Advanced Segment on Google Analytics
-
Hello there,
hope everyone is allright and rockin' the SEO world
Was wondering if anyone could give a tip on how to configure an 'Advanced Segment' on Google Analytics.
Basically I need to isolate traffic for 4 specific subfolders. E.g.
- www.mywebsite.com/solutions/A
- www.mywebsite.com/solutions/B
- www.mywebsite.com/solutions/C
- www.mywebsite.com/solutions/D/part1
Please note that the website has more pages under the specific section. E.g
but  I only need to isolate the 4 directories (and their own sub-folders) mentioned above.
Any idea how I could do this?
Thanks a lot
Joe
-
BTW: We tried to do segmentation via GA and in our opinion segmentation, custom variables, page groups or any other way of segmenting traffic is "broken" due to the way GA tracks a user's session.
We have confirmed this with GA engineers for the last 9 months (another meeting with them tomorrow), but we honestly believe that advanced segmentation (especially if you are in eCommerce) is currently not possible in GA.
The most reliable way we have managed to get this to work is with an alternative analytics package (doing a POC at the moment).
-
Thanks for mentioning the difference, cause I actually had mixed results appearing in the content page reports. I guess I'll setup a second segment for 'Landing pages' only. Thx
-
I might set up 2 advanced segments for the same section and analyse the differences. Having a clear view on the landing pages are important as well. Cheers
-
Thanks for confirming this issue, cause I'm currently seeing mixed results! Will take on your recommendations of cross checking for sanity.
-
Just be aware of the following limitation when using Advanced Segments - this is related to the way Google tracks visitor behaviour during the session:
If for example you configure an Advanced Segment as "Include Page Begins with '/solutions/A'", and then a visitors visits that specific page (or a subdirectory) and then also visits other pages in that session, you will find a few issues:
- /solutions/Y appearing in the Content Page reports (since the user viewed your /solutions/A page and subsequently within that session also viewed /solutions/Y)
- Your segmentation across goals and eCommerce will not work (if you segment on /solutions/A) and hope to see goals originating from that page, you will get mixed results - i.e. also goals or transactions if the user started from another page.
Just do some sanity checks across the data you want to see in the segments - chances are that you will overreport or report on a slightly wrong thing.
-
As Martijn already told it's important to know if you want the advanced segments to segment those sections as landingpages (do people reach the website through that page) or do you want to see all visitors who reached those sections (without having to enter the site through that page)
Because this will give you another Reg.Ex.
-
Hi Joe,
With some easy regular expressions you should be able to do this and create your advanced segment. I'm not sure if you want the landing pages or pages (the disadvantage is you'll also get the other pages people visited before/after they visited your specified pages) within your segment, so that would be your choice.
The regular expression for your advanced segment would be: ^www.mywebsite.com/solutions/A. The ^ is used for making sure your URL is starting with the followed string/url.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Increase in Direct traffic, drop in Google traffic, after updating Google Analytics settings.
I made some changes to our Google Analytics property settings (see notes in screenshot). As a result, there was an equal drop in Google traffic and increase in Direct traffic. Has anyone else seen something like this before? I'm wondering if I should revert. jE7buO6
Reporting & Analytics | | vcj0 -
Google Analytics global page empty
Hello, I don't know what happened with my Google Analytics initial page. For around a week I have there all my websites, but they show no results on global page. If I enter on any property I can see everything as normal, just not on the initial page. Screenshot:Â http://imgur.com/JKFVIh4 For sure I changed anything that I shouldn't. Perhaps you know what's wrong? Thank you in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | prozis0 -
Google Analytics Automated Reporting
HI all, I tend to do a big reporting powerpoint deck using screenshots from google analytics and tables I create year end and mid year. It's like an 80 page report for the 10 webisite swe have and then I go ahead and make annotations as I see from the data. That being said this can take a lot of time, up to a 40 hours of time to pull it all together or more which is challenging when you have daily meetings. Anyhow, I've looked into automating and tried a couple things: 1. Tableau- but it keeps crashing and seems tedious 2. Dashlane and supergrabber- seem a bit tedious to set up too. Anyone have ideas on how to better shar ereporting in the organization in this type of format for a website (websites)? Organic, paid, traffic, etc. Laura
Reporting & Analytics | | lauramrobinson322 -
Uptick in not tracked conversions / anyone have a list of things that google analytics will not track
There seems to have been an uptick in users on our site not being tracked in Google Analytics cause I see a lot more un-tracked revenue in the last 6 months then I used to. I know analytics is still working as it has been tracking a normal amount of visits but I assumed there might be a reason less would be actually showing up in analytics (mabye a change is what is being reported as organic). I know a lot of stuff goes into "not provided" such as logged in search and stuff like that but is there a list of all of the ones that go into not provided and all that just do not get tracked (javascript not enabled, iOS?). If it could be something else as well let me know. Thanks for the help!
Reporting & Analytics | | Gordian0 -
Google Analytics Myth?
Dear Moz-members, I have read several discussions regarding not to implement Google analytics on your website. Reason: Google is tracking your website behavior, for example you have a high bounce rate it will affect your rankings negative. See it as we are opening the doors too much to Google so it can have a negative impact on your online business, especially when your site is new and you are still building your credit. Because of this i have not chosen to install GA. What is your experience with this? Most of the time if i read analytics posts at Seomoz, people do have GA installed. I am also in doubt whether to switch over at GA, but then again mine site is relative new and i am still working on the negative bounce rate/daily visitors. Would like to hear from you pro's whether this is a myth or not 🙂 Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | mcweb0 -
Expert Google Analytics: store with multiple languages and multiple sub-domians
I hope there's some hardcore Analytics shark out there, with a quick reply 🙂 I am setting up a store with multiple languages for a client and need to be able to track multiple sub-domains as a multiple languages in analytics. Example: dk.somedomain.com -> Danish language
Reporting & Analytics | | ReneReinholdt
www.somedomain.com -> English language
no.somedomain.com -> Norweigen language
.. and so on Now what the client would like is to have one single entity with multiple profiles in analytics, like this: somedomain.com
-> www.somedomain.com
-> dk.somedomain.com
-> no.somedomain.com
ex.. So if the client want's to see stats for the English language then he just vlivks the www profile and in case of danish he clicks the dk profile and so on.
 problem here is I can't find an analytics help that addresses this specific issue. I have found this but that doesn't seem to cover it:. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. 🙂0 -
Google Analytics: Difference Between Goal Conversions & Goal Completions
When using Google Analytics, what is the difference between total goal conversions and total goal completions? We have many goals set up in a lead generation environment. Therefore, the only element of conversion is submitted a lead and arriving on the "Thank You" page. THose thank you pages are tagged accordingly. When we run reports though, the number of "Total Goal Conversions" and "Total Goal Completions" never match up.
Reporting & Analytics | | eMagineSEO0 -
Google analytics tracking
Is their a built-in or easy way to track the amount of times an exit link is clicked on a page and show that with other links of the page. For instance: I had a page with several external ad links on it and I want to track how many each got and rank them in google analytics
Reporting & Analytics | | insitegoogle0