Using advance segments or primary dimensions?
-
Hi guys,
I haven't played around with advance segments enough to know the answer to this, so looking for some help.
What I want to track is a keyword through the whole analytics, so I created an advance segment for "KEYWORD". This segment is Include - Keyword - "KEYWORD".
Now when I remove the advance segment and do the following: Traffic Sources - Organic - Primary Dimension - Keyword - "KEYWORD"
The amounts of visits differ a lot. I'm guessing this has to do with sessions? Looking for a clarification on this.
-
John Barth has the right answer below. Not sure if I can add much more, except specific instructions:
When you apply advanced segments to reports in GA, the report is automatically sampled. In the top right corner of the interface, you'll either notice a message in a yellow container, or a square that looks like a QR code. The visit counts may never match up exactly, but if you adjust the precision of the report to it's highest level, you'll get much closer.
Explanation from Google documentation:
Apart from the standard reports, users may issue ad-hoc queries to Google Analytics. Common queries include applying advanced segments to standard reports, applying a secondary dimension, or running a custom report. When the front-end issues a query, GA inspects the set of pre-aggregated tables to determine whether the query can be wholly satisfied by existing aggregates. If not, GA goes back to the raw session data to process and compute aggregate data on-the-fly. If the resulting report is sampled, you will always see a yellow box at the top of the report which says: This report is based on N visits.
-
One thing it could be... in my GA account, almost all advanced segments cause my report data to use sampled data. If this happens, you'll see a yellow bar off to the right above the graph that says something like "This report is based on 119242 visits (1.16% of visits). Learn more". As it's taking a sample of a small amount of data and then extrapolating the rest, the numbers it displays in the report here can vary a lot from the true numbers.
The keyword data listed in the Traffic Sources - Organic report when not using an advanced segment won't be sampled, that's the actual true data.
-
Are you sure you are looking at visits vs unique visits? I have seen some issues with the custom reports messing up reporting a count of unique visitors. If you could include some screen shots of the two reports you are comparing that would help.
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
-
Page Tracking using Custom URLs - is this viable?
Hi Moz community! I’ll try to make this question as easy to understand as possible, but please excuse me if it isn’t clear. Just joined a new team a few months ago and found out that on some of our most popular pages we use “custom URLs” to track page metrics within Google Analytics. NOTE: I say “custom URLs” because that is the best way for me to describe them. As an example: This page exists to our users: http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Ram_HD/2012/photos-interior/ But this is the URL we have coded on the page: cars-trucks/used-cars/reviews/2012-Ram-HD/photos-interior/ (within the custom variance script labeled as “var l_tracker=” ) It is this custom URL that we use within GA to look up metrics about this page. This is just one example of many across our site setup to do the same thing Here is a second example: Available page to user: http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Cadillac_ATS/2015/ Custom “var l_tracker=” /cars-trucks/2015-Cadillac-ATS/overview/ NOTE: There is a small amount of fear that the above method was implemented years ago as a work-around to a poorly structured URL architecture. Not validated, but that is a question that arose. Main Questions: Is the above implementation a normal and often used method to track pages in GA? (coming from an Omniture company before – this would not be how we handled page level tracking) Team members at my current company are divided on this method. Some believe this is not a proper implementation and are concerned that trying to hide these from Google will raise red flags (i.e. fake URLs in general = bad) I cannot find any reference to this method anywhere on the InterWebs - If method is not normal: Any recommendations on a solution to address this? Potential Problems? GA is currently cataloguing these tracking URLs in the Crawl Error report. Any concerns about this? The team wants to hide the URLs in the Robots.txt file, but some team members are concerned this may raise a red flag with Google and hurt us more than help us. Thank you in advance for any insight and/or advice. Chris
Reporting & Analytics | | usnseomoz0 -
How to configure custom dimension and metric in UA using with and without GTM
In universal analytic we can use more than 20 dimension and metric so can anyone tell me how to configure such feature 1) with google tag manager 2) without google tag manager. Like i read to this level - http://imgur.com/kjA4I91 but dont know what to do further? Regards, Jackin
Reporting & Analytics | | jackinmathis10 -
What happend to Advanced Segments?
I notice Google made a bunch of changes to Analytics this week (although I can't find an official announcement?). Does anyone know where the Advanced Segments feature went??
Reporting & Analytics | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Advanced segements Google Analytics
Hi guys, I was to hasty last time marking the given question as answered. So i would like to ask another question on the subject. My original question was how to get a pdf report of 10 specific keywords with information about visits,pages per view. avg, visit time, new visitors and bounce rate. The answer was to create an advanced segment with "or operators" and adding all keywords on an exact match basis. I did this but it still gives me a list of more then 500 keywords in traffic sources organic view. Next to that i get different visitor numbers for some keywords where it says 40 at the normal segments (all visits) but gives me 0 when i turn on the advanced segment. I've been clicking and changing things for a long time until i got almost dizzy. Could someone plz help?
Reporting & Analytics | | 5MMedia0 -
Is there a way to use Google Analytics event tracking for YouTube embedded videos on my website?
Hello! I am trying to track different types of interaction on the YouTube for videos which are embedded on a website to measure the interaction on these video from my organic traffic. Is there a good way to go about this with the code since these are coming from an iFrame on YouTube? Would appreciate any feedback or help on implementing the event tracking with YouTube videos. Many thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | CabbageTree0 -
How to create an advanced segmentation for Google+?
Hey Mozzers, I have a question regarding Google Analytics. The problem: I have created advanced segments for Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. They all work fine... Now I am trying to create something similar for Google+ (since soon we are launching a campaign for it and I want to be able to check the evolution fast and effective). My advanced segments look like: Include -> Source -> Matching RegExp -> (Facebook|Youtube|Twitter) How should the Google+ be inserted into the group? I know this question might be easy for some advanced Analytics users but I am stuck at this point. Any help appreciated! Thanks in advance! Istvan
Reporting & Analytics | | Keszi0 -
How to Turn Google Analytics Into Your Own Rank Tracker Using Custom Variables
I followed the instructions here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables, but cannot see the report in Analytics under "Custom Variables". As I dont know JS syntax, I assume the code is wrong. I just added dohertyjf's code under my normal tracking code. Can someone tell me if and where the error is? | | Much obliged!
Reporting & Analytics | | zeepartner0 -
Disclaimer about using Google Analytic?
When using GA on my Website do I need to have a disclaimer that 'We are using Google Analtyic to Track information'?
Reporting & Analytics | | daracreative0