Forum Discussion
Different results with same query using Google Analytics Built-In Connector
I've read various articles on the data extraction of Google analytics. It looks like the to get correct results for Sessions, all the Event-related dimensions need to be removed from the query. So I would like to add just one dimension which is Gender. Is this not possible? When I compare my Google Analytic report and Power BI report they do not match.
Does anyone have any experience with this?
angelakephart ,
In Power BI Desktop, the built-in Google Analytics connector relies on Google Analytics Core Reporting API. Please review this article to check if you can combine Gender dimension and Sessions metrics using Google Analytics Core Reporting API.
In addition, for the difference between Google Analytic report and Power BI report, please check product team's response."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."
Regards,
Lydia
2 Replies
angelakephart ,
In Power BI Desktop, the built-in Google Analytics connector relies on Google Analytics Core Reporting API. Please review this article to check if you can combine Gender dimension and Sessions metrics using Google Analytics Core Reporting API.
In addition, for the difference between Google Analytic report and Power BI report, please check product team's response."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."
Regards,
LydiaGenerally the built-in Google Analytics connector is a really bad idea. You have to be careful all the time when using it since you will either overcount or get sampled results and both at the same time.
Gender and other demographics dimensions even has a more sinister built-in challenge from GA's side. If your results contains less than 10 users then they round of to 10. The demogfx data is approximated by GA so it's very limited and very unreliable in it's nature. It's usefull on a high-level. But NEVER aggregate over it! :)
But its worse. Check this example. This is what happens behind the scenes in the PBI connector.
Date Gender Users Sessions Mar 1, 2018 male 13 19 Mar 5, 2018 male 17 21 Mar 6, 2018 male 11 14 Mar 7, 2018 male 13 16 Mar 8, 2018 male 14 19 Mar 9, 2018 male 14 20 Mar 10, 2018 male 13 17 Mar 11, 2018 female 11 11 Mar 12, 2018 male 22 31 Mar 13, 2018 male 13 27 Mar 14, 2018 female 10 15 Mar 14, 2018 male 23 31 Mar 15, 2018 male 19 31 Mar 16, 2018 male 15 20 Mar 19, 2018 male 19 23 Mar 20, 2018 male 15 17 Mar 23, 2018 male 10 12 Mar 26, 2018 male 13 26 Mar 27, 2018 male 16 24 Mar 28, 2018 male 22 34 Mar 29, 2018 male 19 22 322 450 Gender Users Sessions female 96 234 male 210 562 306 796 Diff -16 346 In the first result set I've extracted data broken down on day's and summed it up to totals
The other result set contains the same timeframe but just totalled by GA.
The diff tells everything! It's useless.
Try scitylana.com services.
You can extract all the GA data (except the demographics data) in a format that is reliable in ALL types of calculations.
I wrote an article some time back is this problem.
