Overview
Triple Whale measures your store using two separate data sources:
The Triple Whale Pixel: Triple Whale's own on-site tracking. Powers the Web Analytics dashboard, Sessions table, attribution, and most Triple Whale dashboards.
Your connected GA4 property (optional): Google Analytics 4 data that Triple Whale pulls in and displays on dedicated GA4 dashboards and tables.
Knowing which source a metric comes from explains most of the surprises customers run into with GA4 and Triple Whale.
What the GA4 connection does
When you connect Google Analytics 4 in Data → Integrations, Triple Whale starts pulling daily aggregated data from your GA4 property and storing it in three dedicated tables:
Table | What it covers |
GA4 Web Analytics | GA4 sessions, add-to-carts, purchases, and revenue, broken down by landing page, device, browser, and geography |
GA4 Sessions Agg | GA4 users, sessions, page views, and revenue, broken down by traffic source and channel group |
GA4 Product Analytics | GA4 item-level views, add-to-carts, checkouts, purchases, and revenue |
These three tables and the GA4 dashboard built on top of them, are the only places in Triple Whale where you'll see GA4-sourced data.
What the GA4 connection does not do
This is where most confusion comes from:
The GA4 connection does not feed your Pixel-based dashboards. Your Web Analytics dashboard, Sessions table, and Triple Whale's attribution numbers all come from the Triple Whale Pixel, not from GA4. Connecting or disconnecting GA4 will not change those numbers.
Triple Whale does not push events back to GA4. Connecting GA4 is a one-way data pull. Purchases, add-to-carts, and other events tracked by the Triple Whale Pixel are not sent to your GA4 property.
GA4 is not used for Triple Whale attribution. Triple Whale's attribution model relies on Pixel data and UTM matching. GA4 data sits alongside it for reference and reporting, not inside the attribution pipeline.
Why the same metric can show two different numbers
Because Pixel data and GA4 data come from different tracking systems with different rules, the same-named metric (sessions, users, revenue, pageviews) will almost always show different totals between Triple Whale's Pixel-based dashboards and the GA4 dashboard.
This is expected, they're not measuring the same thing. The breakdown:
Sessions / Users / Views: Triple Whale Pixel and GA4 use different definitions. See Why don't my GA4 Sessions match what I see in Triple Whale?.
Revenue: both should be close. See GA4 numbers don't match what I see in Triple Whale.
Which one should I use?
Question | Use |
What did my customers buy and where did the revenue come from? | Triple Whale Pixel (most Triple Whale dashboards) |
Which marketing channels drove the result? | Triple Whale Pixel + attribution |
What were people doing on my site (scrolls, clicks, video plays)? | GA4 dashboard |
What does my GA4 property report for a given day? | GA4 dashboard |
Side-by-side comparison of Triple Whale and GA4 in one place | GA4 dashboard inside Triple Whale |