Micah Fisher-KirshnerFeb 2, 2023

Omg, #GA4 keeps breaking things left and right... Today's complaint is that regex no longer properly works in GA4 or through Looker.

If you want to get it to work, your beautiful regex now has to create exact matches...

... According to one reddit post I've found, this has been going on for a whole month...

...and I now hope that the thousands let go by Google didn't include the analytics team on fixing these bugs.

So, 4 months to go until a forced transition on a buggy product? Yikes...

Show threadMike Blazer 🇺🇦Feb 2, 2023
@micahfk I've tried running regex to match 100 pages in GA4 tosay. I couldn't get results, the requests were timing out.
Show threadMicah Fisher-KirshnerFeb 2, 2023

@MikeBlazer found that GA4 changed their regex dialect in December from partial matching by default to exact matching.

So now everything needs ".*" at the front and back

Show threadDanielle Rohe Feb 2, 2023
@micahfk @MikeBlazer good to know! I haven't started building out my GA4! dashboards yet but soon
Show threadMicah Fisher-Kirshner
@danielle_r @MikeBlazer Ate up an hour or two in frustration, but thankfully Google search - - >Reddit then a check on Twitter search to find this change after I couldn't figure it out myself.
Feb 2, 2023 at 9:41pmWeb
Show threadDanielle Rohe Feb 3, 2023
@micahfk @MikeBlazer yeah there have been other things changed in Looker Studio that never get mentioned and I only confirm via Twitter lol. Like when URL level data from GSC started to include avg position!
Show threadMicah Fisher-KirshnerFeb 3, 2023
@danielle_r @MikeBlazer at least that was a good thing, right? :)
Show threadDanielle Rohe Feb 3, 2023
@micahfk @MikeBlazer yes haha
Show threadSimon Cox Feb 3, 2023
@danielle_r @micahfk @MikeBlazer I suspect there is a team that has desperately been trying to add functionality to GA4 since the announcement of the demise of UA! Annoying for those that got every set up early so they have at least a year’s comparative data.
Show threadMicah Fisher-KirshnerFeb 3, 2023
@simoncox @danielle_r @MikeBlazer Except that this is a change in functionality, which doesn't make sense when they're rushing to hit a deadline.
Show threadSimon Cox Feb 3, 2023
@micahfk @danielle_r @MikeBlazer Not to us, I agree! My bet is tgere will be a few more running up to US shut off as they desperately try to add missing functionality. Bumpy road ahead. (Still a bumpy road).