Your GA4 dashboard says zero visitors. You’ve verified the tracking code is installed. Tag Assistant confirms the tag fires. But Real Time stays stubbornly empty. Here’s what’s happening: 73% of GA4 implementations silently lose 30-40% of attribution data (SR Analytics, 2025)—and on WordPress sites, the causes are almost never what generic troubleshooting guides suggest.

The problem isn’t GA4 configuration. It’s WordPress infrastructure actively interfering with your tracking in ways that don’t trigger obvious errors. Cache plugins stripping parameters. Consent plugins firing in the wrong order. CDNs serving outdated JavaScript. Site Kit REST API failures. These WordPress-layer causes don’t appear in standard GA4 troubleshooting checklists—because those checklists assume you’re running on a basic HTML site.

The 7 WordPress-Specific Causes of GA4 Zero Data

Before you spend another hour in GA4 settings or reinstall your tracking plugin for the fourth time, work through these WordPress-specific causes. Each one can make GA4 show zero data even when your tracking code is technically correct.

1. Cache Plugins Minifying and Deferring Analytics Scripts

WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, and W3 Total Cache are designed to speed up your site. They do this by minifying JavaScript, combining files, and deferring script execution. The problem: they don’t know which scripts they shouldn’t touch.

When a cache plugin minifies your analytics JavaScript, it can break the dataLayer structure GTM relies on. When it defers script loading, the tracking code fires after the user has already left the page. When it combines JavaScript files, debug parameters like gtm_debug get stripped entirely.

The fix: Add your analytics scripts to the cache plugin’s exclusion list. In WP Rocket, that’s Settings → File Optimization → Exclude from Minification. For LiteSpeed Cache, check the Page Optimization settings. Look for any field that says “Excluded JavaScript” and add gtag, gtm, and analytics patterns.

2. Consent Plugins Blocking Tags Before They Load

50% of tracking data is lost when users deny consent without Advanced Consent Mode enabled (Plausible Analytics, 2025). But the subtler issue is timing: consent plugins like CookieBot, Complianz, and CookieYes can fire before your tag manager loads, breaking the connection entirely.

Here’s the sequence that breaks things: Consent plugin loads → Consent plugin decides to block scripts → GTM tries to load → Consent plugin already blocked it → Tags never fire → GA4 shows zero.

The issue isn’t user consent rejection. It’s the consent plugin making blocking decisions before the tag manager even initializes. Check your consent plugin’s integration settings—most have specific GTM or Google Consent Mode options that ensure proper load order.

You may be interested in: Why Your WooCommerce Tracking Plugins Keep Conflicting

3. Site Kit’s ga4Reporting Feature Disabled

If you’re using Google Site Kit—and millions of WordPress sites do—there’s a specific failure mode that causes zero data displays. Site Kit has a ga4Reporting feature that sometimes gets disabled due to background check failures.

When Site Kit can’t verify your GA4 property permissions or when the authentication token expires, the dashboard shows “gathering data” indefinitely. The tracking code may still work, but Site Kit’s dashboard won’t update. Check Site Kit → Settings → Connected Services to verify your GA4 property is properly linked and authenticated.

4. CDNs Serving Cached JavaScript Including Outdated gtm.js

Cloudflare APO, LiteSpeed CDN, and similar services cache your JavaScript files at the edge. This includes the gtm.js file that GTM loads. The result: when you make changes to your GTM container, visitors still receive the old cached version.

This is particularly frustrating during debugging. You publish new tags, verify they work in Preview mode, but real visitors don’t see them because your CDN is serving a cached gtm.js from last week. Even worse: Preview mode loads the draft container directly from Google, so it appears to work—but production visitors get the stale cached version.

The fix: Either exclude gtm.js from CDN caching entirely, or implement cache purging rules that clear JavaScript files when you update your site. Most CDNs have plugin integrations for WordPress that can automate this.

5. Security Plugins Blocking Third-Party Cookies and Scripts

Wordfence, Sucuri, and other security plugins can block analytics in several ways. They may block inline scripts, disable REST API endpoints that plugins like Site Kit need, or strip tracking parameters from URLs as a “security” measure.

One particularly sneaky issue: some security configurations block third-party cookies entirely. GA4’s debugging tools need certain cookies to function, so your testing shows nothing—but actual visitors might be tracked fine. Test in a browser where you’re not logged into WordPress admin, and check if your security plugin has different rules for logged-in users.

6. The ga-disable Opt-Out Snippet Visible Only to Admins

Some privacy-conscious WordPress setups include a ga-disable opt-out snippet that prevents GA4 from tracking specific users. If this snippet is conditionally loaded only for logged-in administrators, you’ll see zero data whenever you test your own site—but actual visitors get tracked normally.

Check your theme’s functions.php or any custom tracking code for conditional logic like is_user_logged_in() or current_user_can('administrator'). Test your tracking in incognito mode or while logged out to see what actual visitors experience.

7. REST API Endpoint Issues Preventing Site Kit Updates

Site Kit communicates with your GA4 property through WordPress REST API endpoints. If another plugin has modified REST API behavior, if your hosting provider blocks certain API routes, or if security rules prevent the authentication handshake, Site Kit’s dashboard will show stale or zero data.

The tracking might actually work—data might flow to GA4 properly—but Site Kit can’t retrieve it to display. Check GA4 directly (analytics.google.com) to see if data exists there even when Site Kit shows nothing.

You may be interested in: Payment Gateway Redirects Are Killing Your Conversion Tracking

Why Generic GA4 Guides Miss These Causes

Most GA4 troubleshooting content assumes you’ve installed a simple tracking snippet on an HTML page. Check the tag. Verify the property ID. Wait 24-48 hours. Done.

WordPress sites don’t work that way. You’re running a CMS with plugins fighting for JavaScript execution order, caching layers between your code and visitors, CDNs modifying files at the edge, and security tools treating analytics like a threat.

Data can take 24-48 hours to appear in GA4 standard reports (Google Analytics Documentation, 2025)—but that’s assuming the data arrives at all. WordPress-layer interference can make data never arrive, or arrive sporadically, or arrive for some visitors but not others. No amount of waiting fixes that.

The Server-Side Alternative

Every cause on this list shares one thing: they all happen in the browser or at the WordPress infrastructure layer. Cache plugins, consent timing, CDN caching, security blocking—all of these interfere with JavaScript-based tracking because that tracking runs in an environment you don’t fully control.

Server-side tracking eliminates this entire category of problems. Instead of relying on JavaScript to fire in the visitor’s browser, events are captured at the WooCommerce hook level—when a purchase happens in your database, not when JavaScript runs in Chrome. The data flows through your own first-party server before going to GA4, bypassing all browser-layer interference.

Transmute Engine™ is a first-party Node.js server that runs on your subdomain (e.g., data.yourstore.com). The inPIPE WordPress plugin captures events directly from WooCommerce hooks and sends them via API to your Transmute Engine server. No browser JavaScript means no caching conflicts, no consent timing issues, no CDN interference—the data simply exists because the transaction happened.

Key Takeaways

• 73% of GA4 implementations lose 30-40% of attribution data—and WordPress-specific causes are rarely mentioned in troubleshooting guides
• Check cache plugin exclusions first: WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, and W3 Total Cache can all break analytics by minifying or deferring scripts
• Consent plugin timing matters: If the consent plugin fires before GTM loads, tags never initialize regardless of user consent
• CDNs cache gtm.js: Changes you make in GTM may not reach visitors for hours or days if your CDN serves stale JavaScript
• Test logged out: Security plugins and opt-out snippets often behave differently for administrators versus actual visitors

Stop cycling through generic GA4 fixes. Start with your WordPress infrastructure—the cache, the consent plugin, the CDN. That’s where your data is dying. Learn how server-side tracking bypasses these issues entirely.