In June 2023, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will become the new standard for Google Analytics measurements. With the transition from Universal Analytics to GA4, it is important to set up a number of default settings correctly before you start relying on the accumulated data. By excluding paid traffic from your referral list in GA4, you gain a better understanding of your actual traffic sources and can make more accurate decisions about where to spend your Google Ads budget.
Why exclude paid traffic in GA4?
Google Analytics is a crucial tool for analyzing traffic to your website. It provides insight into the sources of your visitors, the paths they follow on your site, and where they ultimately convert. Sometimes this data can be skewed by “noise” in the form of referrals. One of the most common and disruptive forms of this noise comes from payment traffic. Here are a few reasons why you might want to exclude payment traffic as a referral in GA4:
- Data distortion: when a customer makes a purchase and is redirected to a payment platform (such as PayPal, iDEAL, or another payment service provider) and then returns to your site, this may be recorded as a new session or as referral traffic. This can distort the data in your reports.
- Confusing conversion paths: a customer’s conversion path may appear to originate from the payment platform, while the actual source of the traffic was, for example, a Facebook ad or an email campaign. This can lead to misinterpretation of the effectiveness of your marketing channels.
- Duplicate sessions: when a user returns to your website from the payment platform, this may in some cases be counted as a new session. This will artificially inflate the total number of sessions and can lead to inaccurate metrics such as the bounce rate.
- Conversion attribution issues: if you do not exclude payment traffic, conversions may be attributed to the payment platform rather than the actual source or medium. This can affect your ROI calculations for specific channels.
How do you exclude payment traffic in GA4?
Unlike Universal Analytics, where you could easily add referral exclusions, GA4 takes a different approach. Follow these steps to exclude paid traffic as a referral in GA4:
- Go to your GA4 property and click on ‘Admin’.
- Under “Data Streams,” select the relevant data stream.
- Scroll down to the “Configure tag settings” section => click on “Show all”.
- Go to ‘List unwanted referrals’ and enter the URLs you want to exclude here.
Tip: work with a RegEx rule that excludes all common Dutch banks and payment providers in one go.
Below you will find a RegEx code that you can copy and enter into GA4:
mollie\.com|mollie\.nl|pay\.mollie\.nl|paypal\.com|pay\.multisafepay\.com|payv2\.multisafepay\.com|multisafepay\.com|secure\.curopayments\.net|pay\.nl|payment-web\.sips-atos\.com|secure\.ogone\.com|abnamro\.nl|asnbank\.nl|betalen\.rabobank\.nl|rabobank\.nl|ideal\.bunq\.com|bunq\.com|ideal\.ing\.nl|ing\.nl|ideal\.knab\.nl|knab\.nl|ideal\.regiobank\.nl|ideal\.triodos\.nl|ideal\.vanlanschot\.com|vanlanschot\.com|snsbank\.nl|diensten\.regiobank\.nl|moneyou\.nl
Example of RegEx input for GA4
By following these steps, you ensure that traffic from these payment platforms is not treated as separate referral traffic, giving you a clearer picture of the actual performance of your website and your marketing efforts.
