Google Analytics Audit Test #

98

Sign In Domains as Referral Sources

Why It Matters:

Critical to understanding where your traffic is coming from and assigning appropriate credit.

Industries:

All

Checks For:

Accuracy

How accurate is your recent data?

Insight Category:

Attribution

Can you tell which marketing efforts are working?

Google Analytics Audit logo

Background

A GA4 audit is essential for uncovering missing insights—key data points that organizations don't yet know and can act upon. A well-done audit evaluates both behavioral tracking and traffic attribution, ensuring each is accurate and useful. It also assesses whether the data collected truly supports business decisions and reporting.

Test Detail

This test checks whether third-party authentication or sign-in providers (like accounts.google.com, login.microsoftonline.com, or facebook.com) are appearing as referral sources in your Google Analytics reports.

This typically indicates that users are being redirected to a login domain (e.g., for SSO or OAuth) and then returned to your site, creating a new session and overwriting the original attribution source.

This causes loss of attribution accuracy and makes it appear as though conversions came from login providers.

Check This Test for Free! Instantly.

Our free instant audit tool checks for 90 issues in 90 seconds.

Then gives you a prioritized list of items to tackle.

No cost, no sales call... just free goodness.
‍

Run a free instant audit
Google Analytics audit test results.

How to Conduct This Test

Basic Tests

  • In Google Analytics > Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, scan for referral sources such as:
    • accounts.google.com
    • facebook.com
    • login.live.com
    • login.microsoftonline.com
    • appleid.apple.com
    • Any other provider your site uses for sign in/authentication
  • Check how many conversions are attributed to these referrers.
  • Use Explore to break down sessions or conversions by referral source and landing page—look for login-related patterns.
  • Seeing sign-in domains as top converters? That means attribution is breaking post-login.

Automated, Free Audit

Run our Instant Audit to catch this instantly.

Need help tracing the redirect path and attribution loss? Hire a pro.

How To Fix

  • Go to Admin > Data Streams > [your stream] > More tagging settings > List unwanted referrals.
  • Add known login domains to the exclusion list, such as:
    • accounts.google.com
    • facebook.com
    • appleid.apple.com
    • login.microsoftonline.com
  • If using SSO or OAuth login flows, ensure the user’s session is preserved across redirects.
  • Test the login flow with tools like Google Analytics DebugView or Tag Assistant to confirm no session reset occurs.
  • Hire a pro to ensure your sign-in experience doesn’t overwrite attribution and obscure your real performance sources.

Tips from a Google Analytics Consultant

Focus on Insights

Every Google Analytics audit should result in a plan for more insights.

‍

An insight is:

  • something you don't know
  • and can act on to improve performance

The Goal

Identify and remove insight blockers. Don't get tempted to track things you can't act on!

Hire a Google Analytics Consultant
Google Analytics consultant