Google Analytics medium : "banner" and "Banner" (not in the same channel group) - google-analytics

I'm exploring Google Analytics features and I've noticed something surprising.
Unless I'm mistaken, the banner medium is associated with the default system channel group Display, although the Banner medium is associated with the ground (Other).
According to the Default channel definitions, the Display group use the regex ^(display|cpm|banner)$
The filters on regex seems to be case-insensitive(as explained here). As a result, when I try to get the data for the Google Analytics API when the filter ga:medium=~^(display|cpm|banner)$,ga:adDistributionNetwork==Content;ga:adFormat!=Text, I get results for both "banner" and "Banner" medium.
However, when I check on the Google Analytics website, the banner medium is in the Display group, and the Banner is in the (Other) group.
Could you please confirm me this point (and explain if possible :)) ?
Thanks a lot !

Banner is being placed under (Other) because it is capitalized. What you can do is create a filter that will convert any campaign parameters to lowerCase.
To do this:
Create a new filter > select "Custom Filter"
Select the Lowercase filter
And from the dropdown, select Campaign Medium
This will convert all of your campaign mediums to lowercase, and will place them in the correct channel grouping.

Related

Categorize Traffic with Specific (non-UTM) Parameter as Email Traffic

I have traffic coming from Salesloft emails sent by sales reps that gets bounced off a subdomain and then has a sbrc parameter appended to the URL. I'd like to ensure that this traffic gets counted by Google Analytics as coming from Email, whereas it's currently falling under the "Direct" bucket. Ideally, users would also be appending utm parameters to their links, but this isn't happening consistently.
I tried creating a filter to search and replace the following regex (?:^|\?|&)(sbrc=[^&]*&?) with ?utm_medium=email&utm_source=salesloft in the Request URI. This changed the displayed URL when looking at my realtime traffic, but did not change how GA categorized the channel of the traffic (still direct).
I then tried editing the default channel groupings for Email to be the system categorized OR Landing Page URL contains "sbrc" and dragged Email to the first channel grouping at the top. This doesn't seem to have done anything at all.
How can I make GA recognize this custom parameter as being attributable to the Email channel?
You could use advanced filters to solve this task. The Advanced filter lets you construct Fields for reporting from one or two existing Fields.
In your case, advanced filters let you assign values to campaign source and campaign medium, based on the content of the request URL. This is a sample setup for the source field, and you need a second similar filter for medium as well:
Ideally, users would also be appending utm parameters to their links,
but this isn't happening consistently.
If they add their own and use a utm_medium other then utm_medium=Email, then it will not be defined as being in the default Email channel.
Filters are not retroactive.
Filters also run after data has already been processed by Google, to only change how it displays in the reports as it gets sent back into the GA reports.
A Search and Replace Filter applied to the RequestURI for
?utm_medium=email&utm_source=salesloft is not going to have the result you want.
It will change the appearance of the RequestURI in reports, not actually change how that traffic is attributed.
Changes to the default Channel grouping are not retroactive, it should have affect going forward though.
To see the changes in historical data for the Channels, you would do best to create a custom Channel grouping at the View level, this can then be applied retroactively to the historic data.

Use "default channel grouping" as a dimension in Google Analytics API

I would like to use the Google Analytics API to get the data displayed on the Acquisition Overview webpage. Especially, I need to get the sessions (formerly called visits) break by Default channel grouping : Direct, Organic Search, Referral, Social, Paid Search, Email, Display and (Other).
As explained here, these groups are based on regex. Therefore, it might be possible to recode these rules, but I would prefer to use these groups as a dimension.
I googled it and most of the answers are referring to Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF), but according to the MCF dimensions & metrics reference, it's more about conversion.
Does anyone know how to use the Google Analytics API (or GA MCF API) to get such data ?
Thanks a lot !
Acutaly I think you should be looking at the Core Reporting Api and dimensions and metrics
The thing that's going to be a little tricky is that first column. That column is Traffic Type and not something you can export directly. It is calculated based upon Source / medium.
Direct = Source not equal (direct) and Medium not equal to organic referral and cpc
Campaign = Source not equal to (direct) and Medium not equal to organic referral and cpc
organic = Medium is equal to organic
paid = medium is equal to cpc
I cant remember what social was I will have to look into that.
Here is the link where you can find the GA definitions for Default Channel Groupings:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3297892?hl=en&ref_topic=3125765
When you go to this link, just click on the edit icon for the channel whose definition you want to see.
For example, for Social, the definition is:
Social Source Referral exactly matches Yes
OR
Medium matches regex ^(social|social-network|social-media|sm|social network|social media)$
Hope this helps.

Mixable metrics and dimensions in google analytics

I'm doing some complex reports for google analytics and would like to ask you if the following is possible. The client wants to have just organic data for a bunch of metrics. Like pageviews, visitBounceRoutes, etc. The query I ended up with is the following:
https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v3/data/ga?dimensions=ga:source,ga:medium,ga:keyword,ga:day,ga:month,ga:year&end-date=2013-11-20&fields=columnHeaders/name,rows,totalResults,totalsForAllResults&filters=ga:medium==organic&ids=ga:79067749&metrics=ga:pageviews,ga:pageviewsPerVisit,ga:visitors,ga:avgTimeOnSite,ga:newVisits,ga:visitBounceRate&start-date=2013-10-20
However the response is as follows:
'{"totalResults":0,"columnHeaders":[{"name":"ga:source"},{"name":"ga:medium"},{"name":"ga:keyword"},{"name":"ga:day"},{"name":"ga:month"},{"name":"ga:year"},{"name":"ga:pageviews"},{"name":"ga:pageviewsPerVisit"},{"name":"ga:visitors"},{"name":"ga:avgTimeOnSite"},{"name":"ga:newVisits"},{"name":"ga:visitBounceRate"}],"totalsForAllResults":{"ga:pageviews":"0","ga:pageviewsPerVisit":"0.0","ga:visitors":"0","ga:avgTimeOnSite":"0.0","ga:newVisits":"0","ga:visitBounceRate":"0.0"}}'
Can the dimensions ga:source,ga:medium,ga:keyword be mixed with the above metrics? It seems they can't since if I omit them the API returns an array of values 1 per each day within the specified range.
Where can I find more information about this and what categories are mixable? https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets just shows all the available metrics but do not explains how they are combined and which one would be valid requests. I'm new at the analytics API and would be great any kind of help or guidance
Thanks a lot
Google Analytics Query Explorer is your friend for playing around with analytics dimensions/metrics/filters ;-)
Try http://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/explorer/?dimensions=ga:source,ga:medium,ga:keyword,ga:day,ga:month,ga:year&metrics=ga:pageviews,ga:pageviewsPerVisit,ga:visitors,ga:avgTimeOnSite,ga:newVisits,ga:visitBounceRate&filters=ga:medium%253D%253Dorganic&start-date=2013-10-20&end-date=2013-11-20&max-results=100
Some thoughts:
Those dimensions & metrics should work -- maybe there was no organic data recorded during that time range?
Try removing the ga:medium==organic filter and see what your data looks like.
Does the profile you're using (ga:79067749) have any filters on it? If so, maybe try a different profile that has unfiltered data. (Analytics best practices -- make sure you have a profile with no filters applied that captures all data.)
As Mike said, there is no problem with the combination of metrics and dimensions you are using.
If you are entering the URL query directly in the browser problem might be the lack of URL encoding in your query string. For example, you need to convert == to %253D%253D
For example, instead of ga:medium==organic, you need ga:medium%253D%253Dorganic
If you build your query in the Google Analytics Query Explorer as Mike suggests, you can grab the direct link to your report by clicking the link symbol in the upper left:

Google Analytics how to get metric for 'number of active users on website at any one time'

In Google analytics how can i get a metric to put "number of active users on website at any one time". I want to put it against past date periods.
I.E I was scrolling through the metrics, trying to add a widget to my dashboard but, I can't find this metric!
It looks like it's possible because google analytics uses it on their standard report, real-time, "current active visitors on website"
How can I achieve this?
Simply, you can't out of the box. There are some limitations in real-time reports and the ways GA counts unique visitors.
However, if you do not need a detailed analysis, this custom report might do the work (just import it for your Analytics Profile/View and click Customization tab). It basically shows the generic numbers (you can change them to fit your needs) according to hour of a day.
Add any secondary metrics to find out how numbers change in days/weekends etc. Or you can slice the data with segments and see if some traffic is more active in the morning etc.
Hope hits helps.
PS: Beware of data sampling...

Google Analytics: track from inbound link to sale

I need to be able to track whether particular inbound links from an external site result in individual sales - is that possible with Google Analytics?
Goto Traffic Sources -> Sources-> Referals. Klick on the domain name to drill down to the url level. On the top of the page hit the "Ecommerce" Tab. This will give you the number of sales for that link, but not indivdual transactions.
If you need to get down to indivdual transactions your best bet is to ask the external site to add campaign parameters to the link (see here : http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033867), build a custom segement based on the campaign name and apply this to the conversions->transactions display.
On second thought, you might be able to build a segment based on the referal path (so no need for campaign parameters), but I haven't tested this. Worth a try, though.

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