Calculate the % of Traffic Lost to Privacy Tools in GA4

💡 💥 Here is how you can find the % of website traffic not tracked 💀 ☠ in GA4 because of Google consent mode, cookie banners, privacy extensions, etc. 👇

Most likely, you use Cloudflare for your website. If you don't, you are out of luck.

Cloudflare provides Bot Analytics for Business and Enterprise customers, allowing you to dynamically examine bot traffic on your website.

Cloudflare identifies unique visitors by counting unique IP addresses that access your website.

Each unique IP address is considered a unique visitor, regardless of whether the request is from a human, bot, or automated system.

So, what we need to do first is determine the percentage of human traffic and estimate the number of human visitors.

Let's assume you're using the Cloudflare Bot Analytics tool to analyze website traffic. You received the following data:

Total number of requests: 500,000

Requests with bot scores (40-99): 200,000

Step-1: Calculate the percentage of human traffic.

Human Traffic = Total Requests - Requests with Bot Scores

Human Traffic = 500,000 - 200,000 = 300,000

Percentage of Human Traffic = (Human Traffic / Total Requests) * 100

= (300,000 / 500,000) * 100 = 60%

By adjusting the number of requests with potential bot scores (40-99) to 200,000, we arrive at a 60% estimate for human traffic.

Step-2: Estimate human visitors.

If Cloudflare reported 250,000 unique visitors in the last 30 days and the % of human traffic is 60%, then the number of human visitors

= 250,000 * 0.6 = 150,000

Step-3: Calculate visitors not tracked by GA4.

If GA4 reported 60,000 visitors in the last 30 days, then the number of visitors not tracked by GA4

= Estimated Human Visitors - GA4 Users

= 150,000 - 60,000 = 90,000

Step 4: Calculate the percentage of visitors not tracked.

The percentage of visitors not tracked by GA4 in the last 30 days

= (Visitors Not Tracked / Estimated Human Visitors) * 100

= (90,000 / 150,000) * 100 = 60%

So now we know that around 60% of website traffic is not tracked by GA4.