When viewing the RealTime Overview section, I notice that when a new user comes online the previous user immediately disappears and is no longer shown in realTime. The next day analytics only shows history data for one visiting user, I know for a fact that this is incorrect, there should be data for multiple users.
I send up analytics data with a simple https request(shown below) . This works for all my other applications. The only difference is that I send up the uid for this app , could this be causing the issue that I am seeing ?
Views
https://www.google-analytics.com/collect
?v=1
&z=14807
&tid=<OUR-UA-ID>
&cid=2535285330542042
&dp=message_6
&dt=message_6
&cd=message_6
&an=freemium_3
&av=3
&uid=123456789
&t=screenview
Events
https://www.google-analytics.com/collect
?v=1
&z=52130
&tid=<OUR-UA-ID>
&cid=2535285331158735
&dp=authentication
&dt=authentication
&cd=authentication
&an=freemium_3
&av=3
&uid=123456789
&ec=authentication
&ea=get_user_info
&t=event
The "cid" in your http call is the client id, where client refers to the device or program that makes the request. It is usually stored in a cookie (on the web) or generated by an SDK (in an app) and is used to unify subsequent requests from the same device into sessions. Since it is set by the client it differs from device to device (and browser to browser), so it can not be used to identify a person across multiple devices.
After it became the rule that any given person might have two or more devices Google came up with the uid, the user id (which by their own TOS might not identify the user, so this is a bit of a misnomer; think "cross device tracking id" and the concept becomes clearer). The uid is set by serverside code, i.e. after the user logs in. Not only this allows to unify visits from multiple devices into distinct users, it also alleviates privacy concerns (since it is supposed to be only created after a users action; there are separate TOS which you have to accept if you create a user id view in the GA interface, and they stipulate that you have to secure the users agreement to use to user id feature).
So if you set the same user id in your code the sessions will be attributed to the same user, even when the cid differs; this is by design and is indeed the point of the uid.
Related
I'm a bit confused on how activating the use of Google Signals in GA4 affects the reporting and raw data. One thing that is obvious is that after activation the demographics data becomes available (gender, age, interests) inside GA. But what about cross-device users stitching?
On the net I saw a couple of articles which have mentioned that turning Google Signals on would affect the overall number of users in the reports (basically reduce it by identifying one user across several devices when it is possible). Does it mean that there will be cross-device users stitched under one Google Client IDs (cid)? Exploring the device overlap I could see a small segment of such users in user explorer who were registered from different devices and have same Client ID on both devices.
This also means that these joint cross-device users data would actually be exported to Google BigQuery, right? By data I mean that we would see this same cross-device user under one and same Client ID in Bigquery.
Bonus question:
How does Google Client ID is actually persisted from the previous device? Does GA4 Configuration Tag sends a dedicated request to Google server on first page load to check if there is user data (Client ID) available from other devices and assigns an old cid to this new visit if match is found in the database?
Or would we see a new cid in real time, but it would be replaced later with the cid from other device when Google renders and aggregates the data on the server side before pushing it into our GA4 account reports?
* we are not currently using any internal User ID of our own to track users across devices
I am setting up Google Analytics Accounts for a Product which have multiple builds as frontend for same user base.
So we have one Product called X and have:
Web Build
Mobile Web
Android App 1
iOS App 1
Android App 2
iOS App 2 6.
The main point is identical APIs and User base is used in all platforms and apps. So if we have a user John Doe he can login in any of the web or apps.
We want to extract following information from Google Analytics.
Under User ID feature want, sessions aggregations of that user around all build and apps, but identifiable. So I can know that user John login to web yesterday and used mobile app today.
Each user belong to a customer (company) in our system. So want to segregate all information based on companies.
I already have achieved point 2 by creating a custom dimension in Google Analytics and believe that's the best way to do it.
Now need suggestions from Gurus on how to acheive point 1 using Google Analytics.
Either use single account and single property for all builds and apps
If yes, then how to identify those apps and builds in sessions
If I use multiple properties/apps in GA account then how to aggregate user sessions among all?
Looking forward to hear how guys around hand or should have handled this scenario. Cheers!
This question is extremely broad, IMO any answer your going to get is going to be primarily opinion based. So here is my opinion and a little extra info to boot.
The first issue you are going to have is that there is a difference between Mobile google analytics accounts and web analytics accounts. The two do not mix. Mobile analytics accounts insert screen views with a screen name. While web accounts insert PageViews with a document location.
There is no way to analyze between two different Google analytics web properties. Unless you intend your android and ios apps to run as websites and send it like its a webpage its not going to work. You could potentially download the data into your own system or big query and analyze it there. Comparing your custom dimension to see what the users have done differently. I would wonder at the quality of the analysis you will get as there will be no real way for you to compare the data and match it up beyond using your custom dimensions user id and possibly date.
I am adding this because I am not sure what your saving in your custom dimension.
The second issue you are going to have is tracking. Google analytics TOS does not allow you to send any identifiable information to Google.
The Analytics terms of service, which all Analytics customers must adhere to, prohibits sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Analytics (such as names, social security numbers, email addresses, or any similar data), or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a mobile phone’s unique device identifier if such an identifier cannot be reset).
You could for example send your companies customer id for John as a user_id but user_id is an internal valuable used for internal processing this is not something you can extract out via the api.
The User ID enables the association of one or more sessions (and any
activity within those sessions) with a unique and persistent ID that
you send to Analytics.
To implement the User ID, you must be able to generate your own unique
IDs, consistently assign IDs to users, and include these IDs wherever
you send data to Analytics.
For example, you could send the unique IDs generated by your own
authentication system to Analytics as values for the User ID. Any
engagement, like link clicks and page or screen navigation, that
happen while a unique ID is assigned can be sent and connected in
Analytics via the User ID.
The best you could do would be to create a custom dimension and send that with every hit username=johnscustomerId. Which you appear to have already done. This is what I have done in the past and it works perfectly well.
Hi I have a customer who is using Universal Analytics on their web page and then when you click on a link it goes into their app that is using measurement protocol.
They UA code is the same but the CID changes.
Example website:
cid=1387132168.1487081747
When i get into the app with the same browser
cid=47d9e140-f6ed-41c2-bd2d-9f3fb91df6b2
I suspect that Google Analytics starts a new user and session when the CID changes and just need some confirmation that that is the case.
The field Cid anonymously identifies a particular user, device, or browser instance. For the web, this is generally stored as a first-party cookie with a two-year expiration. For mobile apps, this is randomly generated for each particular instance of an application install.
You might consider seeing if you cant figure out how to assign a Uid and send that around between the web and mobile apps Uid will override cid.
Cid and Uid are both used to denote specific users and sessions. So yes if it changes its a different session.
When creating Segments in GA I can choose to filter Traffic Sources on User level and on Session level.
Is the User level Traffic Source determined the first time user visits the website and never changes again?
Does the Session level Traffic Source gets updated each time the user visits the website?
Does the same user can have a single Traffic Source (first time visit) on User level and multiple Traffic Sources on Session level?
Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully answer!
A contrary view:
No. There is no such thing as a User-level Traffic Source. Each session has a source. Users can have multiple sessions. Therefore Users can have multiple sources.
Simple proof: create user segment with medium = referral. View standard Traffic Source report, note multiple mediums are reported. This is because returning users can have sessions with different sources, and all of those sessions are included in your segment.
Yes, with a caveat. Each sessions has its own source. It comes from the HTTP referrer sent by the user's browser, which is optional and can be spoofed. However, if the source is Direct (empty), GA will look to see if that user had a previous non-direct source and it will change it to that. This is GA's "last non-direct attribution model". You can look it up.
No. The User has multiple sessions, and each sessions has its own source.
1) In theory, yes (practically this is tied to the client id in the cookie; a new user is created when somebody swipes his cookies, even if it is the same person).
2) Not quite. The Traffic Source changes when the marketing channel changes (direct type-in/bookmarks are not a marketing channel, so if somebody clicks e.g. an adwords ad and return via direct he is still an adwords user. Well, unless you look at the multichannel reports which will count direct channels as marketing channel). Look at the attribution flow visualization, you will see that GA checks for existing campaign information before it attributes to a direct type-in.
3) Yes, obviously - there is one source for the first visit and every subquent visit may have its own traffic source.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Your example is actually a pretty good explanation of the difference between user and session-level segments.
Here's a feature overview for more info:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3123951
The docs describe the clientId as:
This anonymously identifies a particular user, device, or browser instance.
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters#cid
It can be used to send server side hits to analytics while still tying them to a particular user.
There is also a feature in closed beta called userId, which you will be able to pass once a user has authenticated: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/user-id
userId is fairly self-explanatory. However, UA also allows you to pass your own clientid if you choose to. For developing CRM type tools, can one just associate the clientid with a user in the same way that you would with a userid? The goal is primarily to be able to track offline interactions and connect them with visitors in Analytics.
maembe,
clientID is a random number generated by Google Analytics, and keep in mind it's always required and its value should always be a random UUID (version 4) (you could technically use your own, but I am not sure how practical and reliable this would be). Most importantly, you can easily access it with predefined get function (see documentation).
For your needs, this is exactly what you should do -- if someone sings ups, store ClientID in your CRM and then if there is any offline purchase, record the transactions with measurement protocol using the stored clientID. Google Analytics will then make the link (attribution) with that visitor and you will see this in your reports. Also, take advantage of newly available custom metrics and dimensions which can store pretty much anything you want (think of customer segmentation etc.). Beware of storing PII though.
Hope this helps :)
I am curious how UserID is going to work, it might change everything, but for now, I wouldn't rely on it as there is very little information available.
This Analytics support page now states the differences between Client ID and User ID - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6205850?hl=en#clientid-userid
Essentially client IDs represent unauthenticated users, and are automatically randomly generated.
User IDs represent authenticated users, and must be set manually.
It's worth noting that user IDs cannot be things like an email address, or other data that would allow Google to identify the user
You will not upload any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual (such as certain names, Social Security Numbers, email addresses, or any similar data), or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a unique device identifier if such an identifier cannot be reset).
If you upload any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual, your Google Analytics account can be terminated, and you may lose your Google Analytics data.
Taken from: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/policy
I'd imagine User ID is designed to differentiate the behavior of an authenticated user. here