Advanced Segment on Google Analytics

[Joseph.Volcy]

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

• www.mywebsite.com/solutions/Z
• www.mywebsite.com/solutions/D/part2

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

[MagicDude4Eva]

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).

[Joseph.Volcy]

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

[Joseph.Volcy]

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

[Joseph.Volcy]

Thanks for confirming this issue, cause I'm currently seeing mixed results! Will take on your recommendations of cross checking for sanity.

[MagicDude4Eva]

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.

[nvs.nim]

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.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

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!