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How to Force GA4 to Recognize Numbers in Custom Dimensions
Himanshu Sharma
November 17, 2024
👉 Here is how you can force GA4 to treat numerical values of a custom dimension as numbers and not strings. 👇
In GA4, the values of all custom dimensions are stored and processed as strings, even if the original data you are sending is a number, date, boolean, or any other data type.
Because all values are treated as strings, this can affect how data is sorted or analyzed in GA4 reports.
Numerical values sorted alphabetically (as strings) will be out of order.
For example,
“10” would appear before “2” because “1” comes before “2” alphabetically.
Filtering and calculations involving numbers might not work as expected.
For example,
Filtering for “item ID greater than 100” would also include “2,” “20,” “30,” etc., because these strings come after “100” alphabetically.
In alphabetical order:
“2” comes after “100” because ‘2’ is greater than ‘1’.
“20” comes after “100” because ‘2’ is greater than ‘1’.
“30” comes after “100” because ‘3’ is greater than ‘1’.
Even though these IDs are numerically less than 100, they will be included in the filter results.