「GA4 Bug」Average Engagement Time Shows 0m 00s

Updated: March 17, 2025

Issue

Average engagement time is 0m 00s, eg:

Reason

There are two reasons:

• One is that if you are using Shopify and you installed GA4 through Custom Pixel, Custom Pixel runs in Sandbox, its event tracking is limited, and time-related metrics cannot be tracked, so it is 0.
• The other is that if you visit the page and leave, no user_engagement event is sent. There are other events on this page, but there is no user_engagement_msec parameter, which is 0.  Because Average engagement time is calculated based on the user_engagement event and user_engagement_msec parameter,  and user_engagement is an automatically collected event, so you can’t make any settings, consider this is a bug.

Solution

• For the first case, do not use the Custom Pixel function to install, use other methods.
• For the second case, consider this is a bug, you can only wait for the official fix. Given that this bug has existed for a long time, this is a bug that has appeared since February 2023, and the repair time is unknown. It is recommended to re-create a media resource area tracking.