Google Analytics: Creating Advanced Segments and an Issue

Last month Google Analytics released Advanced Segmentation functionality. I am very impressed with it so far, however this functionality is still in beta, which means it could potentially have some issues. In this post I will show you how to create an advanced segment and one issue that I found with it.

Business Problem: I want to see all the data for visits that originate from Google.

Solution: Create an Advanced Segment that will have all the visits that has the source as google.

Let’s see how to create such a segment. (Not this is a very simple segment but the same steps can be used to create more complex segments).

Creating an “Advanced Segment”

1. Click on the “Advanced Segments” link on the left navigation bar under the “Settings” section.

   

2. In the next screen you will see all the “Advanced Segments”. In this screen you manage all the advanced segments. Google Analytics has predefined some of the segments and they are grouped under “Default Segments”. The segments that you create will be listed under “Custom Segments”. To create a new segment, click on the “Create new custom segment” link on the top right hand corner.

   

3. The next screen is where you create the segment. The segments can be created by using one or more dimensions and metrics. On the left hand side you have 2 sections “Dimensions” and “Metrics”. I chose a dimension of “Source” listed under “Traffic Source” as I wanted to see all the visits which originated from Google (i.e. the source was Google). I chose “contains” as the condition as I wanted to get all the visits that originated from anything that contained Google in the source. Finally I entered the word “google” in the value.

   

4. Click on “Test Segment” button to do a sanity check and see if the segment size is as expected. Once you are satisfied with the segment, give it a name in “New Segment” filed and click “Save Segment” to Save the segment.

   

5. Once you the save the segment you will be taken back to “Mange Segments” where your new segment will appear. See below, a new segment called “Google Visits” show up. The new segment is now ready to be applied to various reports.

   

So far so good. However, I found one potential issue with the data.

The Issue

I applied this segment to one of the pages in my Content Report (see below) and chose the date as Nov 3rd.

As you can see my “Google Visit” segment is reporting 328 pageviews while my “All Segments” is reporting only 175 pageviews. That does not seem right. Similarly Unique Views is 112 for “All Visits” while 201 for “Google Visits”. As you can also see from the graph, “Google Visits” are higher than “All Visits” on several dates not just November 3rd. Has anyone else seen something similar? Am I not reading these reports correctly?

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Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/anilbatra
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Goal Attribution to Organic Keywords – Google Analytics Tips and Tricks

In April I wrote a blog post to show you why some of your keywords show 0 Visits and 0 page views in your Google Analytics Report. In this post I am going to show the attribution of goal to the search engine keywords, when a user searches multiple keywords on the search engines to visit your site (all within the same session) and converts from one of the keywords.

Note: The past post and this one are both based on the Organics keywords searches and clicks.

I conducted two following two experiments

1. Converted on the Last Keyword
   1. Searched “1 page no register seattleindian” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com/ , viewed one page and existed the site by typing Google.com in the browser address bar
   2. Searched “2 pages no register seattleindian” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com, viewed 2 pages and then exited the site by typing Google.com in the browser address bar
   3. Searched “4 pages register seattleindian” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com , registered on the site (converted, Goal 1), viewed total of 4 pages and then exited the site by closing the browser
   4. All of the above was done within 30 minutes and using the same browser session

   Visit and Page View Attribution

   As you can see my visit resulted in 3 keywords, total of 7 page views and 1 visit (visit time out is 30 mins and all of it was done in 30 minutes). As I showed you in the last post, 1 page view is shown and attributed to 1st keyword. The other keywords do not get visits or page views attribution (Figure 1). The total pages are accounted and counted in the keyword report even though 6 pages were not attributed to any particular keyword (Figure 2)

   
   Figure 1 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   
   Figure 2 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   Goal Attribution

   In this scenario, the Goal is attributed to overall search engine keywords but not to any particular keyword.

   
   Figure 3 (click on the image to enlarge it)

2. Converted on the First Keyword
   1. Searched “SeattleIndian 4 pages register test 3” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com , viewed 4 pages, registered on the site (converted, Goal 1) and then exited the site by typing in Google.com in the browser address bar
   2. Searched “SeattleIndian 3 pages no register test 3” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com, viewed 3 pages and then exited the site by typing Google.com in the browser address bar
   3. Searched “SeattleIndian 1 pages no register test 3” on Google, arrived on http://www.seattleindian.com , viewed 1 page and then existed the site by closing the browser
   4. All of the above was done within 30 minutes and using the same browser session

   Visit and Page View Attribution

   In this case I converted (Goal 1) when I arrived via the first keyword. When I look at the Site Usage of keywords, the first keywords is credited with 1 visit and 4 pages, the other two keywords did not get any credit of the visit or the pages that were viewed as a result of click on those keywords. So the 3 pages are not attributed to any keyword. This is what I showed in my last post.

   
   Figure 4 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   
   Figure 5 (click on the image to enlarge it)

   Goal Attribution

   In this scenario when the conversion happens from the first keyword, the goal is properly attributed to that keyword.

Conclusion

When a user searches multiple keywords to arrive to the site,

1. The visit is attributed to the first keyword only
2. The page views directly related to the first keyword are attributed to that keyword and other keywords show 0 visit and 0 page views
3. Total page views from all the keywords are counted in the overall keyword report
4. If the conversion happens as a result of the first keyword then it is attributed to that keyword
5. If the conversion happens as a result of any of the keyword other than the first one, then the conversion is not attributed to any of the keywords
6. The conversion from any keyword is counted in the overall keyword report

What’s next? I will be testing how attribution works when a user clicks both Organic (SEO) and Paid PPC (search result) within the same visit.

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Tracking TV Campaigns on Google AdWords using Google Analytics

Today Google announced, that the advertisers who run TV Campaigns via Google AdWords can track the online impact of those TV ads using Google Analytics.
According to Google AdWords blog, you can track website metrics, such as visits, conversion rates and revenue, alongside metrics from your TV Ads campaigns such as:

• Impressions delivered
• Number of ad plays
• Cost
• CPM paid

• Impression Delivered is Total impressions delivered — an impression is defined as an active television that is tuned to and displays your commercial for 2 seconds or more.
• Number of Ad plays – I am not sure what this means but this probably refers to total number of active televisions that viewed the entire ad. I will provide more information as I get more detials.
• Cost is the total cost that was paid for the campaign
• CPM is the cost per thousand impressions delivered

So now you can start to see online, radio and TV ads all in the same reporting. Pretty cool!!

Here is a screen shot of the report that you will get.

Google Analytics: Tips and Tricks – Why do some search keywords show 0 visits

Question 1: A visitor goes to Google searches for a keyword, come to my site views few pages then goes back to Google does another search and comes back to my site all within 30 minutes (same visit). Which keyword will get credit for the visitors activity?

Question 2: I see a lot of keywords with 0 visits and 0 page views in my Google Analytics keyword report. What does that mean?

Answer:
Google Analytics, assigns the visitors activity to the first keyword that drove visitor to the site and assigns only those pages to the keyword that were a direct result of the first keyword. Note: This test was done on Organic results only, I will look at the impact of paid search (PPC) in my future tests.
Let’s look at an example. I used SeattleIndian.com for this test.
Here are the steps that I took

1. Did a search on “SeattleIndian.com 0 pages” and landed on SeattleIndian.com via a click on search results.
2. Bounced back (viewed only 1 page) and went to Google (by typing in Google.com)
3. Did a search on “SeattleIndian.com 1 pages” and landed again on SeattleIndian.com via a click on search results.
4. Again bounced back (viewed only 1 page) to Google (by again typing in Google.com)
5. Did a search on “SeattleIndian.com 4 pages” and landed again on SeattleIndian.com via a click on search results
6. Viewed 4 pages and left.

Below is the Google Analytics report showing the activity.

As you can see one page that I viewed from 1st keyword “SeattleIndian.com 0 pages” get assigned to that keyword and it also gets the credit for visit. The other 2 keywords do not get the credit for the visit or the pages views. The other 2 keywords will show 0 visit and 0 page views.

So where do the page views associated with the other keyword go? Well, I don’t have an answer for that yet. I am still researching and will blog once I have an answer.

In next article I will discuss which keyword gets the credit for conversion if a visitor uses multiple keywords to come to the site and converts with one of the keywords. Is it the first keyword, 2nd keyword or the 3rd keyword that gets credit? (Assuming visitors used 3 keywords).

Google Analytics: Tips and Tricks – Show Visitor Behavior from Specific Countries

Problem:
We need to see the online behaviors of visitors from USA and Canada using Google Analytics. In other words we need a profile which only has traffic from USA and Canada.

Solution:

1. Create a profile in Google Analytics in which you would like to capture visits from USA and Canada.
2. Create a filter that includes visits from USA and Canada only (described below).
4. Apply the filter to the profile that you would like to show the data in. (The filter is automatically applied to the profile that you use to create the filter).

Creating the filter to include US and Canada Traffic Only

1. Filter Name: Give a Name to your Filter.
   
2. Filter Type: Select “Custom Filter” and select “Include” in the radio button. We are creating a custom filter to include US and Canada Traffic Only.
   
3. Filter Field: Select “Visitor Country” as the filter field. Visitor country is populated based on the IP address of the visitors.
   
4. Filter Pattern: This is where you enter the country names. The small trick is with the format and finding out what to enter as the country names. In this case where I needed the visitor behavior from US and Canada, I used United States and Canada as the countries and my filter was
   (Canada|United States). () is required to group all the values together and | is used as on OR.
   So what this filter patter is telling is to match either one of the 2 values (Canada and United States) in the Filter Field (Visitor Country).

   Here is the final view

   

   Now the question is why did I enter United Sates and Not United States of America of USA or US?
   You need to enter what Google Analytics captures the country name as. To find out what you should enter in the country name, go to a profile that does not have any country filters. Go to Visitors –> Map Overlay and scroll down to see the names of the countries. Use the name exactly as it shows in this list.
   
   

More Google Analytics Tips.

Comments? Questions?

Google Analytics: Tips and Tricks – Show Visitor IP Address in a Report

Problem:
A user of web analytics yahoo group asked if there is a way to show visitors IP address in Google Analytics (GA).

Solution:
Visitors IP address is shown in one of the out of the box reports of most of the web analytics tool or can be easily configured by few clicks. That’s not the case with Google Analytics. I had not tried to create this report in Google Analytics but thought this should not be difficult considering Visitor IP was one of the options available in Google Analytics filters. But after few tries (and finally an email from Brian Clifton, head of Web Analytics at Google EMEA, confirmed that Google Analytics does not allow you to show visitor IP in any report. In fact they do not store Visitor IP because it is considered a Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and storing it in GA is against Google’s Privacy Policy. If you are interested in knowing what I tried (because I thought that it will work) continue reading else you have your answer:

Google Analytics does not allow you to see Visitors IP in any report.

What I Tried:
I created a Custom Filter to grab Visitor IP and put it in “User Defined” visitor attribute. “User Defined” attribute is then shown in “User Defined” report (Figure 1 and Figure 2). This attribute can also be used to segment some other reports (Figure 3).
Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

How to create “Visitor IP” Filter

1. Click on “Edit” next to the profile for which you want to create the filter for.
   
2. Click on “Add Filter” on the next screen
   
3. On Next Screen
   
   1. Choose “Add New Filter for Profile” radio button
   2. Enter a description name for filter in “Filter Name” field e.g. “Show Visitor IP”
   3. Select “Custom” from “Filter Type” drop down
   4. Choose “Advanced” radio button
   5. Select “Visitor IP” from “Field A -> Extract A” field drop down and enter (.*) in the field next to it. What this is telling GA is to select Visitor IP and extract all of the content into a temporary variable called A.
   6. Skip the next line “Field B -> Extract B” as you don’t need any other value
   7. Select “User Defined” from “Output To -> Constructor” and enter $A1 in the next field. What this is telling GA is that take the first value from A (hence $A1) and put it into “User Defined” variable. This will then show up in “User Defined” report.
   8. Select “Field A Required” as Yes
   9. Select Field B Required” as No, since there is no Field B
   10. Select “Override Output Field” to Yes because you want the new value to replace anything that might be there (also note that “User Defined” attribute can have only one value).
   11. Select “Case Sensitive” as No
   12. Click “Finish” button (not shown in the screen above)

The above steps create the filter and will be automatically applied to the profile that you created it for.
Since GA allowed me to choose Visitor IP and create a filter my first reaction was that it should work (not knowing that GA does not store IP). I should have got a hint when I did not see any results and went back to edit my filter. The filter screen had wiped out my selection of Visitor IP in field A (see below).
I thought it was a bug but now I think GA was telling me that “It Won’t Work”. Lesson Learned. Remember what Thomas Alva Edison said” I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

So why I am writing about Google Analytics? Well earlier this month, I wrote in my 2008 Web Analytics prediction that

Google Analytics will mature further and start taking customers from other analytics tools like Omniture, WebTrends, Clicktracks etc. The configuration will become little complicated (and hence need for Google Analytics Expertise will grow) and Google will also expose more APIs to allow companies to pull and merge different kinds of data with Web Analytics Data.

Considering, if what I predicted will indeed come true then it is time to start writing about the lessons I learn while configuring Google Analytics and share my experience so that others can learn from my success and mistakes and also share their experiences.

Have you done custom configuration in GA? Would you like to share your custom configurations? How you created them, what worked what did not etc. If yes, please send me an email and become a co-author on this blog. I will be doing a series on Google Analytics configuration and the lessons I have learned.