I've started using the Analytics API since a little while, and I noticed that some metrics are a bit off in the output. For example, I'd expect the ga:adCost metric to give me numbers such as 55.96, while it produces something like 55961449. So it doesn't provide the period (or comma).
The same is true for other (mostly calculated) metrics, such as ga:CPC, ga:pageviewsPerSession, ga:avgTimeOnPage and ga:avgSessionDuration.
What my output looks like.
Then there's also other metrics (such as ga:timeOnPage and ga:sessionDuration) which put ".0" behind every number. Since we use comma's instead of periods in my language, I have to use Excel formulas to convert all these periods into comma's before I'm able to use these numbers in my calculations. I was wondering if there's a workaround for this too.
Thanks for reading and hopefully one of you has a solution for (one of) these issues!
It's not a problem with Analytics but it depends on your Excel settings and/or your computer settings.
Related
My goal is to see which customers originate from organic search, but convert via a different source later on.
To do this, I defined this segment:
Then, I look at the Source/Medium report, but the results seem off. I expected to see zero revenue in the google/organic row (as the segment should show users where the transaction is specifically not coming from google/organic.
Am I using the right tool for what I'm trying to achieve? And if so, what am I doing wrong?
The conversion path in Google Analytics is a better solution here. You can find it under conversions -> multi-channel funnels -> top conversion paths.
What you're going to see here is all the combinations of channels that have been used to generate a conversion, see the screenshot below.
If you have a bigger website you're probably going to have >10.000 different conversion paths depending on the time period that you select. What you want to realize is how much conversion value and conversion was generated in conversion paths that started with organic, but ended with a different channel. Simply apply the filter below in the report to retrieve that data. Please note that in the standard Google Analytics reports all conversions and conversion value are attributed to the last, non-direct click.
The solution is to add a condition that includes only sessions as described in the second step of the sequence. This will reduce the population from all users that present the pattern in the sequence, to only sessions that matter. See detailed explanation here: https://www.napkyn.com/2017/09/07/quick-google-analytics-trick-use-sequence-segments-to-analyse-behavior-over-multiple-sessions/
I am trying to automate the weekly report. Currently, I am using Google Analytics website to get the data for my report. Sampling level is higher precision.
I tried to get the same data by Google analytics API set samplingLevel as HIGHER_PRECISION. However, I am still getting the sampled data.
For FASTER, Precision Level is roughly 25% whereas for DEFAULT and HIGHER_PRECISION sampling level is roughly 50%.
On Google Analytics website, it says 'This report is based on 100% of sessions'. Can I get the same level of accuracy with Google API? I am using Google Apps script.Response for HIGHER_PRECISION is not matching.
Sumit, the API and the Google Analytics UI are certainly different and similarly the sampling's effect on things is a different beast which must be handled properly to get anything useful out of it.
As was mentioned in the comment, you can achieve high precision unsampled reports by (typically) shortening your date range that you're querying for and then "walking" the data.
To walk the data, you are essentially just gradually incrementing that small date range as you move through the desired data.
The "unsampled reports API" is... well, not the best. Considering that's what they are avoiding giving the end user in the first place, the offering available is not a very good long term or large project friendly solution. I would recommend small date ranges and then doing a data walk.
Happy Coding
There are several solutions to avoid sampling issue in Google Analytics by automating the process of data export for short date ranges.
I prefer this tool, it's pretty simple to use: MadStats.io
I'm having a tough time with Google Analytics, trying to understand why the value of metrics changes when segments are applied.
There is a standard audience overview report, which is based on 100% of sessions (no sampling) and the view is not filtered. The period is March of 2017.
Standard "All visitors" segment looks like this:
Then, there is another built-in segment called "Bounced Sessions". When I apply this segment, the "All visitors" values changes:
Amount of users increases, but the count of pageviews decreases.
Any ideas how to explain this?.. Thank you in advance!
Oki, there can be, multiple reasons. Let me explain first how these numbers are calculated, then we move on to your query.
There two types of data gathering and manipulation from google.
Pre-calculated data -- pre-aggregated tables
These are the precalculated data that Google uses to speed up the UI. Google does not specify when this is done but it can be at any point of the time. These are known as pre-aggregated tables
Data calculated on the fly
Some that you do which result in computation or manipulation falls under this category. Like using segments, creating custom reports etc.
Coming to your problem. When you apply segment, every metric that it effects will be calculated again. Thus it may result in numbers greater than you see in normal view.
Standard audience overview report is pre-aggregated at some point of the day. When you apply segment, the results will be calculated with the fresh data. Since latter is the latest, it will automatically give you increased number of the metrics. Even you can see a decrease as well, all depends on your data and user behavior.
Resolution: If you are a premium user, use Big Query. You must rely on big query for every metric as they are fresh and calculated on the fly
We usually import data from google analytics once a month and use it for some reporting needs internally. The problem is that we have to do this manually and it would be nice if we could automate the process and potentially increase the once a month routine to once a week or even daily. Our ultimate goal would be to have a tool set up to import the data automatically and store it to a csv or excel file. The output file doesn't really matter to us. As long as we can have the data pulled from GA on a regular basis without manual intervention, we'll take care of what to do with the data once it's here. We use some java based executable (found online) for this but we run this manually to extract the data.
I have looked for some solutions, even open source tools(.Net preferably, anything but java based really) but I have not really found anything. most of them require manual intervention to export data, and the best they can do is have reports generated automatically based on that data.
Our last resort would be to write up something ourselves but I would like research this a bit further and save developing/programming time. I am pretty sure someone out there has at least encounter/though of this problem.
Any help, pointers or redirection to better sources would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Have you looked into the Core Reporting API or Google Analytic's Magic Script? These would allow you to pull data into Google Spreadsheets on a regular basis. Specifically, the Magic Script will allow you to setup triggers to run a function on reoccurring time interval E.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
I think the question has been answered here before,but i could not find the desired topic.I am a newbie in web scraping.I have to develop a script that will take all the google search result for a specific name.Then it will grab the related data against that name and if there is found more than one,the data will be grouped according to their names.
All I know is that,google has some kind of restriction on scraping.They provide a custom search api.I still did not use that api,but hoping to get all the resulted links corresponding to a query from that api. But, could not understand what will be the ideal process to do the scraping of the information from that links.Any tutorial link or suggestion is very much appreciated.
You should have provided a bit more what you have been doing, it does not sound like you even tried to solve it yourself.
Anyway, if you are still on it:
You can scrape Google through two ways, one is allowed one is not allowed.
a) Use their API, you can get around 2k results a day.
You can up it to around 3k a day for 2000 USD/year. You can up it more by getting in contact with them directly.
You will not be able to get accurate ranking positions from this method, if you only need a lower number of requests and are mainly interested in getting some websites according to a keyword that's the choice.
Starting point would be here: https://code.google.com/apis/console/
b) You can scrape the real search results
That's the only way to get the true ranking positions, for SEO purposes or to track website positions. Also it allows to get a large amount of results, if done right.
You can Google for code, the most advanced free (PHP) code I know is at http://scraping.compunect.com
However, there are other projects and code snippets.
You can start off at 300-500 requests per day and this can be multiplied by multiple IPs. Look at the linked article if you want to go that route, it explains it in more details and is quite accurate.
That said, if you choose route b) you break Googles terms, so either do not accept them or make sure you are not detected. If Google detects you, your script will be banned by IP/captcha. Not getting detected should be a priority.