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
-
Can Segment capture organic traffic? If so is it more reliable than Google Analytics?
Hi mozzers, We just learned that our standard GA hasn't been as reliable as we hoped so and we are trying to find other ways to track organic sessions. Which solution would you consider? Is Segment one of them? If so, is it more reliable than Google Analytics? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Ty19861 -
Should I use sessions or unique visitors to work out my ecommerce conversion rate?
Hi all First question here but I've been lingering in the shadows for a while. As part of my companies digital marketing plan for the next financial year we are looking at benchmarking against certain KPIs. At the moment I simply report our conversion rate as Google Analytics displays it. I was incorrectly under the impression that it was reported as unique visits / total orders but I've now realised it's sessions / total orders. At my company we have quite a few repeat purchasers. So, is it best that we stick to the sessions / total orders conversion rate? My understanding is multiple sessions from the same visitor would all count towards this conversion rate and because we have repeat purchasers these wouldn't be captured under the unique visits / total orders method? It's almost as if every session we would have to consider that we have an opportunity to convert. The flip side of this is that on some of our higher margin products customers may visit multiple times before making a purchase. I should probably add that I'll be benchmarking data based on averages from the 1st April - 31st of March which is a financial year in the UK. The other KPI we will be benchmarking against is visitors. Should we change this to sessions if we will be benchmarking conversion rate using the sessions formula? This could help with continuity and could also help to reveal whether our planned content marketing efforts are engaging users. I hope this makes sense and thanks for reading and offering advice in advance. Joe
Reporting & Analytics | | joe-ainswoth1 -
How do I track a primary domain and a subdomain as single site in Google Analytics?
Our website consists of a primary domain (marketing focused) and subdomain (ecommerce platform). The two sites look and function as one site even though they are using different technology. I would like to track the primary domain (example.com) and the subdomain (shop.example.com) as a single site in Google Analytics. The subdomain will be set up with GA ecommerce tracking as well. Can someone provide an example of the GA snippet that each would need?
Reporting & Analytics | | Evan340 -
Best use of Keyword Rankings report
is there a guide for getting the most out of the keyword ranking tool? I currently have 250 or so keywords, some move up, some move down on a weekly basis but generally trend up. That's about as much info as I gain from it though. anyone got any good tips? thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | benj450 -
Anyone notice a drop in results using site operator?
I set our site's preferred domain back on January 28. We had a www and non www domain being indexed. Since then, I've seen the number or results for our site site operator (site:) decline dramatically. Not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. So, I'm trying to see if it's unique to our site. My gut is that the numbers are probably leveling out to where they should be and the duplicates are falling out, but I would think that as I see number of results for non www decline, the number of results for www would increase. Any thoughts? Anyone else seeing fluctuations in results using site: ? Lisa
Reporting & Analytics | | Aggie0 -
Page Speed - What tool to use?
I am looking for a good tool to measure page speed. Any tools out there that you recommend?
Reporting & Analytics | | rmontanez0 -
Do I need to turn off custom results or empty my cache before using the SEOMOZ Pro Rank checker?
I'm getting unusual swings in SERPS ranks from one day to another (I had several keywords ranked in top ten go to the the third or fourth page in a week). I knwo that there's always variation because of localized and custom search, but this seems to be something more.
Reporting & Analytics | | bbelgard0 -
Using Clients GA account for their over all website to Optimize Their Blog? or is there a better way to compare apples to apples
I would like to optimize my clients blog. If I am using their GA account for their over all website but put in the sub folder for SEOMOz, will it detect that I only want to optimize the blog ex. http://xxx.com/blog or will I be seeing the GA for the entire site on SEOMOZ?
Reporting & Analytics | | CliffordC0