How to tell GA4 is broken
The red flag: conversion count drops to zero or near-zero for more than 48 hours while traffic stays normal. Real conversion drops show up alongside traffic drops; GA4 breakage shows up as decoupled.
The five-minute check
- Open GA4 → Reports → Realtime
- Trigger your primary conversion yourself (submit a form, click a tel link)
- Watch Realtime for the event within 60 seconds
If the event does not appear, GA4 is the problem, not your funnel.
The seven likely causes
- Tag fired but conversion mark removed — Admin → Events → flip 'Mark as conversion' back on
- Tag did not fire — GTM container changed; check GTM preview mode
- Consent mode blocking — cookie banner changed and now defaults to denied
- Property reset — someone restored an older config that lost custom events
- Filter excluded your test traffic incorrectly — IP-based filter is hiding real traffic
- Data layer removed — site update broke the variables the tag depends on
- Cross-domain tracking broken — domain list changed and now sees same-user as two sessions
For most Houston small businesses we audit, the cause is #1, #2, or #4. Quick fix, big relief.
How to prevent recurrence
- Tag-firing monitor (we use Tealium iQ or a simple Pingdom-style check on the GTM endpoint)
- Weekly Realtime spot-check on the three most important conversions
- Documented data layer that any dev touching the site can validate against
What BayouEdge does
We run the diagnostic in under an hour, fix the cause, and add monitoring so it does not happen silently again.
What to do next
Call James at 832-338-2926. If your conversion count looks suspiciously low this week, the five-minute check above will tell you whether it is real or whether GA4 is broken.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How often should I spot-check GA4?
- Weekly Realtime check on your top three conversions. Five minutes. Catches 80% of breakage before it costs you a month of data.
- Can I rebuild lost conversion data?
- No. GA4 does not backfill. Once an event was not recorded, it is gone. The only fix is faster detection next time.
- Does call tracking help here?
- Yes. Call tracking is a second source of truth. When GA4 and call tracking disagree, GA4 is usually the broken one.
- Should we move to a non-Google analytics platform?
- Usually no. GA4 has problems but it is free and the market standard. Better answer: keep GA4 + add call tracking + add weekly monitoring.