I have several Custom Dimensions setup in both admin and in the code on my site.
I have verified that the data is being sent correctly to Google Analytics (I used the Chrome GA debugger), but can't seem to find any reports that show these new dimensions.
Since their changing things all the time, it's probably hidden somewhere, but I've gone through every standard report and haven't seen anything.
So, where do you go to view this information?
Found it! Well sort of. Right now, Google doesn't have a standard report that includes Custom Dimenstions. You have to go in Customization to build a custom report and include any of the custom metrics or dimensions you've created.
If you're new to GA, custom reports can probably be a little confusing so wrote up a quick blog post that walks through setting up, implementing and building reports with custom dimensions: http://benmarshall.me/ga-custom-dimensions/
Related
Background
I've created a Data Studio report that looks to a Google Analytics property. In this Google Analytics property I've created custom dimensions which are being populated as I need.
I want to set up a dimension filter on the report in Data Studio but CustomDimension1, etc isn't showing as a field in the list.
What I've done so far
I've looked to see if the field exists as a filter dimension. I've tried creating a new field but can't see what the formula for this would be.
I've read the docs behind the filter control here:
https://support.google.com/datastudio/answer/6312144?visit_id=637020676101086398-168687373&rd=1
I've watched a number of videos to try and find the answer.
I've looked on stack overflow but all the questions relate more to setting up custom dimensions in Google Analytics rather than pulling this information through to Data Studio.
I've searched Google and can see this question being asked before on website www.en.advertisercommunity.com but the links in the Google search results just take me to the Data Studio support site:
https://support.google.com/datastudio/community?hl=en
When I search using the page title of the advertisercommunity.com pages as keywords on the Data Studio page it doesn't come back. It's as though this question was never asked. Neither does anything relevant to my question.
Question
Has anyone achieved this by creating a new field or by using another mechanism I'm not aware of?
Okay, the issue I had was down to timings.
I'd created the Data Studio report first and then added the custom dimensions in Google Analytics after the report had been created.
After running through the data source area, I found the refresh fields button which then detected my GA custom dimensions and added them to the list of fields. I was then able to select the custom dimension as a field on the filter control!
Further info, the GA custom dimensions pull down by their actual GA custom dimension name rather than being Customdimension1, Customdimension2 that I was looking for.
Hope this helps someone else!
I want to track particular links on my site to see where they come from. For example, I want to know which links on my navigation are being clicked, so if something is not being clicked I could potentially remove it.
I have been using UTM's, super easy, but results in skewed analytics data.
I looked into Google Tag Manager, but I don't want to slow down my website. I can change the site easily, so not sure if this is the best solution.
I found an article dated 2008 that says I can do this:
https://www.example.com/?from=topnav
Is that still valid? Is there a better way. I can't seem to find any information on this and assume somebody wants to acquire this information.
Thank you.
I have been using UTM's, super easy, but results in skewed analytics
data.
UTM codes are meant to track inbound traffic. Don't use them to track internal/outbound navigation, as it will seriously mess up your reporting.
I looked into Google Tag Manager, but I don't want to slow down my
website.
GTM is loading async, just like GA, so performance-wise they are equivalent.
I found an article dated 2008 that says I can do this:
https://www.example.com/?from=topnav
By default GA will not track link clicks. You can indeed add parameters to URLs and then use those to build custom reports and see which links are being clicked.
Since what you're trying to do is custom implementation, you won't find a single best answer, it's up to you to implement something that fits your needs. These are some examples:
https://analytical42.com/2017/track-internal-links-google-analytics-gtm/
https://www.gravitatedesign.com/blog/can-google-analytics-track-link-clicks/
I'm a consumer data analyst who is not very familiar to coding other than occasional encounters with HTML and Python, and I'm just starting with the coding part of Web Analytics. In particular, I need to learn about checking websites I don't own (therefore I don't have access to their Analytics accounts) for tracking info, but it has been phenomenally hard to find information on which tracking function each component of code stand for, or to what extent it is visible from the page source.
For a project, here is a page I'm trying to check for Google Analytics/Tag Manager/alternative analytics setup, and see what is exactly being tracked on it. Other than the source code, I checked it with Ghostery, which gave me this Tag Manager code page. Is it possible to check tracking info from these two (events, pageviews, URI and how many custom dimensions there is, specifically), and which part of the code includes that info (particularly URI and dimension info - the first two, I have more idea about)?
This is a page I'm also looking into. I can see that this one has Google Analytics/Tag manager, but again, I can't make sure of what is being tracked, and whether the Analytics/Tag Manager setup is looking -potentially- problematic in any way. Here is the Tag Manager page for this one that I obtained through Ghostery.
Any help would be much appreciated...
Looks like what you are looking for is Google Tag Assistant extension for google chrome: https://get.google.com/tagassistant/
you can download it from here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-assistant-by-google/kejbdjndbnbjgmefkgdddjlbokphdefk?hl=en
When you install it it will appear as icon on any page you visit and it will show you all GA implementations on a page:
You can select tracking ID you are interested in and it will tell you how many Page Views/events were fired for that particular tracking ID only:
Then you can select individual tracking event/page view and see all data that are being sent with that tracking request. Just Click on URLs and click the icon to put the data in table:
Here "cd" stands for Custom Dimension, so here you can clearly see 2 custom dimensions that are being tracked:
Hope this helps, good luck!
I've implemented GA on our b2b site. It's strictly internal but we'd like to track behaviors of users to see if some of the sections on the site are relevant. So, it's working, but say you have
www.blahblah.com and you want to also track
www.blahblah.com/edit
www.blahblah.com/askquestion
Do you set up a filter for this? I did try it and not sure if it's working quite yet. Any info/advice would be greatly appreciated. I am brand new to GA.
Thanks
Not quite sure what you are asking.
If you want to know about metrics for the individual pages you'd go to to the Aquisition->Page Content reports. Overview will give you, well, an overview (you can use the filter box to look at the metrics for any specific Url), Content Drilldown will display a view structured by url hierarchy.
If you're after user behaviour you can create segments. If you want to know if somebody vistited the homepage and, after that, the /edit page you'd got to advanced segments (the arrow above the "Explorer" Tab in most views, click "create new segment", choose "sequence" from the advanced tab, choose page as dimension and "/" to filter for as step one, "/edit" as filter value for page two, enter a name for the segment and click save. Now you'll get all reports only for visitors who have visited those two pages, starting with the homepage.
There are a number of predefined segments, you should try them to see what they can do. You need a pretty good understanding of metrics and dimensions in GA to get the full value from segments, but the simple stuff (e.g. analyze differences between marketing channels) is already pretty useful.
So, for page performance seek out reports with page metrics and use filters. To analyze user behavior use segments which apply to most of the GA reports.
Hope that helps, if not you might to explain more specifically what you want to see in your reports.
You can create separate custom report for individual sections and drilldown by almost all the GA provided dimensions. please reffer the sampel provided.
Please access this URL in your browser as this is a predefined custom report which does the same thing you want. This will get saved under custom reports. You need to edit the custom report and give your own path/section insted of "/services/" under filters section
Been using internal site search with Google Analytics and while I love the ability to see what my users are searching for, I am having a really hard time figuring out what search terms lead to which pages.
When I search on both the nextPagePath and searchKeyword dimensions while filtering on the search results page at the current path, the nextPagePath is always the search results page even when I know it shouldn't be (when tracking my own obscure searches). The same goes for using the searchDestinationPage dimension. I can't get any data that shows a jump from a search results page to another page on the site.
Here's a cleaned up example of my api query.
dimensions=ga:searchKeyword,ga:nextPagePath&metrics=ga:pageviews&filters=ga:previousPagePath=#dosearch
When I use the standard Analytics UI and look at the Destination Pages list under Content->Site Search->Destination pages, I only have 25 or so, all of which are just the variations on the base search-result page URL.
Do I need additional tracking code on my search results pages? Custom variables? A different query through the API?
I can see the tracking requests going out from both the search results and the pages selected from the results.
I found a couple of questions in the Analytics forums that ask this same question, but none of them had anything resembling a working solution.
I would bet you are not using the proper dimensions in the API
See https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets/internalsearch
ga:searchDestinationPage is probably what you wanted when using ga:nextPagePath