Hi there, my team is currently trying to determine what this tracking code is.
Our analytics team has bucketed this code under direct traffic, which is why I’m investigating it’s meaning (I’m SEO). Typically when we see a code grom Google it’s paid or Organic.
Now I know our paid team properly tags for attribution purposes.
So that makes me think that maybe we should be bucketing this to SEO.
It seems to be associated with our product PIP pages too. Any insights on this code would be much appreciated?Could it be associated to Google Merchant Center (Free listings or Paid)?
Here is the tracking code
Tracking Code “
notrackingcodeset_google_notset_notset_notset”Thanks!
The short answer is:
The tracking code value “notrackingcodeset_google_notset_notset_notset” in your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports indicates that Google could not fully classify the traffic source, but it identifies Google as the originating entity, often defaulting to ‘Direct’ as the channel grouping.
This specific pattern is highly indicative of traffic originating from Google Merchant Center’s Free Product Listings or other Google-owned surface traffic, where the necessary tracking parameters (like the gclid for Google Ads or manual UTMs) are absent or stripped.
To solve the poor attribution and correctly categorize this SEO-related traffic, you should leverage the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol to send server-side events that enrich the session data with known identifiers, or, more effectively, integrate your product data feed directly using the Google Merchant API to ensure product-level tracking is optimized and attributed correctly.
This API integration is a cost-effective, durable solution to secure accurate attribution for your valuable free listing traffic.
The long answer is:
The tracking code string “notrackingcodeset_google_notset_notset_notset” is an internal Google identifier that appears when a user clicks through from a Google surface, specifically often Google Merchant Center Free Product Listings, to your website, but the URL lacks the standard identifying parameters that Google Analytics expects for proper classification, such as Google Click Identifier (gclid) for paid traffic or standard UTM parameters.
When this data is missing, GA4 defaults the source to ‘google’ and the medium to ‘(not set)’, which your Channel Grouping then buckets into ‘Direct’ traffic.
This is a common and frustrating issue for SEO teams, as it masks high-value organic visibility from free listings, which should indeed be bucketed with your SEO performance.
To gain control and correct the attribution, the most robust, long-term, and cost-effective approach is to bypass client-side tracking limitations and utilize server-side data synchronization.
Specifically, you should implement the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol by routing your website events through a Server-Side Google Tag Manager (GTM) setup running on a platform like Stape or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
This allows you to inspect the incoming traffic on your server and, if you detect a session matching this pattern or a referrer from a Google property, you can enrich the event payload before it hits GA4, setting the source and medium fields correctly to reflect google and free-listings or organic, thereby aligning it with your SEO efforts.
For an even more proactive approach to managing the source of this traffic, integrating your eCommerce system (such as WooCommerce or Shopify) with the Google Merchant API allows for programmatic management of your product data feed.
While the Merchant API’s primary use is feed management, ensuring the feed is perfectly structured minimizes potential tracking errors that lead to the “notrackingcodeset” issue on the Google side, and it provides a foundational step for future advanced tracking implementations with Google surfaces.
This level of server-side integration and API usage future-proofs your tracking against browser restrictions and ensures that your SEO team receives proper credit for the highly valuable traffic generated by Google’s free listing ecosystem, proving far more cost-effective than repeatedly trying to troubleshoot client-side tagging issues.
About The Author
