Without cross-domain tracking, a visitor moving from your marketing site to a separate app domain looks like two sessions, and the original traffic source is lost, so the signup gets credited to direct. Configuring it in GA4 links the domains.
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Setting it up in GA4
In the data stream's tag settings, add the domains to configure. GA4 then passes a linker parameter on links between them so the session continues.
Common checks
- The same measurement ID is on every domain
- Domains are listed in the cross-domain configuration
- Redirects between domains keep the linker parameter
- Referral exclusions don't hide your own domains
Common mistakes
Overlooking the third-party tool
Hosted forms, billing or booking pages on other domains break attribution too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Usually not. Subdomains of one domain share cookies by default, but check your configuration.
Keep reading
- Google Analytics 4: Google’s current web and app analytics product, which records visits and actions as events and reports where visitors come from and what they do.
- Direct traffic: Direct traffic is visits analytics cannot attribute to any source. It includes typed URLs and bookmarks, plus many visits whose referrer was lost.
- Marketing Attribution: The practice of assigning credit for sign-ups, pipeline and revenue to the channels and touchpoints that led to them, including organic search.
- Session: A session is a group of interactions one visitor has with a site within a set time window. In GA4 a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity by default.
- BigQuery export: The BigQuery export sends raw GA4 event data into Google BigQuery, where you can query it with SQL without sampling, thresholds or retention limits.
- Consent Mode: Consent Mode is Google's API for passing a visitor's cookie consent choices to Google tags, which then adjust what they store and send.
- Data thresholds: Data thresholds are GA4 limits that hide rows with small user counts so individuals cannot be identified, mostly when Google signals or demographics apply.
- Data-driven attribution: Data-driven attribution uses a statistical model of converting and non-converting paths to share credit across touchpoints. It is GA4's default model.
