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.
Can you arrange Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percentage change?
-
I'm doing a year to year traffic audit for a client. I would like to analyze Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percent change. Is there a way to do this? Do I have to create a custom variable?
-
As most people here have said, the best way is to just do this work outside of GA. Custom variables have to track current site performance, so I don't believe there's a way to build a custom variable that looks at data as it's been recorded in GA in the past.
There are a lot of ways you can put the data together, but when I usually do is use Google's Compare option as you select the time period you're looking at. When you export the data to Excel, Google will create a separate row for every time period, like this:
Source / Medium | Date Range | Sessions .....
google / organic | Jan 13, 2015 - Feb 22, 2015 | 278,834 ...
google / organic | Jan 13, 2014 - Feb 22, 2014 | 247,424 ...
You can combine those into one row fairly easily with VLookup, as Ray suggested, or by creating a Pivot Table, where Source / Medium is the Row Label, Date Range is the Column Label, and Sessions (or whatever metric(s) you're interested in) is the Values.
If you've created a Pivot Table, copy those values over to a new sheet, and calculate the percent change in each row, just like Ray said.
Hope this helps!
Kristina
-
If I'm understanding you correctly, I think you're going to have the same problem with channels. Google changed their reporting structure in July 2013.
-
That would be effective if the Source/Medium was consistent between both years. You might have better luck with Channels for this method (less variation between years), but Source/Mediums are probably going to vary between years. I.e. 2013 includes a Source/Medium that no longer exists in 2014, so the data would not align neatly.
-
You don't have to run a VLookup necessarily. You can align the data side by side and do a simple division formula to calculate the percentage of change. Just copy and paste the data into two columns, and use the IMSUB to find the difference, then divide for a percentage.
-
Hi VC,
Unfortunately, I do not think there is a default reporting option to sort a compared Source/Medium report by % changed. Absolute change is available (although sometimes doesn't sort properly) and may give you a good idea of the traffic differences - Absolute change may even be better since it could identify a low %, but high traffic change.
To find exactly what you're looking for I suggest:
- Export the Source/Medium data for 2014
- Export the Source/Medium data for 2013
- Run a VLOOKUP function in Microsoft Excel to have a single table with 2014/2013 data
Now, you can calculate percentages, absolute values, and sort/filter the data as you see fit. Google Analytics provides a lot of the necessary data analysis tools, but it doesn't replace the power of MS Excel :)....yet.
-
The easiest way to do this is to export the data and work with it outside of Google Analytics. I reccomend using http://www.nextanalytics.com/ to automatically export data from GA into excel.
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
-
How to change domains in Google Analytics without losing the data
Hi there, We recently changed our domain from .COM to .NET so that all our subdomains from external pages matched. Right now in Google Console we have our new .NET website being tracked, but in GA we are still tracking .COM. It is also causing issues with MOZ crawling our site because of the .COM/.NET discrepancy. My question is what is the best way to change our Google Analytics from .COM to .NET without losing historical data and what considerations do we need to change before implementing this? Our team was concerned that just downloading the old data would be too vast and it we wouldn't be able to continue manipulating it dynamically in GA. Thanks!!
Reporting & Analytics | | cPanel-LLC.0 -
Did Analytics change the way to handle Google images searches on Dec 12?
Dear all, One of the sites I'm monitoring receives a lot of traffic from image searches or images that appear in universal search results. On Dec 12th, 2015, the bounce rate for these sessions went from around 30% the day before to around 87%. See screen shot below. Did anybody notice similar bounces in the bounce rate? Did Google change something in the way that image search is handled? Looking forward to your ideas! large?v=mpbl-1&px=999
Reporting & Analytics | | AABMarketing_Frank0 -
Google Analytics Real Time Not Working! :(
Hello Everyone, Today, the real time feature in my google analytics stopped working. I am able to see that traffic is visiting my site, but not in real time. The real time count is usually at 0. But, there are some instances where real time will come back online, but there will be only 1 unique visitor. At any given time, our website usually has 20 visitors or so..Has anyone encountered this issue? Where should i start looking for fixes? What are the possible problems? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | KarlMarxTheBear0 -
Tracking time spent on a section of a website in Google Analytics
Hi, I've been asked by a client to track time spent or number of pages visited on a specific section of their website using Google Analytics but can't see how to do this. For example, they have a "golf" section within their site and want to measure how many people either visit 5 page or more within the golf section or spend at least 6 minutes browsing the various golf section pages. Can anyone advise how if this can be done, and if so, how I go about it. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | geckonm0 -
How many users completely block Google Analytics cookies ?
Hello everyone! In your experience, how many of your visitors' browsers completely block cookies including those of Google Analytics ?
Reporting & Analytics | | Masoko-T0 -
Google Analytics - Keywords (not set) or ( not provided) WHY???
In Analytics, most of my visitors are landing on my home page, but when trying to see wich keywords they use, most of them are: (not set) or ( not provided) See screencast: http://screencast.com/t/AKwPW76qLVsN Can you tell why? What is going on? Is there a way to solve this? Thank you, BigBlaze
Reporting & Analytics | | BigBlaze2050 -
Setting up Google Analytics default URL
If someone has set: the default url in Google Analytics to a non-www address (http://mysite.com) then placed the UA tracking script from that GA account within the CMS framework of the website... ... and then set the permanent 301 redirect in the htaccess file to redirect to the www address (http://www.mysite.com). How less accurrate will my GA analytics measurements be considering the default url within GA is non-www and the permanent 301 redirect in htacess is to the www-address? Anyone know how reliable GA reports are until the default url in GA analytics is changed to match what is the redirected url in htaccess file? _Cindy
Reporting & Analytics | | CeCeBar0 -
Should you get a new Google Analytics account if your site has a new domain after a site redesign/new development?
We recently developed a new site for a client and they have opted to move forward with a domain change. Should we create a new Google Analytics account for the new site?
Reporting & Analytics | | TheOceanAgency0