managed-components / managed-components/google-analytics-4
Negative `engagementDuration` Values Due to Time Synchronization Issues
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- Dominant language
- TypeScript
- Stars
- 27
- Forks
- 9
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Description
We use Cloudflare Zaraz to integrate GA4 for event monitoring. While analyzing the underlying GA4 event data, we discovered an interesting phenomenon: a significant number of `engagement_time_msec` values are appearing as negative.

## Root Cause Analysis
After investigating, we identified that this occurs when there's a time synchronization discrepancy between the user's device and Cloudflare Worker (Zaraz's execution environment). Specifically, negative `engagement_time_msec` values appear when the user's device time is ahead of the Worker time.
We conducted a test to reproduce this behavior:
1. Set client time 4 minutes ahead of actual time
2. Focus on a page, where client time is used to [mark engagementStart](https://github.com/managed-components/google-analytics-4/blob/main/src/index.ts#L97)

3. When the user leaves the page, a `visibilitychange` event triggers, and `engagementDuration` is [calculated on the worker side](https://github.com/managed-components/google-analytics-4/blob/main/src/index.ts#L130) as approximately `now - engagementStart`. In cases where the client time is ahead of the server time, this results in a negative `engagementDuration`
4. This can be verified by querying the underlying event data in BigQuery for GA4, where `engagement_time_msec` reflects this time difference

It's worth noting that the issue also affects accuracy when client time lags behind server time, resulting in inflated engagement duration values.
## Suggested Solution
It might be worth considering using timestamps consistently (either all client-side or all edge-side) when calculating `engagementDuration`. This could help address potential issues since client-side time discrepancies are fairly common.
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
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Research direction
Start in src/index.ts at the engagementStart logic around line 97 and the worker-side engagementDuration calculation around line 130. Reproduce the discrepancy with a client clock four minutes ahead, then compare the resulting GA4 engagement_time_msec values in BigQuery. Done means the chosen timestamp strategy no longer produces negative or inflated engagement durations under clock differences.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- typescript
- Domain
- analytics
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 42/100