How to exclude referrals on GA4?
Google Analytics 4 shows you the source of traffic and ideally purchases. Those reports don't always work as expected. In this Analyzify help center article; we will show you how you can fix UNWANTED REFERRALS on Google Analytics 4.
Keep in mind that referral exclusion will start working after you make these changes. Unfortunately it doesn't reflect on the past data.
GA4 Referral Problem for Shopify Stores
The problem: You are seeing unnatural referrals on your Google Analytics 4 reports - and it breaks your reports. They are not the actual referrals - but only another website the user has visited in between the session.
The solution: Using Analytics' referral exclusion setting.
The most common unwanted referrals are:
- Payment Providers (PayPal, Stripe, Klarnapayment, etc)
- Your current domains (if you have more than one domain or if you have changed your domain)
- Checkout Processors (Carthook, Recharge, etc)
A Note: Social media referrals shouldn't also be here - especially if you are running ads. However, you DO NOT want to exclude them. They are actual traffic sources. But you want to make a correct UTM set up so that the traffic source is defined correctly such as paid, campaign name, ad name, etc.
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