CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-analyticsgoogle-tag-managergoogle-analytics-4google-ad-manager
klee38
klee38

Reputation: 1

View GCLID in GA4 without Custom Dimension

With Google now advising against using high cardinality custom dimensions, is there a way to see GCLID values in GA4 without having to create a custom dimension?

For context, Auto-tagging has been enabled on the Google Ads side, however the GCLID parameter and its values are being automatically stripped out of the landing page report in GA4. E.g. User clicks on an ad and lands on domain.com/abc?gclid=123, what we see in GA4 landing page report: domain.com/abc

This appears to be done automatically by GA4 to provide a cleaner reporting view, however, it is hindering our reporting in this case.

We would like to be able to see GCLID values in either standard or exploration reports in GA4.

One idea was to send user_id to GA4 but use the GCLID values instead, as this website has no use for user_id otherwise. However, it is unclear if this approach would cause other issues or would even work.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2210

Answers (2)

Carson Whitley
Carson Whitley

Reputation: 133

There is a dimension in GA4 reporting called "Landing Page + Query String" which will contain all of the query parameters on the URL. That field is available in both standard and exploration reports and can be filtered on.

Upvotes: -1

BNazaruk
BNazaruk

Reputation: 8111

Using a user id is an interesting thought. But what are you going to do when you need to do this again for something else?

I would just make a CD and store gclid there. Then when I need all values from it, I would either use a BQ export, which won't be affected by the cardinality limits or use an exploration, which is also a nice ad-hoc way to bypass it.

Upvotes: 1

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