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I'm trying to generate sessions and users information on all traffic containing a certain web address (we'll call it www.example.com). I'm using the Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-On.

My current report configuration for the add-on:

Type: core
Start Date: 1/1/2015
End Date: 12/31/2015
Metrics: ga:sessions ga:users
Dimensions: ga:date ga:landingpagepath
Filters: ga:landingpagepath=~www.example.com

The issue is when I replicate the report in Google Analytics the numbers do not match up. The session numbers in GA are higher than the numbers in the spreadsheet while the users number is lower in GA than in the add-on. It does not seem that the add-on is pulling all pages that contains the web address.

For reference the filter I used in GA is include; landing page; Regex; www.example.com

Am I using the =~ filter incorrectly?

Thank you for your help.

samthebrand
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Benny Xie
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2 Answers2

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The discrepancy might be due to sampling. Is your API report sampled? If you're using Google Sheets, it will tell you so in the report heading.

If the discrepancy is an order of magnitude then it's probably something else.

Also, you probably should consider using an advanced segment instead of a View filter to isolate a specific landing page within a View. But it depends on your particular use case.

samthebrand
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  • I think the issue here is that Google will sample the data unless you have a premium account. As I'm trying to automatically pull data into a google sheet I think this is the only way. Not sure if this can be a potential solution but found this on Google's Dev pages - https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/config/mgmt/v3/mgmtUnsampledReports – Benny Xie Jun 12 '15 at 18:24
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Certain metrics requested will have GA pull sampled data. I changed the metrics to only ga:sessions and the data returned as non-sampled.

Benny Xie
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