-
So, this is a bit of an interesting puzzle you’ve got on your hands. Your issue is with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) where events keep repeating themselves a bit like a flashy disco light. I know, not exactly the greatest party, right? This happens for both automatic and custom events. Adding to the mix is the strange behaviour of these duplicates randomly disappearing and reappearing every time you reload the page.
Now, in theory, all should be working since your setup is pretty standard – Google Ads and Google Search Console both link directly to GA4, and every duplicate event even has the same parameters. But there’s always that one troublemaker in the bunch causing chaos, isn’t there?
You’ve tried all the right things – checking for multiple GA4 and GTM codes on the website, installing Google Analytics 4 directly onto the website, running it with and without filters, switching on (or off) “Collect Universal Analytics events” in GA4, and even attempting GTM installations through a Plugin and hard coding it into the header.php file. But no luck so far.
I’d definitely recommend taking a more technical approach to this problem. Start with the front-end tracking debugging and take the GA4 Debugger with a pinch of salt. It’s a rough product and well, a bit buggy to be honest. Instead, you may want to use the Network tab to see what’s being sent out with each page load and observe if any repeated events occur.
If you spot double events, it essentially points to a problem within GTM. You could disable it, reload the page and see if double tracking persists. If it does, you may have another culprit – possibly gtag.js doing some shadow tracking in parallel.
In short, figuring out duplicate event firing for your Google Analytics 4 is really a systematic process of elimination. The issue may not be as complicated as it seems but it does require some technical know-how. Hang in there and you’ll soon have it sorted.
