7 signs your website tracking is quietly broken
Tracking almost never fails loudly. There is no error message when a purchase stops counting or a number gets inflated. It just quietly feeds you the wrong figures, and you make real budget decisions on them. Here are the seven signs we see most often.
Run through the list
1. Your platforms disagree with each other
GA4, Google Ads, Meta and your store all report different sales numbers, and the gaps are large and growing. Some difference is normal because of attribution, but big persistent gaps mean something is broken.
2. Reported revenue does not match your bank
The clearest tell. If GA4 or your ad platforms are meaningfully above or below the money that actually landed, your measurement cannot be trusted for decisions.
3. ROAS looks too good to be true
Suspiciously high return on ad spend usually means conversions are double-counting. Two or three tags firing the same purchase inflate the numbers and flatter campaigns that may not deserve it.
4. Conversions dropped off a cliff with no cause
A sudden drop with no matching drop in real sales usually follows a site change, a theme update, or a platform migration that broke a tag.
5. Ad performance quietly declined after iOS or privacy changes
If browser-only tracking is all you have, iOS and ad blockers erode your measured conversions over time, and delivery gets worse as the platforms optimise on less data.
6. Your cookie banner does nothing to your tags
If tags fire the same whether visitors accept or decline, you have a compliance problem. If they are blocked outright on decline, you have a measurement problem. Either way it needs wiring properly.
7. Nobody can say what is actually being tracked
If no one can confidently list which events fire, where, and with what data, that uncertainty is itself the problem. You cannot fix or trust what you cannot see.
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Check my tracking freeWhat to do about it
If two or more of these ring true, get a proper audit before you spend another month optimising on numbers you cannot trust. A good audit tells you exactly what is broken, what it is costing you, and what a clean fix looks like, in plain English.
Get the full picture with a fixed-price audit
We check your live tags across every platform, explain what is wrong, and give you a fixed quote to fix it. The audit comes off any build.
See how it works & pricingRelated reading
What a tracking audit finds Google Ads conversions not tracking? Meta Pixel underreporting? Audit & rebuild pricingDatahound are analytics and ad-tracking specialists. We audit and fix broken GA4, Google Ads, Meta CAPI and server-side tracking for ecommerce and lead-gen businesses. See pricing · Free tracking check · datahound.agency
Common questions
How do I know if my tracking is broken?
Compare your platforms against each other and against your bank. Large, persistent gaps, suspiciously high ROAS, or a sudden drop with no drop in real sales are the clearest signs. A live tag scan confirms it quickly.
Is some difference between platforms normal?
Yes. Attribution models and windows differ, so GA4, Google Ads and Meta will never match exactly. It is large and growing gaps, or numbers that do not match your actual revenue, that signal a fault.
How much does bad tracking cost?
It is rarely a line item, which is why it hides. But optimising ad spend on wrong numbers, pausing good campaigns and scaling bad ones, quietly wastes a share of every pound you spend.