I've just started using google analytics, and except of a quick beginners tutorial I don't know very much :-).
I have a website with few steps in the sign-up page. In the first step the user verifies his phone number. I want to have a list of all the users phones that completed the verification step but didn't finish the registration. In order to do this I send the following events in each step:
{eventAction: 'registration phase1', 'eventLabel': userPhoneNumber}.
{eventAction: 'registration phase2', 'eventLabel': userPhoneNumber}.
{eventAction: 'registration phase3', 'eventLabel': userPhoneNumber}.
I want to create a report that shows me all the phone numbers of the users who fired the first event but didn't fire the third event. I tried to achieve this by using event advanced filters with include and exclude condition but it seems that data being shown is not correct. I also tried to do this using the Query Explorer but I couldn't find out how to do this.
You can do this by first using the Google Analytics web UI to create a segment. You can learn more about segments here.
You'd want to use "include" and "exclude" sessions or users depending on your need. The setup will look something like this, adjust the events action/category/label as you wish to match the events you want.
Save your segment and head over to the Query Explorer.
Select the appropriate property and view which you created the segment. Under the "segment" field type in the name of the segment you just created like so:
Fill in the rest of the form with the dates, dimensions/metrics that you want and you should get results according to that segment. No additional filtering needed.
I have created the dimension, it's currently my only one so it has index 1. It has session level scope and is active.
I have also created a custom report to see any results I might get from it. All the report does is show the Session metric against my custom dimension. Nothing extra such as filters.
In my code (which until now was unmodified) I have added the following line between the 'create' and 'send' calls:
ga('set', 'dimension1', 'test');
Nothing is appearing in the report, or anywhere else when I use this dimension as a secondary dimension.
I have tried on a second GA property of mine and it also doesn't work there.
What am I doing wrong?
Generally, it takes 1-3 hrs for the dimension data to show in GA UI. But there are ways to check if the hit you sent contains the dimension or not.
On your browser, check the ga requests ( Like in chrome -> Inspect -> Network -> filter by collect). If you have included the dimension correctly, the pageview hit sent must contain cd1 parameter (1 is the index of the dimension). If the hit contains the dimension and value, then wait for few hours and your report will show the data.
You can also use Google Analytics Debigger to check the requests sent to ga by your website page
Say my URL is in the format of www.mywebsite.com/search?keywords=library.
Aside from using Page Level 1 or Page Level 2, is there any way I could specifically get the value of a certain GET variable to be the column of my Google Analytics table?
I currently have this table (see below), but I'm using a Page Level column which I think is kind of a cheat. I'd prefer if there was a method to just pull through a specific section of the URL.
Is there a way to do this?
You can create a custom dimension in analytics. Go to your property settings -> custom definitions -> custom dimensions -> new. Give it a name (that will appear as column label in your reports). Since the keyword is part of the url hit level scope seems the best fit (meaning that your dimension is associated with a specific user interaction - you could also choose to tie it to the complete session).
If you create the custom dimension it will have a numeric index which you use in your tracking code together with the "dimension" keyword. The following example assumes you have created your first dimension (index 1) and are using php:
ga('send', 'pageview', {
'dimension1': "<?php echo filter_input(INPUT_GET, 'keywords', FILTER_SANITIZE_ENCODED); ?>"
});
(you can use another/better filter but do not put the variable directly into your page).
Now the value is send along with the pageview. Custom dimension do not show up in the standard reports, but you can use them in custom reports or set them as secondary dimensions in your standard reports.
I have a site with a store search that posts in the following format.
www.site.com/store-locator?city=&province=&zip[postal_code]=68123
I am trying to configure GA to give me feedback on people visiting this page and a count of specific zips searched.
example report data
/store-locator?city=&province=&zip[postal_code]=68123 1000 visits
/store-locator?city=&province=&zip[postal_code]=68456 768 visits
/store-locator?city=&province=&zip[postal_code]=68789 221 visits
note: the 'city' and 'province' values may also be populated (and I will want to mod GA to give similar data on these too).
Can anyone give feedback on how to configure GA to give me data similar to this?
Thanks!
As far as I know, the only way to look at this type of segment historically is using individual segments, which doesn't work well for an arbitrary number of zip codes. However, you can collect this data more effectively as described for new traffic. This comes up often with information like categories, tags, dates, query string variables, etc.
You can create Segments for each zip. This will work for historical analysis, but is impractical beyond a few. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3124493?hl=en&ref_topic=3123779
You can also use Content Grouping to create groups. This will not work historically. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2853423
The way I've handled this is using Custom Dimensions, which replaced Custom Variables when Universal came out. This also only works for future data.
To use Custom Dimensions, you would pass the zip code to google analytics explicitly when calling the analytics javascript code.
You can pull querystrings with javascript, or echo the parameter using something like PHP as follows:
<?php
if (array_key_exists("zip",$_GET)) { $theZip = $_GET["zip"]; }
else { $theZip = "nozip"; }
?>
And, sending the custom dimension --
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX');
ga('set', {'dimension1': '<?php echo $theZip; ?>'})
ga('send', 'pageview');
You also need to setup the custom dimension in the Analytics Profile. Docs on custom dimensions https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/platform/customdimsmets
/store-locator?city=&province=&zip[postal_code]=68123 1000 visits
Step 1: In GTM, create a new macro. I called mine {{province}}
Macto Type = URL
Component Type = Query
Query Key = province
This will populate the Macro with the value of province from the query string.
Step 2: In your Google Analytics property, define a custom dimension called "province". This will assign an index key to the dimension.
Step 3: In your GTM tag for Google Analytics, you will find Custom Dimensions under more settings. Add a new dimension, apply the index number from #2 and for the dimension select the macro you created from #1
Publish and you are all set.
Now when you look in Google Analytics, you can add a secondary dimension and choose your newly created custom dimension.
I am trying to use google universal analytics and its custom dimensions.
On one page, I want to send multiple values for one (and one only) dimension.
I tried:
ga('send', 'pageview', {'dimension1': 'grumpy cat'})
ga('send', 'pageview', {'dimension1': 'happy cat'})
When I use google API, I can get for my dimension1 all the values I just sent - so it works well.
However I think (I am not sure about it) that I should not send several times a pageview hit on the same page because it would disrupt the pageview metric.
So I tried to use a custom metric (pageview is a metric after all):
ga('send', 'metric1', {'dimension1': 'grumpy cat'})
ga('send', 'metric1', {'dimension1': 'happy cat'})
But this one doesn't work at all :(
It seems ga.('send'... only accepts pageview but it is weird (why specify pageview in the arguments if it is the only value possible?)
How can I solve my problem? Is it just a syntax issue, is it not possible with custom dimension / custom metric? Can I actually use pageview to do it? Should I use custom events instead of that?
Thank you!
* edit *
I actually found out that I may use an event with a label like:
ga('send', 'event', 'cat', 'view', 'grumpy')
ga('send', 'event', 'cat', 'view', 'happy')
(If anyone can confirm it or have comments I would be happy with that)
I had a similar problem a while back. The thing is, you cannot push multiple values to a single custom variable (dimension or metric) in both Google Analytics (GA) and Universal Analytics (UA). What happens when you push more than one value to a custom variable, dimension, or metric for a single page (or session or user, depending upon the scope of the custom variable, dimension or metric, if you're using UA) is that the last reported value is the only one that is recorded. The last value overrides the previously set value. So, you have tried to record two pageviews with 2 different values for your custom variable (or dimension).
In your case, say a person loads a search results page after having included two categories, grumpy cat and happy cat, and you want to record both of them in a custom variable or dimension by reporting the variable (or dimension) twice, and if you send them in the order you mentioned,
ga('send', 'pageview', {'dimension1': 'grumpy cat'});
ga('send', 'pageview', {'dimension1': 'happy cat'});
you are simply recording two different pageviews (which will skew your reports in innumerable ways, depending on the number or categories you may have). For example, if a person visits more than 5 categories, you will have duplicate pageviews, and your time on page will be drastically reduced, as according to UA (or GA) these pageviews (except for the last one) would have lasted for less than one second.
Also, any events you wanted to link to those custom variables (or dimensions), would only be linked to the last pushed pageview or custom variable (or dimension). As an example, if you had an event tracking set up to identify how many people interacted with the search results, and if you then wanted to filter by category (dimension1 in your case now), to know how many people interacted with the page when dimension1 equals grumpy cat you would get 0, as the events would have only been recorded for the pageview with ddimension1 equal to happy cat because that was the page which GA (or UA) thinks the user had been viewing when firing the event, and that page only had dimension1 set to happy cat. Since those two calls are async, you would actually never be able to know if the events were sent to the pageview you think it went to, even as I explained.
The better way to record this type of data would be to use url-encoded category names, space separated, and a space appended to the end of the list also. As an example, you must send the pageview as,
ga('send','pageview',{'dimension1':'grumpy-cat happy-cat '});
or better, as,
ga('set',{'dimension1':'grumpy-cat happy-cat '});
ga('send','pageview');
Note the space at the end also. This extra space allows you to filter any report based on the custom variable using the reg-ex <categoryName>\s. As an example, to find out how many people viewed a page with category Grumpy Cat, you will filter your report such that the dimension1 matches regex grumpy\-cat\s. I have escaped the - character in regex using \-, and \s stands for a whitespace character. The good thing is, such a report will fetch you all pageviews (or whatever you want to look at), those with only the grumpy cat as category name, as well as those pages which have grumpy cat in the categories to which a page belongs.
A way to add subcategories is to send dimensions as cat1 cat1-subcat1 cat1-subcat2 cat2 cat2-subcat1 so that the regex cat1\s will take care of all category level pages, whereas the regex cat1 will take care of all pages which have category cat1 or which have a subcategory belonging to cat1.
Hope that helps. :)
On a side note, using events for views of a page containing a category is not a nice way of recording it. Because, if you assign dimensions (and this is one of the reasons why custom dimensions were introduced, as different sites have different categories and Google can't name all), your events will also carry the dimensions of the page and it helps a lot to identify which categories are in need of what, by simply segmenting your reports by, in your case, dimension1. For example, you will get to know which category has highest SEO visits and which has the best conversion rates, and stuff. Happy analysing! :)
As it's already stated previously, you can not push multiple values at once. However, this is just an indication the approach to collect events data is not right, that is this is not a page view event anymore. My case was different, but the solution breaks down as follows:
You have multiple values to push into UA at once, say cat's features such as white, grumpy, hungry
Now, you actually realise that this is not a page view event, but rather yet another dimension - cat views/conditions/features - name it whatever you like;
You create a custom event in your GTM, called 'cat-condition';
You create a new tag in GTM collecting cats condition;
You create that custom dimension in GA and GTM, and every time you have to record cats condition you do something similar to the following (extremely simplified code sample)
['white', 'grumpy', 'hungry'].forEach(condition =>
dataLayer.push({event: 'cat-condition', condition})
)
Code snippet assumes you have GTM container configure on the page to enable dataLayer.
Finally, create a custom report in GA to deal with cat conditions. Surely, you can push more details with every single cat's condition to be able to relate it with the page details etc, but this way you have quite a flexible solution with the data being normalised right from the beginning.