Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Reporting & Analytics
    4. Google Analytics: Different stats for date range vs single month?

    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.

    Google Analytics: Different stats for date range vs single month?

    Reporting & Analytics
    3
    5
    8366
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Bio-RadAbs
      Bio-RadAbs last edited by

      I've been scratching my head, chin, and you name it over this one.

      I have an advanced segment to remove bot traffic from my data. When I look at the Audience Overview data for a single month (let's say Aug). I am shown a session count.

      No problems here, however If I set the date range to (January - August). The august monthly stats is incorrect, much lower. What this means is that, if I export a CSV report from Jan-Aug, the data is wrong compared to individually recording a month.

      Anyone faced this? I've asked the question over at the Google Analytics technical section as well, but no answer

      P.S I even used the 'control the number of sessions used to calculate this report' tool but no luck.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Bio-RadAbs
        Bio-RadAbs last edited by

        Google's pre-built filters are working fine for me (i.e. all sessions) and it's my bot filter when I view via a date range vs month only that is causing the confusion.

        I got an answer from the google analytics technical page. There is a setting to exclude bot traffic, therefore avoiding the need to build custom segments.

        You can do this for each profile so I've turned it on to test, let's see how my results turn out. If it removes the bot traffic automatically, then the date range wouldn't change. Here's how to do it:

        Admin >> View Settings >> Bot Filtering (Click the Check Box) then the Save button. Done... no need for a dedicated segment.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • RG_SEO
          RG_SEO last edited by

          I agree with Bendall that sampling is what is most likely causing your problem here. You may find this post useful: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1042498?hl=en-GB

          I suspect that the reason that your sampled total closely matches the total of individually downloaded monthly data is because sampled data is Google's 'best guess' when the data in the date range becomes too large. This best guess is based on sound statistics, but ultimately there will be some variances. I've found these variances get bigger the larger your site and the larger your date range. Google do this to reduce load on their servers as crunching the numbers for large data sets can be very resource intense. You COULD upgrade to Google Analytics Premium which gives you un-sampled data as standard, but this is very expensive and only really suitably for large organisations.

          There is no easy way round this I'm afraid. I'd suggest that you think about what level of data you are comfortably using - sampled data can still give you valuable insights / trends. Some are comfortable with using sampled data (I prefer now too). I believe there are some tools that allow you to download un-sampled data from Google Analytics via their API but I have not tried these.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Bio-RadAbs
            Bio-RadAbs @Bendall last edited by

            I didn't know about this. I always thought the a data range would show the same data as the small range.

            Strange thing is, If I note down each month's sessions individually and then add them up, they closely match the total session count my data range gives. Its just that my month data within the range that is wrong.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Bendall
              Bendall last edited by

              Are you sure the data in the larger date range is not being "Sampled". Always more dependable to add up smaller date ranges from my experience in the free version of GA, as if their is too much data to crunch it will take a sample and upscale it.

              Regards

              Ben

              Bio-RadAbs 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Meier

                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 | | Meier
                0
              • Kevin.Monks

                What is Local SEO in Google Analytics (Organic Source)

                Recently, I saw "Local SEO" is mentioned as the organic source. Can someone please tell what is this and from where Google is fetching data for this source?

                Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin.Monks
                0
              • jayoliverwright

                Google Analytics reporting traffic for 404 pages

                Hi guys, Unique issue with google analytics reporting for one of our sites. GA is reporting sessions for 404 pages (landing pages, organic traffic) e.g. for this page: http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php the page is currently a 404 page but GA (see screenshot) is reporting organic traffic (to the landing page). Does anyone know any reasons why this is happening? Cheers. http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php GK0zDzj.jpg

                Reporting & Analytics | | jayoliverwright
                2
              • Brand_Psychic

                Google Analytics shows most referrers as "Direct" -- What are some better tools?

                Very often Google Analytics will show 50-90% of our referrers as (direct) which is not very helpful. Are there other tools out there that will provide a clearer breakdown of what other websites are sending us our traffic? Specifically, I want to be able to be able to tell who are the top traffic referrers to my top performing pages on my site for the last 30 days. (I want to be able to study this on a per-page basis.) Thanks in advance!

                Reporting & Analytics | | Brand_Psychic
                0
              • aaronprimal

                Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics

                I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.

                Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal
                0
              • AdvanceSystems

                Google Analytic - Is it possible to see which organic keyword triggered goals?

                Hi, I am trying to see which of my Google organic keywords triggered my goals? In GA I click > Conversion > Goals > Overview > Source Medium (This then says where my goals came from but when I click Google / Organic it just brings me to the overview page of my organic traffic). Is it possible to see which organic keywords trigger goals?

                Reporting & Analytics | | AdvanceSystems
                0
              • Robert-B

                Localhost:4444 Showing Up in Google Analytics

                Hello All, Lately in my Google Analytics account I have noticed a referral source labelled: localhost:4444 The number of visits is really high from this source, but I have no idea (no clue!) what it actually means. Can anyone shed some light on what this is about? Should I be creating some sort of filter to screen out this as a referral source (assuming it is not legitimate)? Many thanks in advance. Cheers!

                Reporting & Analytics | | Robert-B
                0
              • daracreative

                Setting Up Google Analytic with Sub Folder Sites

                What is the best way of setting up Google Analytic for a website that has many sub folders? The main site is example.com and it has 40 sub folder sites like example.com/uk example.com/France etc etc Would it be advised to track a single domain in Google Analytic then create filters for the sub folder sites. Filters > Include traffic from > Sub directories Also with this method is it possible to view overall incoming website stats for everything? Previous experience would be great with this thanks 🙂

                Reporting & Analytics | | daracreative
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.