Custom GA4 event sent to dataLayer but doesn't show up in Analytics

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Custom GA4 events pushed to the dataLayer on tab clicks are not appearing in Google Analytics. The site recently updated its GA/GTM setup.

  • Context: A Google & YouTube app connection uses one GA ID, while the site code initializes another GA ID; both IDs appear combined in GA.
  • Implementation: Custom events were added to track clicks on the Calendar/Class tabs (URL provided). The events are visible in the browser console within window.dataLayer when tabs are clicked.
  • Attempted steps: A custom event was created in GA (condition: click / event_name equals calendar-tab-click), but the events still don’t show in the GA dashboard.

Status: The poster is requesting ideas; no solution or root cause identified yet.

Key terms: GA4 = Google Analytics 4; GTM = Google Tag Manager; dataLayer = the browser-side event queue used by GTM/GA.

Summarized with AI on December 17. AI used: gpt-5.
1

A while ago, we updated our Google Analytics/Google Tag Manager integration.

We have a Google Analytics connections set up via the Google & Youtube App, with one GA id. The configuration is set to use one id. The code itself is initialised with another id, all of them show up as combined in Google Analytics.

We added a few custom events to see how many people use the Calendar/Class tabs here. As you can see, when you click one of the tabs and open up the console, clearly the events are in the window’s dataLayer object.

However, I cannot find them in our Google Analytics dashboard, even when they should have definitely been fired. I’ve also created a custom even in Google Analytics (“click / event_name equals calendar-tab-click”) but no dice.

Does anyone have any ideas?