Why Geographic Is Wrong in Google Analytics 4: Apple’s Private Relay

Issue

Some people may find that their website is oriented to Germany, but there are some users from the United States and the Middle East, and there are conversions, which is very unreasonable.

Reason

There is one characteristic of this part of users with geographical region errors: they all use Apple’s Safari.

This is because of the privacy service Private Relay launched by Apple in 2021. When using Safari to browse the web, Private Relay ensures that all traffic on the user’s device is encrypted, and it assigns the user an anonymous IP address:

The geographical area is obtained through IP address query, so GA4 cannot obtain the accurate geographical area.

Due to the limitations of national regulations, Apple also pointed out that the Private Relay function cannot be used in China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines.

Solution

Since this privacy service is at the system level, it is powerless and there is no solution.

If Safari users enable Private Relay, the tracked geographic information will be wrong.