Google Analytics Audit Test #

38

Campaign Ids Are Set for All CPC

Why It Matters:

Critical to understanding where your traffic is coming from and associating it with costs to perform ROAS/ROI analyses.

Industries:

All

Checks For:

Accuracy

How accurate is your recent data?

Insight Category:

Attribution

Can you tell which marketing efforts are working?

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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 all CPC (cost-per-click) traffic includes a campaign ID—either as part of UTM parameters (utm_id) or automatically via ad platform tracking (e.g., gclid from Google Ads or fbclid from Facebook Ads).

Campaign IDs are essential for joining GA4 data with ad platform cost and performance data in your data warehouse, enabling full-funnel reporting and precise ROI analysis.

Without campaign IDs, it becomes nearly impossible to reliably match sessions and conversions to ad spend, especially when working across platforms or performing multi-touch attribution.

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How to Conduct This Test

Basic Tests

  • In GA4 > Explore, build a report with:
    • Dimensions: Session source/medium, Session campaign ID
    • Filter: Session medium = cpc
    • Look for CPC sessions with (not set) under campaign ID (also known as utm_id).
  • You can also query BigQuery or use raw event data to verify which sessions are missing utm_id, gclid, or fbclid.
  • If a significant portion of your CPC traffic is missing a campaign ID, you’re losing the ability to match cost to performance.

Automated, Free Audit

Run our Instant Audit to scan all CPC traffic for missing campaign IDs.

Not sure where the gap is? Hire a pro.

How To Fix

  • For Google Ads, ensure auto-tagging is enabled so gclid is appended to URLs.
  • For Meta Ads, ensure fbclid is preserved and not stripped during redirects.
  • For all platforms:
    • Ensure manual UTM tagging includes utm_id (optional but helpful for mapping).
    • Never override or strip query parameters during redirects or link shortening.
    • Ensure landing pages and tools preserve query parameters (like gclid) throughout the user journey.
  • Hire a pro to help enforce consistent tagging practices and build robust cost-matching across your analytics and ad data.

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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