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We have a custom event called "consumer_action_booking" which we're passing to GA4. I marked that event as a conversion event: Verify the event set up as conversion

However, when I look at the event count for that actual event, it does not match the conversion count. Here's the results of a custom exploration I set up: enter image description here

As you can see, the raw event count is 4647 but the conversion number is 4254. This is a completely unsampled report.

I reviewed this post which would seem to indicate that there's simply an error in data collection or something on GA4s end and it's been in there for 11 months, but that doesn't really make sense to me.

Does anyone have a more recent understanding of why these two numbers would not be the same?

EDIT So I noticed in the Conversion set up a couple interesting numbers. They mention that the Total Users for the conversion is around 4.2k, but the Total Events is around 4.6k. enter image description here

That would correspond to the numbers I see in the chart results: 4.2k users is ≅ 4254 Conversions. 4.6k events is ≅ 4647 Event Count. So my theory is that Conversions is about Users and Event Count is about Events. enter image description here

I guess this would mean that Conversions are scoped to User and Total Events are scoped to Events? Can anyone confirm or verify this?

Also, it seems wild to me that Conversions would be scoped to User since I can envision lots of scenarios where a single user would do multiple Conversions of the same type.

Am I crazy? Or wrong?

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Was the event created and marked as a Conversion on the same date? It will only count as a Conversion from the date it was marked as one, so if there was a delay, that could explain the difference.

Another possibility is the Conversion Counting method (a setting in GA4) - do you have it set to Once per Event or Once per Session? It is set to Once per Event by default.

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  • The event was not created and marked as a Conversion on the same date, but both were active and defined for all of the time frame I'm showing. Also, the counting method is set to Once Per Event.
    – Eric Oliver
    Jul 21 at 15:34
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I was just running into this as well. I think you are close in your explanation of it being users, but not quite. The conversions will only count one event even if that event happens multiple times in a session, https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13366706?hl=en.

It may not seem like there would be multiple events for the same session, but there are lots of reasons that could happen. One example is someone filling out a contact form, then submitting another with a missed note or such. It would count as two events but only one conversion. "Thank you" pages is another example where the visitor could bookmark or refresh the page triggering another event.

That's how I understand it anyway.

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