There is no such thing as a sight extra irritating in GA4 than to take a look at a report and see half of your classes have been attributed to “(not set)”. When Google has no knowledge for a dimension it merely returns the “(not set)” worth. However what meaning in your web site can range by context, and fixing it’s not at all times trivial.
Basically, there are two principal locations you’ll see “(not set)” values seem in your reviews,
- Acquisition Stories (i.e. Session Supply / Medium or First Person Supply / Medium)
- Touchdown Web page Stories
However they will pop up in all types of reviews, all with barely totally different causes and options.
(not set) supply / medium in GA4 report
This happens when GA4 has no knowledge about how a Session began. That is subtly, however critically totally different from Direct site visitors. Direct site visitors happens when GA4 detects a standard session beginning however doesn’t know the place it got here from and in any other case acts usually. One of the best ways to consider the variations is that Direct site visitors is the “All the things Else” bucket and that “(not set)” classes are errors of some type.
What particularly causes the error is at any time when the robotically generated session_start occasion isn’t recorded. When this occurs Google begins to file occasions and must tie them to some sort of session. However all the small print for a way that session arrived are usually saved on that session_start occasion and due to this fact it simply has to make use of “(not set)” because the placeholder.
Causes of lacking session_start occasions
- Session timeouts
- If a consumer’s session instances out, generally a brand new session can start and not using a correct session_start occasion.
- This may be mitigated through the use of the utmost session timeout allowed by GA4 (7hrs 55 minutes)
- Customers leaving the web site earlier than the session_start occasion is distributed to GA4
- If for instance, if a consumer clicks in your web site by chance and quickly leaves it they may set off page_view occasions, however the session_start one is typically delayed and so may not hearth earlier than they exit.
- A key indicator of this kind of behaviour is if in case you have a lot greater clicks recorded in your Advert Platform than you see classes in GA4
- Advert blockers and privateness extensions
- These can typically intervene with the conventional operation of Google Analytics knowledge processing.
- Not a lot may be achieved about this set off, however it’s often a comparatively small proportion of customers
- Incorrect GA4 configuration, community points & JS error
- Generally, issues will simply break in your web site and GA4 gained’t work the best way it’s imagined to.
- Pay shut consideration to the console and search for any console errors, duplicate occasions or simply plain weirdness popping up.
(not set) touchdown web page in GA4 report
This, like with Supply / Mediums, happens when GA4 has no knowledge on what touchdown web page a session began on. This will happen once more when the session_start occasion is lacking as above. Nevertheless, the extra frequent trigger for this error to look within the touchdown web page report is for there to be no page_view related to the session in any respect.
Widespread causes of page_view-less classes are unusually triggered occasions. For instance, if in case you have an occasion firing from somebody studying an e mail affirmation, then which may not get related to the unique internet session. This may due to this fact be a session with no page_views and a (not set) touchdown web page.
One of the best ways to minimise the presence of (not set) in your LP report is to carefully examine these classes and see what occasions are being triggered in these classes that supposedly haven’t any pageviews. As soon as you understand which occasions are triggering these classes, you may take a look at their triggers and see what is likely to be inflicting them.
Lastly, a neat trick in case you’re being plagued with (not set) is to extend the session timeout period from half-hour to a most of 7hrs 55 minutes. This will make sure that unfastened occasions that fireside late don’t get missed out from the primary internet session.
(not set) in different GA4 reviews
In many of the different reviews (not set) is fairly self-explanatory. They’re merely conditions the place no knowledge was acquired for that dimension for comparatively apparent causes:
- Session Google Advertisements Marketing campaign – For non-paid site visitors or if the Advertisements account isn’t linked to GA4
- Nation – This report depends on ip addresses. If the IP deal with is blocked because of e.g. VPNs it will seem beneath (not set)
- Merchandise Identify – If no Merchandise Identify knowledge was despatched with the ecommerce knowledge then it’s going to seem as (not set)
(not set) in GA4 is merely the absence of knowledge for a dimension. In most reviews, that is no downside, it’s to be anticipated that not everybody helps you to geolocate their ip deal with. Nevertheless in sure instances it’s indicative of errors in your monitoring and you must try to minimise these errors as a lot as you may. You’ll by no means have the ability to get rid of them fully, however decreasing their affect in your reviews is a worthy objective. Lastly, one different method that may assist, is to filter out these rows out of your reviews both utilizing Discover reviews or the in-built Library performance. With a filtered report you may ensure you’re making your selections on solely the correct knowledge with out the errors polluting your judgement.