The GA4 audit checklist you can run by asking

Written by Uptimal, the team that builds and operates Upbuild and runs marketing analytics for multinational clients across the globe. Everything below reflects how the tools actually behave, including the parts the platforms would rather not discuss.

Every inherited GA4 property is a crime scene: events nobody remembers creating, conversions counting twice, channel groupings from a 2023 experiment. The audit that finds it all used to cost a day of Explorations. Phrased as questions against a connected property, the reads take under an hour in Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot Studio or Gemini Enterprise.

Collection and events

One: every event by volume, 30 days, flagged for near-duplicates (add_to_cart next to addToCart is two charts lying separately). Two: events that stopped, month over month, because a dead event is a dead tag (walk that chain in the GTM guide). Three: pages by views with a title-to-URL sanity check for fragments and PII leaking into paths.

Key events and money

Four: every key event, its counting method, and whether purchase-shaped events count "every" (they should) versus lead-shaped ones counting "once per session". Five: revenue integrity, transactions with zero value and duplicates by transaction id. Six: the funnel’s middle, cart-to-checkout-to-purchase ratios against your platform’s norms; a step that leaks 90% is usually measurement, not UX.

Attribution and traffic

Seven: channel split with "unassigned" and "(not set)" percentages, the tattoo of missing UTMs. Eight: the attribution model and lookback actually configured versus what the team believes. Nine: internal traffic and referral exclusions (your own domain in the referral report is the classic).

Quality and plumbing

Ten: thresholding exposure, whether small segments vanish (the mechanics live in the quota guide). Eleven: the Google Ads link, and whether both sides agree on conversions within the expected delta. Twelve: consent rate and its trend, because Consent Mode moved your baselines whether anyone measured it or not.

Make it a ritual, not a project

The audit’s real product is the delta: run the same twelve questions monthly and diff against last month. New event names, a counting method change, unassigned creeping up: each is a one-line finding when caught in 30 days and an archaeology project at 12 months. Saved prompts make the ritual nearly free; the prompt gallery has the phrasings.

Frequently asked questions