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Inaccurate tracking of PayPal transactions in GA4 using GTM integration
I’m trying to get a handle on some transactions tracking in Google Analytics 4. The website lets customers pay through two methods, either PayPal or credit card. The whole credit card process happens within the site, thanks to an iFrame. With PayPal, it’s a little different as customers need to head over to PayPal’s website, complete the purchase, and then they’re zipped back over to our site. It seems like all the credit card transactions are being picked up by GA4, but PayPal ones are acting a bit shy.
To understand the issue, I’ve used GA4 DebugView to do a bit of detective work, along with the GTM Tag Assistant. It seems like the datalayer for PayPal transactions is behaving as it should, it doesn’t appear to be the culprit. The strange thing is, even when the purchase event goes off successfully and all the datalayer variables are accurate after the customer returns from PayPal, the tag that was supposed to send purchase data back to GA4 decides to sit this one out. I’m wondering if the order of events might be causing this snag. Is it possible that the datalayer fires before the tag could even load, all because the user was taken off the site? At this point, it’s just a guess.
What I’m sure of is, it’s definitely not an issue about referral exclusion. We’re not dealing with data being filtered out of Analytics because it’s not even reaching there in the first place – ruling out the possibility of payment gateway referral exclusions being the cause.
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2 Replies
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It sounds like your site’s credit card transactions and PayPal transactions are treated differently by Google Analytics 4 (GA4). All the credit card transactions are recorded properly but PayPal ones aren’t, even though the data layer seems to be properly setup. You’re guessing it might have to do with the order of events, such as the data layer operating before the Google analytics tag loads in. But right now, you’re just not sure why GA4 isn’t tracking the PayPal transactions correctly.
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In basic terms, your website’s PayPal transactions aren’t being tracked properly in Google Analytics 4 (GA4), though the credit card ones are just fine. Despite the data being correctly passed to GA4 after a PayPal purchase, the tag that’s supposed to tell GA4 about it isn’t triggering. You’ve ruled out the common issue of referral exclusion so it’s a bit of a mystery, but you’re considering if the problem might be the sequence of events, like the data being ready before the tag can handle it due to users leaving your site to pay through PayPal.
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