Content Groups in GA4 and bugs in it

Content groups is something you can add in GA4 with tag manager.

Basically, you just create a table or variable and assign that to a page.

For example, you can create a variable called event and use that to set a variable called content_group

If you set that in the configuration tag, it will send the content_group to the value of the event. It's all straightforward enough. You can read the official documentation here

The problem I have had is that sometimes it just doesn't work. There is a bug in it so sometimes it says none and not set even if the set-up is correct.

In the debugger the variable is set and you can see it. However, when it gets to the reporting, its missing.

How to fix?

Set additional content groups

You may want to set additional content groups. For example, you might want a top-level content group for Men's clothing and then content_group2 for Apparel and content_group3 for Shirts.

You can set additional content groups by creating custom parameters for the content groups and then registering the content groups in Analytics as custom dimensions.

from the documentation, you just set up content_group2 and register it as a custom definition. It does work. So strange. Hopefully, they will fix it one day but for now, just add another variable to set in tag manger, register it and create a report based on that value.

Hope that helps someone out.

Ben

Ben has a BEng (Hons) in Computer Science and 20 years of experience in online marketing, specialising in SEO, lead generation and affiliate marketing. After spending over a decade as an igaming affiliate, he has decided to concentrate on GA4 training and SEO Audits.