Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Comparing % Change, Google Analytics
-
Hey Mozzers,
Is there a simple way to compare the "% Change" in traffic when comparing two separate time periods in a single Google Analytics report?
When comparing data from two separate time periods, an exported CSV doesn't include the % Change (booo!), and there's no option to sort by % Change within the GA report, essentially forcing you to scroll through all the results to pinpoint the major movers and shakers.
I'm not averse to using spreadsheets to sort this data, but I'm thinking that I'd likely need a macro to make this work, something like this. However, none of the macros on that page are working (possibly because they were designed for a previous version of Analytics).
All suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks!
-
Got it! Pivot table led me to the promised land. Thanks for the advice.
-
Appreciate the suggestions! Forgive my Excel ignorance, but the difficulty stems from not being able to directly compare and sort the data.
So let's say I want to pull my top 500 keywords driving traffic for a week's time and compare them to the previous week. If I pull a CSV from Analytics in a report comparing the two weeks, it'll show the same keyword (biscuits) in rows 8, 9, the same keyword (sandwiches) in rows 10, 11, the same keyword (buns) in rows 12, 13. I could use formulas like =D8-D9 to compare the difference in total traffic for a keyword, and =(D8-D9)/ABS(D8) to get the percentage, but then I can't sort by the difference (because the formula will calculate whatever moved during the sorting), which leaves me in the same bind as I have with Analytics -- not being able to sort by the change in traffic over two different time periods.
If I try to pull two separate CSV's from GA, from two separate weeks, and copy/paste that data into two separate columns, the data won't align correctly. For example, "buns" have been the top keyword driving traffic one week, so it'll be A1, but it was the fourth best keyword the next week, putting it into A4. In other words, the data isn't aligned.
I'm all for trying to display this data with a pivot table, but I'm not sure where to begin. Do you have any resources you could recommend?
-
Excel FTW! A pivot table could handle this for you as Basil said. Or if you wanted to do a one-off formula, it would look something like this:
=(B1-A1)/B1
Where B1 is your number from the more recent time period and A1 is the number from the previous time period.
Hope this helps!
Tim
-
Hi Dan,
There is no way to do that with GA, but you can with excel. What you're trying to accomplish can be easily done and summarized in an excel pivot table (which can also include predefined formulas).
Let me know if you need any help figuring out how to create one.
Basil
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
-
Google analytics suddenly stopped tracking all my landing pages
Hey guys. I love the new update of GA. Looks so clean. So, of course, I was excited to see how my landing pages were doing. I went to behavior, all content, all pages. And I noticed it's only showing me 19 pages out of the 93 I have indexed. And none of the top ones at all! Can't find them anywhere in GA! Anyone seen this before? Thank you so much
Reporting & Analytics | | Meier0 -
Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics
if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com?? I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO0 -
Google Analytics - Organic Search Traffic & Queries -What caused the huge difference?
Our website traffic dropped a little bit during the last month, but it's getting better now, almost the same with previous period. But our conversion rate dropped by 50% for the last three weeks. What could cause this huge drop in conversion rate? In Google Analytics, I compared the Organic Search Traffic with previous period, the result is similar. But the Search Engine Optimization ->Queries shows that the clicks for last month is almost zero. What could be the cause of this huge differnce? e9sJNwD.png k4M8Fa5.png
Reporting & Analytics | | joony0 -
Google Analytics and Bounce Rates Query - Should I block access from foreign countries ?
Hi , When I look at my google analytics for my UK Website, I can see alot of visits come from outside the UK , i.e Brazil and USA. Both of which give me almost 100% bounce rates from people visiting from there. I am wondering, if google looks at bounce rates with regards to ranking factors and should I therefore block access to my site from visitors outside the UK ?... Would this help increase my rankings ? Given that we only serve uk customers, I cant see any benefit of allowing non uk customers the ability to see the site . what does people think ? thanks pete
Reporting & Analytics | | PeteC121 -
Why are plus signs (+) suddenly showing up in Google Analytics organic search keywords reports?
Since June 13, 2013, the number of organic search queries containing a plus sign (+) has gone up over 1,000% compared to the previous period on my site in Google Analytics. These plus signs appear to be taking the place of spaces in these search queries (i.e. "word1+word2+word3"). This appears to be almost (or completely) Google organic traffic, not other search engines. Since I highly doubt searcher behavior would change so suddenly, I'm trying to figure out why Google is replacing spaces with plus signs. Is anyone else seeing this? Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | RCF0 -
Totally Remove "localhost" entries from Google Analytics
Hello All, In Google Analytics I see a bunch of traffic coming from "localhost:4444 / referral". I had tried once before to create a filter to exclude this traffic source, but obviously I did it wrong since it's still showing up. Here is the filter I have currently: Filter Name: Exclude localhost
Reporting & Analytics | | Robert-B
Filter Type: Custom filter > Exclude
Filter Field: Referral
Filter Pattern: .localhost:4444.
Case Sensitive: No Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong and give me a push in the right direction? Thanks in advance!0 -
Custom Variables to track Vimeo plays on website with Google Analytics?
Hello Everyone, I'm trying to track how many times a Vimeo video is played on my site via GA. Does any of you have any knowledge of how can this be achieved? I've read the documentation and came up with this: After the iframe embed i insert this: Of course the GA is loaded in the header. Does not work, at least i cant see anything in analytics. I have set up the segment as per the attached image. Thanks in advance! Alex E6XnO.png
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0