Forum Discussion

jcabeza's avatar
jcabeza
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago

user measure google analytics

I have wrong data from Google Analytics to PowerBI, they are different than data in Google Analytics in "user" measure.          
Need Help
Ram_DCT's avatar
Ram_DCT
Helper II
8 years ago

Thank you Roland! Let's see if we get any attention from BI Dev team.

 

-Ram

GilbertQ's avatar
GilbertQ
Super User
8 years ago
You have to remember that the Google Analytics is a cube. So when you are using measures across different dimensions this will appear to make the numbers incorrect.

But if you get them individually they will be correct. So one way around this is to bring in the common ones together. And then merge them in Power BI Desktop in the Query editor.
  • RolandKramer's avatar
    RolandKramer
    Frequent Visitor
    8 years ago

    Thanks for your answer.

     

    I'm aware of combining metrics can cause numbers to appear different than in GA. However, combining Users with Pageviews, never caused any problem before and still doesn't for other domains I am reporting for.

     

    It seems to me now that the particular problem I'm facing lies within GA. When I report Users over a longer timespan this affects the number of Users within GA as well. This problem appears at some point in the past.

     

    So, as a result of that, a follow up question: is there a way to import data from GA from a certain moment in time? Now it imports all lifetime data, but I don't need all of this, and in this case this causes numbers to appear wrong. 

    • BriannewtonO's avatar
      BriannewtonO
      New Member
      8 years ago

      I'm encountering this issue as well. When comparing a week's User count in GA and Power BI, they don't match. However, when comparing them day by day, they match.

       

      What I suspect is going on is in how GA calculates Unique Users. I'm pulling daily unique users from GA. However, if you just aggregate those numbers, you're not doing the same process GA is. When you pull a week's data of unique users from GA, it's actually going through a week's list of users and doing a distinct count based on a userID.

       

      So essentially if a single user came to to the site 2 times on Monday, 3 times on Tuesday and 5 times on Thursday and you were doing a Monday through Sunday report where you're pulling daily data in Power BI, your Power BI would show 1 unique user on Monday, 1 on Tuesday and 1 on Thursday for a total of 3 for the week (Each day they were a unique user). However GA sould be able to recognize that was the same unique user across all three days, and would just count it as 1.

       

      I don't see a way around this aside from pulling down a separate query for Weekly users (not daily), or running queries ad hoc based on the time frame.