GA4 audit checklist: 10 checks before you trust your numbers

Most growth advice assumes your data is right. In young companies it usually is not: the form was rebuilt and the event stopped firing, campaigns went out without tags, a cookie banner was added and sessions "dropped". A marketing audit that starts with channels and budgets, on numbers like these, optimises noise.

A Google Analytics audit comes first for that reason. It does not ask "how are we growing?" but "how far can we trust what we see?".

1. Key events exist. At least one real outcome (sign-up, demo request, purchase) is marked as a key event. With none, no report can tell you which traffic works.
2. Key events fire once. Submit the form yourself and watch DebugView. Two events per submission is as common as zero. This is the heart of any conversion tracking audit.
3. Direct is below about 30%. A larger share usually means untagged emails and social posts, not people typing your address.
4. Unassigned is close to zero. Sessions with no channel point to broken UTM tags.
5. No days are missing. A gap of a day or two often marks a release that removed the tag.
6. Engagement rate is plausible. A sudden collapse, or a rate far below your normal, suggests bot traffic or a double-loaded tag.
7. One country is not flooding you. A spike from a market you do not sell to is usually not real demand.
8. Consent is accounted for. After a cookie banner, compare rates rather than raw counts, and check that consent mode is set up.
9. Internal traffic is filtered. Your own team should not be your best-converting segment.
10. Organic sessions match Search Console clicks. They never match exactly, but a large gap means one of the two is measuring something else.

Order matters more than completeness. Fix key events first, because every other decision depends on knowing what converts. Then tag your own links, so Direct stops hiding where demand comes from. Leave the cosmetic issues for last.

Treat the audit as a move in its own right. "Fix measurement" is a legitimate week of growth work, and usually the cheapest one: nothing you do afterwards can be judged without it.

Every check above can be done by hand in GA4 with DebugView, the traffic acquisition report and Search Console. Expect an afternoon the first time.

Our free GA4 audit runs the same kind of checks on your last eight weeks and turns them into a Health Score from 0 to 100, with each deduction explained and three moves for this week. It is read-only, and it works as a quick growth audit of where you stand before you spend more.

If you would rather ask questions about the result in Claude, the GrowthWise MCP brings the score and the plan into the conversation.