I recently encountered a major GA4 issue related to thresholding with a large international B2B company.
Data thresholding in GA4 is designed to prevent companies from being able to use and access PII (personal identifiable information) such as demographic or interest information to identify website users. Thresholding applies to both reports and exploration within GA4.
Thresholding is applied whenever the user count is too low within the reports therefore making it easier to single out PII.
Now, in principle, this is a great idea, but in my opinion, Google goes too far with thresholding.
A great example of this was with my client that switched on Google Signals in late March. By default, Google Signals is switched off.
In this case, the client turned Google Signals on to give greater reporting. Two days later, Google Signals was switched off and thresholding appeared in many of the main reports.
Now, thresholding can be turned off in many cases by turning on “Device-Based” reporting in “Reporting Identity”. To find this go to, “Admin”-> “Reporting Identity”-> Click “Show All”-> Select “Device-Based”. I don’t recommend changing the reporting identity to not mess with any data reporting, but if thresholding won’t go away this is an option.
The other option is a deeply unpopular one: Wait out the storm. Thresholding should clear up in 2-4 weeks.
This is why it is so important to have a trusted consultant to walk you through these issues. If you have any questions, get in touch!