Google Analytics - data gap

[richardurrutia]

Hello,

I'm using the Google Analytics connector on powerbi and I have some issues with the data on powerbi. I always have a gap between the data that I see on Google Analytics and the data imported in powerBi. I check many data like sessions, users, page view etc and I have always a gap on the same period. The difference can reach 30%...

I tried with 2 differents google analytics account (one is a premium) and it's the same.

has anyone any idea on this issue ?

thanks for your help

[adelheni]

Hi, 

you are facing an issue of sampling. So Power bi's connector for google analytics has a sampling issue and an API Calls limit. The standard limitations and quotas for Google Analytics API requests are documented in Limits and Quotas on API Requests. However, Power BI Desktop and Power BI service allow you to use the following enhanced number of queries.

Queries per day: 1,500,000 Queries per 100 seconds: 4,000

Might be better to connect Google analytics to a data warehouse such as Google BigQuery, which will help you get access to historical data that you won't be able to get with Power bi's connector. I'd suggest using a third-party connector such as windsor.ai, they also have a ready & free templates ( https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/power-bi/windsorgroupgmbh1585043281642.media_overview_...)

[bhuwan]

The issue being described is the user count is higher in power bi than is presented on Google Analytics site. I have done a bit of research on why that might be and I have run across several sources which use windsor.ai and or BigQuery to get data into power bi. I don't know how the API limitations would result in inflation of users I would think less users would show up in Power BI. One topic which I believe could be causing the gap or inflated numbers in power bi is Thresholding in GA4 I would consider that a possible reason for the numbers in the GA site to be less than the numbers in Power BI which aren't impacted by thresholding which is Google filtering out rows to protect the users privacy. 

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I have the same issue. The user number in Google Analytics is around 7K, on the Power BI dashboard is around 19K. 

If I add Google Analytics metrics without adding any GA dimension, the user number matches with the Google Analytics dashboard.

But whenever I add any GA dimension to my report, the user number increases. 

Best wishes

Abdullah

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @Anonymous 

Did you try setting a filter on the date column in Power Query Editor? You could provide a start date for it, e.g. the first date of the website when it started to have users. That will filter data to a specific date range.

Jing

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @richardurrutia 

Currently Google Analytics connector in Power BI does not have the functionality to specify date range dimension directly from the UI. So, Power BI sends the entire date range from the earliest possible to the current date. When date range is large, the queried data may be different. 

In order to resolve this, you can connect to Google Analytics first. Then in Power Query Editor, select date column and apply a date range filter to it. This would add a date range explicitly in Power BI. This queries GA API for only the selected date range, and should pull the data within the time interval specified.

For example,

#"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Added Items", each [Date] >= #date(2019, 9, 1) and [Date] <= #date(2019, 9, 30))

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing
If this post helps, please Accept it as the solution to help other members find it.

[PaulDBrown · Accepted solution]

not sure if this is the issue you are seeing, but this thread is worth a read:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Power-Query/Different-results-with-same-query-using-Google-Analytic...