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Google Analytics 4 – Refunding Transactions and Internal Traffic
So, here’s the deal: I’ve managed to implement all the GA4 events, including those related to refunds. However, I’ve hit a snag. In our company, we’ve excluded traffic from internal IPs, and the admin page sits on one of these. I’m a bit stuck on how to get around this.
On a different note, I’m using gtag and I want to make it clear to GA4 that refunds are permissible. I had the idea to send something like “internal_traffic=false” to overwrite the preset value in the GA settings. But I just can’t figure out how to do this. Can you lend a hand?
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2 Replies
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While excluding internal traffic is good for analytical purposes, it indeed poses a challenge when there’s a need to track certain internal events, such as the ones pertaining to refunds. Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward way to override this setting directly via the gtag. My recommendation would be to have a separate property or view in Google Analytics for the admin section of the website. This way, you can easily track events related to refunds without changing the criteria for filtering out internal traffic.
Regarding your second query about communicating that refunds are permissible to GA4, Google Analytics doesn’t inherently know or care what “refunds” are. Instead, it relies on the events you send to it. If you trigger an event every time a refund is issued and send it to GA4, Google Analytics will log that event. It’s always about sending relevant event data and then you can create reports based on that data within the GA4 interface.
However, do remember that any changes in the tracked events could impact your existing reports and data interpretations, and such implications should be well thought out.
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When you exclude internal IPs, all the traffic that originates from these IPs will not be tracked by Google Analytics. As your admin page sits on one of these excluded internal IPs, you won’t be able to track events that happen there. You can get around this by creating a separate property for internal traffic on Google Analytics, or you could also temporarily remove the IPs from the exclusion list when you need to test the events.
Regarding the issue of making refunds clear to GA4, you cannot modify the internal preset values directly in Google Analytics. However, you can send the data related to refunds by using specific event parameters. Google Analytics allows tracking of several ecommerce-related events out of the box. You can use the ‘refund’ event when a refund is processed. You can also include ‘items’ (which takes an array of item objects) to provide more details if needed. This should give you a better understanding of how refunds are affecting your business while using Google Analytics 4. Always review the GA4 documentation for accurate and up-to-date information.
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