Forum Discussion
Data from Google Analytics Doesn't Match!
I've got response from the product team.
This is expected behavior. The API we're using for Google Analytics is the one available to free users, and that API is known to return less accurate values for high volume sites due to the way it samples data. Unfortunately, the API for Google Analytics Premium customers is significantly different than that for the free users, so we'd need to implement a new connector specifically for Premium in order to get the more accurate values. This is not currently on our roadmap. Customers who would like to see this feature should request it or upvote it (if already there) at ideas.powerbi.com.
Best Regards,
Herbert
I've got response from the product team.
This is expected behavior. The API we're using for Google Analytics is the one available to free users, and that API is known to return less accurate values for high volume sites due to the way it samples data. Unfortunately, the API for Google Analytics Premium customers is significantly different than that for the free users, so we'd need to implement a new connector specifically for Premium in order to get the more accurate values. This is not currently on our roadmap. Customers who would like to see this feature should request it or upvote it (if already there) at ideas.powerbi.com.
Best Regards,
Herbert
Thank you v-haibl-msft, this makes sense. We'll have to figure out a plan B for our report.
PaulDBrown v-haibl-msft cowork16 @
I have spent a lot of time working with GA from the API side.
High volume, in this context, would be a site that when queried via the API, allways/very often hits the sampling threshold of 500K visits within the time range queried.
I represent a company that solves this challenge with the standard API. Please come try us out.
Thank you for the input. A question if I may...
I am working on a client with an average of 100 K monthly visitors (1.2 million a year). So if I wanted to include their GA data in a report, with historical trends etc, would that cause data discrepancies?
I understand the implications of aggregate data and the risks involved in using it in reports. But can't we simply replicate data (by avoiding re-aggregating in sums etc in PBI) as seen on GA? It defeats the prupose of PBI in terms of slicing etc..., but on the other hand allows to centralise reporting from different sources in PBI to make PBI the single reporting tool.
I guess what I find a bit disconcerting is the original poster's comment that the data as seen in the query editor in PBI si the same as seen on GA, but discrepancies occur in reports...
(BTW, I have looked at your product and it does sound very impressive, albeit I am not sure if this particular client wants to spend on extra tools when he can access data on GA for free).
Please excuse my obvious ignorance regaring GA, but I haven't needed to use GA data in PBI before. (btw, does the same problem happen with data extracted from Facebook, Instagram etc?)
Thanks for your help,
Paul.
EDIT: as an afterthought, does Google Data Studio show the same discrepancies as we might find in PBI?
