Reply To: Updating GA4 Custom Dimensions After Initial 'Config' Call

[Kelsey]

You see, Google introduced a quirky update to GA4 around last August. Without much warning or documentation, they added a mechanism to ignore ‘duplicate’ configuration calls and enabled it by default.

You should be able to address this by following these steps:

1. Go to your GA4 property’s Admin
2. Navigate to Data Streams
3. Select the relevant data stream
4. Go to Configure Tag Settings
5. Find your Google Tag and
6. Click the checkbox next to your stream
7. Turn OFF the option for “Ignore duplicate instances of on-page configuration.”

It seems like gtag.js’ behavior is contingent on your GA4 property’s config. There are other configurations you can adjust too, including cross-domain linking rules.

I’d also like to give a shout out to Angela Grammatas and Todd Bullivant who helped figure this out on Measure Slack 🙂

Just a quick note – it might seem a bit offbeat to use both GTM and gtag() simultaneously. This approach could accumulate technical debt. A more efficient strategy would be to migrate all direct gtag() calls to GTM by activating your dataLayer.