[Layla]

Based on your situation, merging to ‘the beast’ seems like a practical choice. You could definitely streamline your operations instead of double-tagging and managing multiple standalones. However, it’d mean you’d need to invest time in training your teams on GA4 and possibly to manage permissions if there’s a way. You’ll need an expert view to guide your decision though!

[Layla]

This discrepancy may be due to sessions that are counted in multiple channels. For example, during a single session, a user might arrive via organic search, then return direct within a short time period. In Google Analytics this can be considered as one session, but two channel interactions. Therefore, when you add up the channels individually, it could exceed the total number of sessions.

If you’re using the Multi-Channel Funnels reports in Google Analytics, they would attribute a single session to different channels which might lead to a higher session count when you add up channels manually.

In essence, the difference doesn’t imply an error in counting, but rather it’s a reflection of how Google Analytics attributes sessions to different channels. To get an accurate representation, it’s more beneficial to analyze the performance of each channel on its own, rather than try to combine them for a total. Understanding each channel’s contribution can give you a better impression of which are successfully driving users to your website.

[Layla]

Google Analytics doesn’t provide a way to identify individual users. Google’s policy prohibits sending personally identifiable information to Google Analytics. However, you can track individual user behavior in aggregate using the User-ID feature. This feature assigns a unique ID to each user when they sign in to your site, allowing you to track user engagement and sessions. However, it doesn’t allow you to track personal information like the user’s location or device.