Why GA4 Is Always Wrong (And How to Fix It)
Your WooCommerce dashboard says you made $10,000 last month. Google Analytics says $6,000. One of them is wrong—and it’s not WooCommerce.
The revenue gap between WooCommerce and Google Analytics isn’t a bug. It’s a fundamental limitation of how browser-based tracking works. Studies show GA4 underreports ecommerce revenue by 15-50%, with one Reddit user documenting a staggering 50% underreporting rate compared to actual WooCommerce sales. The culprit? Ad blockers, consent denials, and browser restrictions that stop GA4’s JavaScript from ever firing.
Here’s what’s actually happening—and how to fix it.
Why WooCommerce and GA4 Show Different Numbers
WooCommerce and Google Analytics measure sales using completely different methods. Understanding this difference explains why they’ll never match perfectly—and why GA4 is almost always the one that’s wrong.
WooCommerce tracks transactions at the database level. When a customer completes a purchase, WooCommerce writes directly to your WordPress database. No JavaScript required. No browser cooperation needed. Every single transaction gets recorded, regardless of what’s happening in the customer’s browser.
GA4 tracks transactions through browser JavaScript. When that same customer completes a purchase, GA4 relies on a JavaScript snippet running in their browser to send a “purchase” event to Google’s servers. If anything blocks that script—ad blockers, privacy extensions, browser settings, consent denials—the transaction becomes invisible to GA4.
The result: WooCommerce sees 100% of your sales. GA4 sees whatever percentage the browsers allow.
This isn’t theoretical. Over 32% of US internet users run ad blockers, and approximately 129 million users worldwide have browser extensions that block Google Analytics by default. For tech-savvy audiences, blocking rates can exceed 58%.
The Five Reasons Your GA4 Revenue Is Wrong
1. Ad Blockers Are Eating Your Data
Ad blockers don’t just block ads anymore. Popular extensions like uBlock Origin, AdBlock Plus, and Ghostery target analytics scripts by default. When these blockers detect Google Analytics code, they simply prevent it from loading.
The scale of the problem: Publishers were forecast to lose $54 billion in ad revenue in 2024 due to ad blockers. For ecommerce stores, this translates directly into missing conversion data—transactions that happened but were never reported.
Desktop users are hit hardest. One study found that desktop traffic was 40% higher in self-hosted analytics compared to Google Analytics, with nearly all the difference attributable to ad blocking.
2. Consent Mode Is Creating Blind Spots
Since March 2024, Google has required Consent Mode v2 for any site using Google Ads with EEA traffic. If a visitor declines analytics cookies through your consent banner, GA4 won’t track their session—including any purchases they make.
The catch: GA4 can use “behavioral modeling” to estimate missing data, but only if your site meets minimum thresholds. You need at least 1,000 events per day from users who reject cookies for seven consecutive days, plus 1,000 daily users with consent granted during seven of the past 28 days.
Most small and mid-sized WooCommerce stores don’t hit these numbers. That means every declined consent is simply lost data with no recovery.
3. The Thank You Page Never Loaded
GA4 ecommerce tracking typically fires on the order confirmation page. But customers often close their browser, lose their connection, or navigate away before that page fully loads. The transaction completed—the money hit your account—but GA4 never recorded it.
Payment redirects make this worse. When customers pay through PayPal, Klarna, or bank transfers, they leave your site entirely. If they don’t return to the confirmation page (or return with cookies cleared), GA4 misses the sale.
4. Multiple Tracking Scripts Are Fighting
Many WooCommerce stores end up with duplicate tracking code—one from a plugin, one added manually, one from Google Tag Manager. When multiple scripts try to track the same event, GA4 can deduplicate them incorrectly or double-count transactions.
The WordPress.org support forums are filled with store owners troubleshooting this exact issue. The official WooCommerce Google Analytics plugin has over 100 open support threads about tracking discrepancies.
5. Safari and Firefox Are Blocking by Default
Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) limits first-party cookies to seven days on Safari. Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection blocks known tracking domains automatically. Neither browser requires users to install anything—privacy protection is built in.
For stores with significant iOS or Mac traffic, this means a substantial portion of returning visitors look like new users to GA4, breaking attribution and conversion tracking.
What This Means for Your Business
Revenue discrepancies between WooCommerce and GA4 aren’t just an analytics annoyance. They create real business problems:
You can’t trust your marketing ROI. If GA4 shows your Facebook ads generated $5,000 in revenue but the real number is $8,000, you might cut a profitable campaign. Conversely, you might overspend on channels that look better than they actually are.
Your audience data is incomplete. GA4’s demographic and interest reports only include visitors whose browsers cooperate. The 30-40% you’re missing might behave completely differently—but you’ll never know.
AI-powered ad optimization suffers. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other platforms use conversion data to optimize targeting. Feed them incomplete data, and their algorithms optimize for the wrong audience.
How Server-Side Tracking Fixes the Gap
The fundamental problem is browser dependency. Every time you ask a visitor’s browser to do something—load a script, set a cookie, send an event—you’re asking permission that can be denied.
Server-side tracking removes the browser from the equation.
Instead of relying on JavaScript to fire in the visitor’s browser, server-side tracking sends data directly from your server to Google Analytics (or Facebook, or any other platform). Ad blockers can’t block it because there’s nothing running in the browser to block.
Here’s the difference:
Client-side (current): Visitor’s browser → JavaScript fires → Data sent to GA4 (if not blocked)
Server-side: Your server → Data sent directly to GA4 → Always arrives
For WooCommerce stores, this means processing purchase events at the server level—the same place WooCommerce already records them. The data path matches what your database sees.
Implementing Server-Side Tracking for WordPress
Traditional server-side tracking requires setting up Google Tag Manager Server-Side containers, configuring cloud infrastructure, and managing ongoing technical maintenance. For most WooCommerce store owners, this complexity is a non-starter.
Transmute Engine™ offers a simpler path for WordPress. It’s a server-side tracking solution designed specifically for WordPress sites that sends data directly to GA4, Facebook CAPI, Google Ads, and other platforms—without requiring GTM server containers or cloud configuration.
The approach works because it processes events at the WordPress level before sending them server-side, matching the same transaction data your WooCommerce dashboard shows.
What You Should Do Now
Step 1: Quantify your data gap. Compare last month’s WooCommerce revenue against GA4’s ecommerce reports. If the difference is more than 10%, you have a significant tracking problem.
Step 2: Check your tracking setup. Use Google’s Tag Assistant to verify that purchase events are firing correctly. Look for duplicate scripts or consent mode misconfigurations.
Step 3: Evaluate server-side options. Whether through GTM Server-Side, a managed solution like Transmute Engine, or another approach, server-side tracking is becoming essential for accurate ecommerce analytics.
Step 4: Stop making decisions on incomplete data. Until you solve the tracking gap, treat GA4 revenue figures as directional estimates, not ground truth. Your WooCommerce dashboard is more accurate for actual revenue.
Key Takeaways
- WooCommerce tracks at the database level; GA4 tracks through browser JavaScript. This fundamental difference means WooCommerce will always be more accurate for actual revenue.
- 32% of US users block tracking, and 129 million have GA-blocking extensions by default. Your GA4 data is missing a substantial portion of your real traffic and transactions.
- Consent Mode v2 creates additional blind spots for EEA traffic unless your site meets minimum thresholds for Google’s behavioral modeling.
- Server-side tracking bypasses browser limitations by sending data directly from your server, recovering visibility that client-side tracking loses.
- The revenue gap isn’t a bug—it’s structural. The only fix is moving tracking out of the browser entirely.
FAQ
Why does GA4 show fewer orders than WooCommerce?
GA4 relies on JavaScript that runs in visitors’ browsers. When ad blockers, privacy extensions, or consent denials prevent that JavaScript from loading, GA4 can’t record the transaction. WooCommerce records orders directly in your WordPress database, independent of what happens in the browser, so it captures every sale regardless of visitor settings.
How much data am I actually losing to ad blockers?
Studies show 15-50% of ecommerce data goes unreported in GA4 due to blocking. The exact percentage depends on your audience—tech-savvy visitors block at higher rates (up to 58% for audiences from sites like Hacker News or Reddit), while general consumer audiences typically block at 20-35% rates.
Will Google’s conversion modeling recover my missing data?
Only if you meet minimum thresholds: at least 1,000 events per day from non-consenting users for seven consecutive days, plus 1,000 daily consenting users during seven of the past 28 days. Most small and mid-sized WooCommerce stores don’t generate enough traffic to qualify, meaning their blocked data remains permanently lost.
What’s the difference between server-side tracking and regular tracking?
Regular (client-side) tracking uses JavaScript in visitors’ browsers to send data to analytics platforms. Server-side tracking sends data directly from your server, bypassing the browser entirely. Since ad blockers and privacy tools work at the browser level, they can’t block server-side data transmission.
Can I implement server-side tracking without technical expertise?
Traditional GTM Server-Side setups require cloud infrastructure management and ongoing technical maintenance. However, solutions built specifically for WordPress—like Transmute Engine—handle the server-side processing automatically through a plugin, eliminating the need for container configuration or cloud management.
Your WooCommerce data tells the truth. It’s time your analytics did too.
