Croct data arrives in GA4 events but not in standard reports
I connected our Croct project to GA4 two days ago. In the GA4 realtime debugging view I can confirm the events arrive with the Croct data attached, audiences, experiences, experiments, and variants are all visible as event parameters.
However, in the standard reports there is nothing to segment by. No Croct dimension appears in the dimension picker. I expected the parameters to become dimensions after the standard processing delay, but 48 hours have passed.
Is an additional step required on the GA4 side? Our property is a standard GA4 property, no 360.
1 answer
Answering my own question after resolving it.
The missing step is on the GA4 side: event parameters do not become report dimensions automatically. You must register them as custom dimensions in GA4 admin under Data display > Custom definitions, one per parameter you want to use. After registration, the dimensions appear in the picker and populate going forward.
Two notes from my experience:
- Registration is not retroactive in standard reports, so register the dimensions immediately after connecting, before you accumulate data you will want to slice.
- After registering, watch for GA4's "(other)" row. High-cardinality values get grouped under it, so keep audience and variant names short and reuse them rather than creating many one-off variations.
The realtime debugging view was showing the raw parameters all along, which is why the connection looked fine. It was fine. The registration step was the missing piece.
Classic GA4. This exact step trips up every integration that sends custom parameters, not just Croct. Bookmarking your answer for my team.