What is Data Thresholding?
A privacy feature in GA4 that hides rows of data with small user counts to prevent individual user identification, often triggered when Google Signals is enabled.
In Google Analytics 4, data thresholding occurs when a report or exploration contains demographics or signals data, but the user count in a specific row is too low. To protect user privacy, GA4 applies a threshold and either groups the data into an '(other)' row or simply drops the data entirely from the report.
Why it happens:
The most common cause of data thresholding is enabling Google Signals. Google Signals attempts to track users across devices using their signed-in Google accounts. When the sample size is small, revealing the data could theoretically allow someone to identify a specific user.
How to fix it:
To remove data thresholding and see your actual numbers, you have two options:
- Change Reporting Identity: Go to Admin > Reporting Identity and switch to 'Device-based'. This will ignore Google Signals data for standard reports.
- Disable Google Signals: If you do not need cross-device retargeting capabilities in Google Ads, you can turn off Google Signals completely in your Data Collection settings.
Using a tool like NiceLookingData can automatically audit your property to see if your reports are currently being silently thresholded by these settings.
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