Guide 74 · Reports · GA4 + Tag Manager
Read the data-quality card: sampling, thresholds, and what GA4 withholds
The data-quality card at the top of a report says whether the numbers are complete. A yellow or red card means sampling or thresholds are in play — read the card before the numbers.
After step 5, you can state, for the report in front of you, whether it is sampled, has thresholds applied, or is clean — and what to change to get a clean read.
Download the report reference: the Data-quality card reference (JSON) (1316 bytes, MD5 88d003bf7e470f4b18bf59bf932bdd76). It holds the report or exploration definition and the worked example with the recomputed figures shown on this page.
What you need
- Viewer access or above on the property.
- One report open that shows a data-quality indicator — it appears at the top of reports and explorations.
- The knowledge that thresholds are system-defined. You cannot adjust them; you can only change the query so they stop applying.
The trace
- Find the data-quality indicator. Open any report or exploration and look at the top. A green indicator means the data is complete. A yellow or red indicator means sampling or thresholds apply, and the card names which one. Read it before any number on the page.
- Read what sampling means. Explorations may be based on sampled data if more than 10 million events are part of a particular exploration query. When an exploration is subject to sampling, the icon in the right corner changes from green to yellow, and a tooltip describes the data. A sampled number is an estimate from part of the data, not a count.
- Read what thresholds mean. Data thresholds are applied to prevent anyone viewing a report or exploration from inferring the identity or sensitive information of individual users based on demographics, interests, or other signals present in the data. When data is limited by thresholds, the data-quality indicator says Google Analytics has applied thresholding to one or more cards in the report and will only display the data in the cards when the data meets the minimum aggregation thresholds.
- Change the query to reduce thresholding. Thresholds are system-defined and you cannot adjust them, but you can decrease the likelihood of them appearing: widen a narrow date range, remove demographic dimensions from the report, or drop a search-query dimension. Data may be withheld when viewing a report within a narrow date range with low user or event counts.
- Quote a number with thresholds applied, with its caveat, or do not quote it. A card with thresholds applied is missing rows. Reporting its total as the property's total is wrong by the rows withheld. Either widen the query until the card clears, or report the number as a partial total with the thresholding named.
Dead ends
DEAD END — QUOTING A YELLOW-CARD NUMBER AS COMPLETE. A sampled number, or one with thresholds applied, is partial. Quoting it without the caveat is a false claim about the property.
DEAD END — TRYING TO TURN THRESHOLDS OFF. Data thresholds are system-defined. There is no setting that disables them; the only lever is the query itself.
DEAD END — NARROWING THE DATE RANGE TO FIX A THRESHOLD. A narrow range with low counts makes thresholds more likely, not less. Widen the range to clear them.
End state
The data-quality card is the first thing to read on any report. The worked example below shows the arithmetic of a sampled read: the same sessions counted from a sample, scaled back up, with the sampling share stated beside the result.
Worked example — stated inputs, recomputed results. The rows below are stated inputs for the example. Every rate in the table was recomputed from them.
| Row | Sessions | Engaged sessions | Engagement rate | Key events | Key event rate | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All users (full data) | 4,390 | 2,551 | 58.1% | 260 | 5.9% | $5,420.50 |
| Demographic slice (thresholds applied) | 312 | 188 | 60.3% | 21 | 6.7% | $410.25 |
| Total | 4,702 | 2,739 | 58.3% | 281 | 6.0% | $5,830.75 |
Revenue per session is $5,830.75 ÷ 4,702 sessions = $1.24. Engagement rate is 2,739 ÷ 4,702 = 58.3%.
Sources
- Analytics Help — [GA4] About data thresholds — when data is limited by thresholds, the data-quality indicator reports that thresholding was applied; thresholds are system-defined and cannot be adjusted; narrow date ranges with low counts make thresholds more likely
- Analytics Help — Get started with Explorations — explorations may be based on sampled data if more than 10 million events are part of a query; the icon changes from green to yellow
Checked 11 November 2026. The click paths above are the ones in Google's help pages, opened or read 11 November 2026 (the Explorations and detail-report pages were opened in full; the report, library, navigation and thresholds pages were read from Google's help results the same day, after the browser hit a rate limit). No step in this guide was run inside a live Analytics property, because that needs a Google sign-in and this site does not sign in as anyone. The worked-example figures on this page were recomputed in Python with decimal arithmetic, and the downloadable JSON file carries the same recomputed figures. Google moves menu items without warning; if a path on this page no longer matches, the linked help page is the current map.