Did your reports in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Looker Studio work without problems and suddenly they do not? And even though you made no changes?
Are you getting the error "Invalid configuration" or "Invalid combination of metrics and dimensions"?
Do not lose your head. You are not alone and the error is not on your side. The cause is a change in how Google handles dimensions and metrics.
If you use a product dimension such as Item ID, Item Name and so on together with metrics such as Revenue and so on, an error occurs and the reports stop working.
Google has introduced new Item-Scope dimensions, so Item ID, Item Name and so on are now Item-Scoped, while Revenue, Add to Carts and so on are Event-Scope Metrics.
However, you cannot combine metrics and dimensions of a different scope (item-scoped with event-scoped). This is a characteristic you knew from GA3. In GA4, until the turn of 2022 and 2023, this data could be combined. Now everything is changing and we are going back to the situation from GA3, where data across scopes cannot be mixed.
So How Do You Fix It?
The fix consists of changing to dimensions and metrics of the correct scope. Google has introduced Item Scope Metrics and Dimensions to replace Event Scoped Metrics and Dimensions, although at the time of writing this post they may not be available in all accounts. This means you will have to wait until Google rolls these dimensions and metrics out to all accounts.
New E-Commerce Dimensions and Metrics
Google Analytics provides a version of each e-commerce measurement metric for items and for events. This lets you analyse information about your products or services and analyse important e-commerce interactions separately.
The following e-commerce dimensions and metrics are available in Explorations and the Data API:
- Currency
- Item brand
- Item category 1 -5
- Item coupon
- Item ID
- Item list ID
- Item list name
- Item list position
- Item name
- Item promotion
- Order coupon
- Transaction ID
- Item affiliation
- Item variants
- Items added to cart
- Items checked out
- Items clicked in list
- Items clicked in promotion
- Items viewed
- Items viewed in list
- Items viewed in promotion
- Shipping amount
- Shipping tier
- Tax amount
Analytics is also renaming the following Event-Scoped metrics:
- Add to carts (previously called Add-to-carts)
- Item-list click events (previously called Item list clicks)
- Item-list view events (previously called Item list views)
- Item view events (previously called Item views)
- Items purchased (previously called Item purchase quantity)
- Promotion clicks (previously called Item promotion clicks)
- Promotion views (previously called Item promotion views)
A note on Google Analytics: When you use an Item-Scoped Dimension such as "Item ID" or "Item category" in "Explorations", remember to use Item-Scoped metrics such as "Items purchased" rather than Event-Scoped metrics such as "Purchases". The former gives you the number of items. The latter gives you the total number of purchases. In explorations you can also see that individual dimensions and metrics of different scopes cannot be combined. That is, if, when importing dimensions and metrics, I select for example the Revenue metric, all the dimensions and metrics that cannot be combined with it can no longer be selected.
Google is currently rolling out the new dimensions and metrics in waves and it is not yet clear how long it will take for them to reach your account and your data. If you already want to work with them and do not know whether you can, just click through to "explore" in the left column of Google Analytics 4 and open an empty "free form".
You can then search the dimensions and metrics for the new item-scoped ones from the list above. If you see them there and can work with them, it does not mean that you can work with them in Looker Studio. The new dimensions and metrics are not yet carried over into Looker Studio and cannot be used there. Many reports therefore will not work and you have to look for another way to solve the problem.
If your project is larger, you will probably reach for the GA4 BigQuery export.
Update: December 2023
You should by now be able to see all of the dimensions and metrics above in Looker Studio. It is still the case that you cannot combine event-scoped and item-scoped dimensions and metrics, that is, you cannot, for example, combine Item view events & Ecommerce purchases. It is not ruled out that in the future dimensions and metrics will change, be added or be removed. If you run into non-working reports again in the future, check whether all the dimensions and metrics you entered really work as they should.
Do you need help with GA4?
Translated and supplemented with our own experience from the article available here.