New GA4 Account Added Automatically to Our Account. Broke All Conversion Tracking.
I came back from a two week vacation to discover that a new GA4 account has been added automatically to our account apparently by Google. This caused all our conversion tracking to break. We’ve been on GA4 for over a year and everything was working fine but apparently Google thought we needed a new GA4 account. Here is the message they added on the new account: “This property has been set up for you based on your original Universal Analytics property, reusing existing site tags and settings where possible. To see which settings have been automatically migrated, go to Admin > Change history. To verify that the migrated settings are accurate, review them in the Setup Assistant.”What do we do? Do we have to use the new thing they set up or can we delete it and use ours that was working. I’m not expert and I’m really confused by this.
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The short answer is:
The confusion and broken conversion tracking stem from Google’s automated creation of a second Google Analytics 4 property based on an old Universal Analytics property, which likely changed the Measurement ID used by your website’s tags.
Since you already had a working GA4 setup, you should delete the new, automatically created property and, crucially, verify that your Google Tag Manager or hardcoded tags are using the Measurement ID of your original, working GA4 property.
The automated process may have also updated linked Google Ads accounts to use the new property’s conversions, which must be immediately reverted to your original property’s conversions.
To future-proof your conversion tracking against browser restrictions and unexpected tag changes, you should implement server-side tracking using Google Tag Manager and Stape to send high-fidelity data via the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol, ensuring reliable data flow independent of the front-end tag.
The long answer is:
The new, automatically created GA4 property is a result of Google’s push to ensure all old Universal Analytics properties have a GA4 counterpart, even if you had already performed your own migration.
Because this new property was connected to your original Universal Analytics property, Google’s automation process likely linked its own conversions and potentially even updated your site’s tagging or linked ad accounts, which caused the conflict and broke your existing, functional conversion tracking.
You absolutely do not have to use the new property and it is strongly recommended you delete it to prevent ongoing confusion and data fragmentation.
To fix this, you first need to go to your Universal Analytics Admin section, find the GA4 Setup Assistant, and formally disconnect the link to the automatically created GA4 property.
Once disconnected, navigate to the Admin section of the new, unwanted GA4 property and move it to the Trash Can.
This will stop the conflicting configuration.
The next critical step is to audit your tag management system, which is presumably Google Tag Manager, or your website’s code to confirm that the Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration tag is firing with the correct Measurement ID for your original, working GA4 property.
If your conversions for platforms like Google Ads or Facebook were also broken, you must check the Conversions section in your Google Ads and Facebook Ads accounts and ensure they are optimized for the conversion events originating from your original GA4 property, not the new, now-deleted one.
For a cost-effective and highly reliable long-term solution, you should transition to server-side tracking using a solution like Google Tag Manager and Stape, hosted on a service like Google Cloud Platform.
This setup leverages the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol by sending conversion data directly from your server to Google Analytics.
Instead of relying on client-side browser tags which can be blocked or interrupted, the web server or cloud environment sends a direct, unblockable hit containing the complete Purchase or Lead data, which significantly increases conversion accuracy and robustness.
This is a vital step for a comprehensive marketing technology stack, ensuring your data remains clean, complete, and resilient against future browser privacy changes.
Furthermore, you should consider using the Google Analytics Data API to build custom, more powerful reporting dashboards in a tool like Looker Studio or to pipe your granular data into a data warehouse like BigQuery, allowing you to combine it with CRM or eCommerce data for deeper insights outside the standard GA4 interface.
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