Google Analytics Audit Test #

41

Cleaned page paths / allow-list of query parameters

Why It Matters:

Critical to ensuring that your data is usable for analysis and understanding visitors behavior on your site.

Industries:

All

Checks For:

Utility

How powerful is your current implementation?

Insight Category:

Behavior

Can you tell what visitors are doing?

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Background

A GA4 audit is essential for uncovering missing insights—key data points that organizations don't yet know and can act upon. A well-done audit evaluates both behavioral tracking and traffic attribution, ensuring each is accurate and useful. It also assesses whether the data collected truly supports business decisions and reporting.

Test Detail

This test checks whether your GA4 setup uses an allow-list (whitelist) approach to query parameters, meaning only approved, meaningful parameters are retained in URLs tracked by GA4. If no filtering is in place, you may be capturing excessive or irrelevant parameters such as:

  • Session tokens (sid, sessid)
  • Tracking noise (fbclid, gclid, msclkid — outside of landing pages)
  • Personal identifiers (PII risk)
  • Dynamic promo codes or referral strings

Left unchecked, this creates:

  • High cardinality in GA4 reports
  • Duplicate page paths
  • Sampling issues
  • Messy and bloated data exports

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How to Conduct This Test

Basic Tests

  • In GA4 > Reports > Engagement > Pages and Screens, view Page path + query string
    • Look for long, varied URLs with many versions of the same page (e.g., /product?promo=, /product?ref=, /product?sid=)
  • In Explore, count distinct page paths and assess how many are caused by changing parameters

Advanced QA

In BigQuery, run the following query:

    SELECT page_path, COUNT(*) AS count
    FROM `your_dataset.events_*`
    GROUP BY page_path
    ORDER BY count DESC
  • Identify common parameters contributing to data noise

Automated, Free Audit

Want help spotting noisy parameters fast? Run our Instant Audit

Or hire a pro to implement URL hygiene and filtering.

How To Fix

  • Go to GA4 > Admin > Data Settings > List unwanted query parameters
  • Add all irrelevant or dynamic parameters to this list (e.g., ref, promo, session, utm_content)
  • Use a consistent, documented allow-list of query parameters based on business value:
    • Keep: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, search, etc.
    • Strip: any marketing noise, session IDs, dynamic values not needed for reporting
  • In GTM or server-side tagging, normalize URLs and strip query parameters before sending them to GA4
  • Implement canonical URL rules on-site to prevent duplicate indexing and tracking
  • Hire a pro to audit your URL structure and implement a clean, scalable page path strategy in GA4.

Tips from a Google Analytics Consultant

Focus on Insights

Every Google Analytics audit should result in a plan for more insights.

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An insight is:

  • something you don't know
  • and can act on to improve performance

The Goal

Identify and remove insight blockers. Don't get tempted to track things you can't act on!

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