Reporting is about whether GA4 is organised to answer the questions you actually get asked. Clean data, correctly counted, can still produce misleading channel reports if paid campaigns aren't tagged, or unintelligible page reports if every URL is listed individually.
Chapter 5 of 6 · GA4
Layer 4: Reporting Audit
Check whether your channel groupings, UTM consistency, and content groups produce reports that answer real questions. Chapter 5 of the GA4 Best Practice guide.
2 min read
↳ In this account the culprit was the email platform: the spring_sale template shipped links with utm_source but no utm_medium, so GA4 could not map them to a channel.
Unassigned above ~5% almost always means tagging gaps, not mystery traffic. Fix the links; the channel does not backfill.
| Check | What to look for | Pass condition | Fix if failing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unassigned traffic | What percentage of sessions land in the "Unassigned" channel? | Under 5% of total sessions | Add UTM parameters to paid campaigns missing them; check for sources using unusual medium values |
| Brand vs non-brand split | Is branded organic search separated from non-brand? | A custom channel group or report filter exists to isolate brand-name queries | Create a custom channel group in GA4 with a brand keyword rule, or use Search Console to separate query types |
| UTM consistency | Are source and medium values consistent across campaigns? (google vs Google, cpc vs paid-search) | Each channel has one consistent source/medium pair; no variants | Enforce a UTM naming convention; run an audit of the Source / Medium report to find variants |
| Content grouping | Are page paths grouped into meaningful sections (Blog, Pricing, Product, Checkout)? | Content groups configured; reports show section-level data not just raw URLs | Set up content grouping via GTM or in-page parameter; register as a custom dimension |
| Sampling and thresholds | Are Exploration reports showing a sampling indicator? | No sampling on the reports you rely on for decisions | Narrow date ranges; use standard reports (not Explorations) for high-level numbers; consider GA4 360 if sampling is persistent |
Paid Search
mediumexactly matchescpc
Brand Organic
medium=organicANDsourcecontainsacme
Rules are evaluated top to bottom and a session lands in the first rule it matches, so put the most specific rules first.
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