# Event-site GA4 payment-referral diagnosis

Editable worksheet (English). Keep this inside your analytics team. Do not enter buyer names, card details, email addresses, or live order IDs.

## 1. Define the event and reporting question

| Field | Entry |
|---|---|
| Event edition and public page | |
| Website owner / GA4 editor | |
| Ticket-platform contact | |
| GA4 property and web stream (internal reference) | |
| Completed baseline date range and property time zone | |
| Report and dimension (for example, Traffic acquisition → Session source / medium) | |
| Exact suspicious source / medium row and count | |
| Event-page landing URL in the report | |
| What decision depends on this correction? | |

Keep First user, Session, and event-attribution dimensions separate. Use the same dimension before and after a change.

## 2. Trace a visitor route

| Route / ticket option | Event page host | Ticket form host | Payment host | Confirmation host | Returns to a GA4-tagged organizer page? | Who controls tags and redirects? | Evidence/date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary ticket option | | | | | Yes / No / Unknown | | |
| Alternate payment option | | | | | Yes / No / Unknown | | |
| Cancellation or failed checkout | | | | | Yes / No / Unknown | | |

If there is no observed return to a tagged organizer page, stop: a referral exclusion on that organizer page cannot create purchase measurement on the provider's site. Confirm orders in the ticket platform.

## 3. Classify each hostname before a change

| Hostname | Observed role | Evidence: entry/referring page or tested route | Decision and owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| | Payment step that returns to our tagged site / our second tagged domain / genuine partner / unknown | | Narrow unwanted-referral rule / evaluate cross-domain setup / keep as real source / investigate |
| | | | |

Do not exclude a venue, sponsor, publisher, or discovery site merely because it appears in a referral report. GA4 already handles many same-domain and subdomain self-referrals automatically.

## 4. Record the single approved change

| Field | Entry |
|---|---|
| Change owner and time | |
| Current unwanted-referral rules or cross-domain settings | |
| Evidence for this specific hostname | |
| Proposed match condition and why it is narrow | |
| Approved change and saved configuration | |
| Rollback owner and previous value | |
| Ticket-provider setup changes, if any | |

The unwanted-referral list and cross-domain measurement solve different problems. Cross-domain measurement requires the same GA4 web-stream tag ID on participating domains and compatible navigation; do not assume a third-party checkout permits this.

## 5. Test and release

| Test | Entry route and consent state | Payment / return host | Observed page or event on our site | Result / issue owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approved non-purchase return or sandbox order | | | | |
| Cancellation, if supported | | | | |
| Alternate payment path, if supported | | | | |
| Real partner referral remains visible | | | | |

Use DebugView only to inspect collected events from your own debug device. Attribution there is limited. After processing, compare new Traffic acquisition data with the same Session source / medium scope and a comparable completed period.

## 6. Close the diagnosis

| Question | Evidence / remaining limit |
|---|---|
| Did the payment host stop appearing as a new referral in the relevant new sessions? | |
| Is a legitimate partner source still visible? | |
| Does the return page still work for attendees? | |
| Were ticket orders reconciled separately with the provider? | |
| What remains unmeasured or unresolved? | |
| Follow-up date and owner | |

Do not rewrite historical conclusions from the new setting. Google notes that previously attributed sources can still appear for returning users.

Primary documentation: [GA4 unwanted referrals](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10327750?hl=en), [cross-domain measurement](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10071811?hl=en), [traffic-source scopes](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11080067?hl=en), [DebugView](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7201382?hl=en), [data freshness](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11198161?hl=en).