequences’ within your segments. This allows you to specify that a user does X, then does Y, all in one session. Instead of using ‘AND’, create a sequence segment wherein first ‘event_one’ should happen, followed by ‘event_two’. This type of segment would provide information on sessions where event_one occurs before event_two, within the same session, which seems to be what you’re after.

[David]

You’re right! It does seem a bit odd. But actually, there might be some reasons why there’s a slight discrepancy. For one, GA4’s pre-made reports aren’t always super reliable. So we often suggest using the Explorer or exporting the data for analysis somewhere else if that’s a possibility for you.

Secondly, you’ll want to double-check you don’t have Google Signals enabled because this alters the thresholding and sampling logic. Also, switching to device-only reporting can help with thresholding issues. Just a side note, once Google Signals is enabled, it seems the thresholding logic can’t be fixed even if you disable them afterwards.

Another thing to consider is Event Properties Cardinality. Despite Google’s claims, GA4 still has a fair share of bugs and less-than-ideal features. The cardinality of your event property values is one example. If it’s too high, sampling starts becoming a bigger issue and a larger percentage of your events comes up as ‘Other(Other)’, and this happens even if you’re not using the high cardinality dimension in your report.

There are also data retention limitations. Unfortunately, GA4 doesn’t provide free access to old data anymore, so if you’re trying to count old events, that may be a problem. UA does let you see old events, but GA4 does not.

These suggestions are quite broad. For a better understanding, you might need to do further problem-solving on your end to find out exactly which datapoints and at what times aren’t getting counted. Exporting data to BigQuery might aid in narrowing things down. Right now, many analysts tend to avoid directly comparing GA4’s data to that of UA – even though knowing the difference can still be useful. But it’s kind of become the norm in the industry today.