Helpful Articles (filter at right)

*Building a Marketing Dashboard in Excel

Marketing-DashboardThis article describes the steps I went through to build a working prototype; it is light on process and documentation because this is an educational article, not a technical how-to article. More →

2 Help Resources Available

The Analytics Edge help site has plenty of resources available for learning and assistance with reporting. This article explains what is available and highlights the ‘account not found’ problem people experience when sharing workbooks. More →

A Programmer’s Guide to Analytics Edge No-Code Macros

If you’ve written a few lines of script and aren’t afraid of words like “variables”, this guide will get you going quickly with Analytics Edge macros. Even if you’ve just played with a few Excel formulas, you might surprise yourself with how much you can do with Analytics Edge macros and how FAST it gets done! More →

Account Reference Names

Analytics Edge takes account security very seriously. When you use the add-in or one of the connectors to access one of your accounts, the product will encrypt a security token and save it to your computer. You will be asked for an account reference name for this token. More →

Active table in memory?

What is this green worksheet with the message “ANALYTICS EDGE – active table in memory…“? When you are editing a query or stepping through an Analytics Edge macro, a green worksheet (ᴁ Step Results) will appear. This temporary worksheet shows you what it is currently in memory — the results of the last function step — before you formally write it out to a worksheet.

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Add-in: Call VBA From A Repeating Macro

Let’s say you have an Analytics Edge workbook that uses a Repeat Macro function to loop through several web properties, each writing to a separate worksheet. Since Analytics Edge doesn’t help you with worksheet formatting much, let’s say you whipped up a little VBA code to do it. How would you integrate that VBA code into the Analytics Edge macro? More →

Add-in: Changing Dates in Multiple Queries

If you are build a report that includes multiple queries and you want to be able to change the dates of all the queries at once, there are a couple of ways you can get this done — with a little pre-planning, or a little hacking. More →

Add-in: Hacking the Query Worksheet

The Analytics Edge Add-in allows you to place Quick Queries anywhere in your workbook, but all those queries can be edited in a single place: the ‘ᴁ Analytics Edge Queries’ worksheet. Caution is strongly recommended–make a backup of your workbook before you start! More →

Amazing SEO Reporting In Excel

With version 4.0 of the Analytics Edge Google Search connector, you can quickly create SEO analysis reports with tremendous insight potential; way beyond what you can do in Google Search Console itself! More →

Analytics Without Programming

Avoid complex Excel formulas; Analytics Edge lets you build reports in Excel without complicated formulas or programming. Using a simple wizard interface, this small Excel add-in lets you combine, calculate, split, pivot, sort, filter and much more. Try it yourself and see how easy it is! More →

Annual Reporting Challenges

It’s that time of year again, time to summarize the performance of your website, search engine optimization efforts, and campaign spending. As you start your marathon of data manipulation, there are a few things you should keep in mind to avoid disaster. More →

Calculating a Weighted Average (Average of Averages)

A common reporting challenge in Excel is merging sets of data, such as combining monthly numbers for a quarterly or annual total. Adding up simple metrics is obvious, but what do you do with things like the average position or conversion rate? [Hint: you should not average or total anything that is already an average or ratio] More →

Combining Google Search Console And Google Analytics Data

Easily combine data from Google Search Console with Google Analytics 4 — Analytics Edge makes it easy.

  • no copy-paste
  • no downloading data
  • pulls data direct from API’s
  • no coding required
  • no 1000-row limit
  • less than 5 minute’s work
  • the whole workflow automated
  • click to refresh

Constant Contact API Changes

The Analytics Edge Connector for Constant Contact now (2024-06-07) supports the latest (version 3) API from Constant Contact. Many things have changed between the older (version 2) API, and this document gives a brief overview of the differences between them, and how Analytics Edge has changed how used them.

Note that the Constant Contact connector is the first connector released by Analytics Edge (in 2014) and has undegone only minor changes over the years. The new release is a significant update in both the user interface as well as how the data is processed and presented.

Reference IDs and Data Structure Changes

Constant Contact uses different ID numbers in the new API to reference the various data elements (contacts, email campaigns, links, etc). They also structure the data differently; for example, a resend of a campaign in v2 was issued a new campaign ID, but in v3 the campaign is split into 2 campaign activities with a primary email and a resend activity.

The old connector exposed a lot of the inner workings and forced users to cross reference IDs between queries to piece together the information they wanted. The update does a lot of this work behind the scenes; for example, campaign reports actually trigger one API call to get the activities for a campaign, then multiple calls for each activity and additional queries for activity details if needed, merging the data into a single response.

Field Names and Order

The old connector exposed the raw field names from the API (e.g. first_name, last_name) while the update provides more presentable field names (e.g. First Name, Last Name).

The order of the fields between the various queries changed according to how the API delivered them, which tended to change depending on the data. This could cause problems in report formating, forcing additional steps to reorder the fields in a specific way. The update controls the field order and appearance in most cases.

Accounts

The account authentication used by Constant Contact has changed with the new API, so the connector manages separate stored accounts for the v2 and v3 APIs. This means sepaarte Accounts wizards. The new login process uses Oauth, so the login process is a little different.

The old Accounts wizard allowed you to get information about a selected account or a list of available accounts — this extra functionality has been moved to a new Account Information wizard. This wizard allows you to select between using v2 or v3 accounts.

 

Constant Contact: Autoresponder Reporting

Constant Contact offers some simple reports on your autoresponder campaigns, but little detail is available. Even through the API, the data is difficult to extract, but it can be done. This article details how Analytics Edge makes it possible to monitor your email series to see who each message was sent to, which ones bounced, whether they were opened, and whether they clicked on a link.

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Constant Contact: Click-Through Data

Downloading Constant Contact click-through data for multiple clients has never been easier than with Analytics Edge and the Constant Contact connector. This article describes the process in detail, so you can get the job done fast! More →

Constant Contact: Email Cohort Analysis

This article explains how to build a cohort analysis report in Excel using the Analytics Edge Add-in with the Constant Contact connector. Cohort Analysis lets you see how one group of subscribers behaves differently from another. More →

Constant Contact: Reporting Automation

branded-report-example (1)With Analytics Edge, your reporting gets a whole lot easier with single-click refreshes, and you don’t lose any of the flexibility that makes Microsoft Excel so popular for Constant Contact analytics reporting. Here’s an example of one engagement that went from idea to “This is AMAZING!!” in 24 hours. More →

Creating an Excel Dashboard Widget

Creating a dashboard in Excel can be quite simple –it’s really just a matter of downloading the right data and some easy formatting techniques. Layout is your challenge, but even that can be overcome.

creating-a-dashboard-widget More →

Data Sampling Problems In Annual Reports

Google Analytics uses statistical sampling to improve responsiveness for large queries. There is nothing wrong with statistical sampling — it will usually produce numbers close to the actual, but not always. More →

Error: 400 AuthorizationError CUSTOMER_NOT_ACTIVE

This Google AdWords API error occurs when you try to query an old account that has not been active in over 15 months. The API will not permit queries to inactive accounts. This usually occurs in agencies with long account lists, some of which are old and no longer used. More →

Error: 401 authError Authorization

This Google Analytics API error indicates that the security token for the account you are using has failed. Normally the security tokens are auto-renewed, but if you changed the account password or otherwise changed your security settings, the renewal can also fail. More →

Error: 503 There was a temporary error

This Google Analytics API error indicates that there was a problem processing your query request. This can occur if you make too many bad queries in a short period of time, or if you use use up your quota for the day. In some cases, it may indicate that the server was too busy to process your request (usually for a very large query).  More →

Error: Account not found. Check Account wizard

This error usually occurs when you share workbooks with coworkers, or after a computer move or rebuild. Analytics Edge stores a reference to the account in the workbook, but the actual security tokens are stored on your computer.  More →

Error: Invalid/missing dates

This error usually occurs when the cells you referenced in a query have moved or the contents are changed. Analytics Edge connectors offer the ability to use cell references for the dates, but the references can get out of alignment if you add rows or columns in the worksheet, or if you renamed the worksheet. More →

Error: License issued to a different computer?

Analytics Edge is licensed by computer, so the add-in keeps track of the computer it is licensed for. Sometimes a Windows Update or hardware change will mess up the license, and you will get an error saying “License issued to a different computer”. More →

Facebook Ads Bidding and Budgets

The Facebook Ads bidding and budget information may seem to work in mysterious ways, especially when you are trying to generate a report from the API. Here is a picture of how it fits together. More →

Get Impressions From Google Analytics

A lot of people want to include the clicks and impressions metrics in their Google Analytics reports, and are frustrated when they see most reporting tools do not offer those metrics. That is because they don’t actually come from Google Analytics — they come from Google Search Console, and that uses a separate API.

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Google Analytics 4 Report Automation

Now that the Google Analytics Data API has been released, it is possible to automate your Google Analaytics 4 reporting. Analytics Edge and the Google Analytics connector makes the process easy with a powerful add-in for Microsoft Excel.

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Google Analytics 4: Add Session Count Dimension

It is easy to get a Session Count fields added to your Google Analytics 4 reports — just add a custom dimension for the existing event parameter! The data doesn’t start collecting until you do this, so do it now! More →

Google Analytics 4: Adding Page Count

There are a lot of things from Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) that I miss in Google Analytics 4. Although page engagement metrics are much improved, I was frustrated by the lack of any ability to gauge the Page Depth of my visitors. Do they look at 1 page, 3 pages, or 20?  The averages just don’t tell the whole story. Here is how I added a Page Count dimension and a couple of early observations I made with the data. More →

Google PageSpeed Insights API: No Connector Required

Google’s PageSpeed Insights API reports on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved. The service works with a simple URL request and requires only a static API key for volume use. The Read Text/Web File function in the Analytics Edge Add-in lets you make these types of web queries — no need for a special connector.
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Google Search: Annual Reporting

Long-term reporting with Google Search Console data is fraught with challenges. This article discusses some of the unique problems time can create, and how Analytics Edge products can save you time while solving them. More →

Google Search: Branded Versus Non-Branded

The filtering capability in Google Search Console is very restrictive (single phrase match), making it useless for separating branded from non-branded search terms in all but the simplest cases. Enter the Analytics Edge Add-in — a quick regular expression filter and your work is done. More →

Google Search: Download All Your Page And Query Data

Downloading your Google Search Console data into Excel is easy with Analytics Edge. The Google Search Connector uses the API to pull down all of the query and page metrics — without the 1000 or 5000 row limit imposed by the web interface. More →

Google Search: Eliminating Noise

As discussed in a companion blog article, while trying to create an annual report for my own websites, I discovered that Google Search data is full of ‘noise’ — data that actually makes it harder to make useful observations about trends. This article includes the workbook I used.

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Google Search: Get 16 Months Of Search Data

The Google Search API now supports a full 16 months of historical data, but the only date-related field is ‘date’, so this is how to get all that data out in a meaningful way — in weekly or monthly buckets. The Google Search Connector from Analytics Edge provides a MultiQuery tab that does just what you need, and your appears in Excel in seconds! More →

How To Add Row Numbers

There are times you want to see row numbers in your results — a cumulative count column starting at 1 and increasing down the column. A combination of two Analytics Edge macro functions makes this possible. More →

How To Build a Report Using Fiscal Weeks

Building queries based on calendar periods is pretty straight forward, but when challenged to build a report using fiscal periods, the Analytics Edge cell references can to be used to get any fiscal period you need. The magic is figuring out a series of Excel formulas (or just manually entering them) for the fiscal dates. More →

How to Schedule Email Delivery of Reports

The Analytics Edge Add-in allows you to fully automate the refresh and delivery of report by email on a schedule of your choosing. It involves several steps:

  • setup your email server options
  • create the report you want to send
  • add a macro with a Save/Email PDF or Workbook command
  • schedule the report to run

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How To: Email Campaign Domain Analysis

email-domain-analysisFind out how your email campaigns are performing with particular domains, so you can see which ISPs your subscribers use most often, and detect if you’re having delivery or compatibility problems. More →

Incremental Report Updates

If your monthly report is regularly pulling down a full year’s worth of data, it is probably downloading 11 months of data that hasn’t changed. You can speed things up by doing an incremental update — just download the data you need. More →

ISO Week Reporting

When a connector (API) does not offer the ability to make weekly reports based on international or ISO weeks (Monday to Sunday), you can use the Analytics Edge Add-in‘s Repeat Macro functionality to fill in the gap. More →

Long-Tail Keyword Analysis (Advanced Example)

Long-tail keyword phrases are often made up of many different combinations of similar words, making it difficult to tell when there is a common topic of interest. This article walks through the creation of a keyword analysis report, based on weekly snippets of data from Google Search Console. More →

Making a CTR versus Position Chart By Device

The Analytics Edge Add-in is perfect for doing a quick analysis of search engine ranking data. In this article, I show how to get a CTR versus Position chart by Devices — showing the difference for click-thorough-rate of desktop versus mobile. More →

Manually Scheduling a Refresh

If you want to refresh a workbook more than once a day, or if you simply want to control the refreshes yourself, this article shows how the Analytics Edge Add-in interacts with the Windows Task Scheduler app. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: GA 4 Bounce Rate

What is the bounce rate in Google Analytics 4? Is it better to be higher or lower? What is typical? Does it affect my search engine rankings? Here is some insight into this commonly misunderstood metric. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: GA 4 Sessions

As people dig into the metrics in Google Analytics 4 for website tracking, they discover that the session counts can sometimes be confusing. My recommendation: stop focusing on sessions — focus on user engagement with your content instead. The number of sessions in a day has become almost meaningless, and that metric should not appear in a prominent location in any report. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: GA 4 Time on Page / Session Duration

Time on page and session duration are old metrics from the early days of web analytics. You can find the equivalent in Google Analytics 4, but I don’t recommend using them as they are fundamentally flawed as explained below. User engagement is what you should be focusing on in today’s web metrics, so User engagement/Total users is the preferred measure.

Add this calculated metric to your property so you can include it in your reports.

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Misunderstood Metrics: GSC Average Position

Google Search Console makes it easy to track the position of your website pages in Google’s search results, but the numbers are averages, and averages don’t tell the whole story. When it comes to search engine ranking, they can be really misleading. More →

Multi-Source Waterfall Report

The wizard-based automation provided by the Analytics Edge Add-in for Excel makes it easy to combine data from multiple sources. This article explores how you can build a Waterfall Report that includes data from Google Webmaster Tools (now Google Search), Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and an external database. More →

Over 700 Filters for 12 Fiscal Months

Case Study: the client has over 700 different product groups and we need an annual report of organic search traffic to each one. Oh, and they use fiscal months, not calendar months. When faced with a challenge like this, you have a choice: should you just brute force your way through it, creating a unique query for each product and fiscal month? Or should you spend the time building a solution that is more automated, using macros and lookup tables to get the job done? You may want to stop and consider a few things before choosing… More →

P25 and P75 Aggregations

New “P25” and “P75” aggregations options have been added to the Combine, Duplicates, Lookup, Pivot, Subtotal and Total functions. More →

Please reduce the amount of data you’re asking for

When the Facebook Ads API returns an error 500, it is usually telling you that the combination of the number of metrics and rows of data being asked for is too large for them to process all at once. You may hit the limit around 1000 rows, or it could be higher or lower depending on the number of columns you are asking for. More →

Reading Sitemaps to Get a Full Listing of Pages

When analyzing website traffic, there are times you might want a full listing of the website’s pages…even those that never get any traffic or impressions. Google Analytics and Google Search Console will only report on pages were there is data, so these unrecognized pages continue to be overlooked. This article shows how the Analytics Edge Add-in can read the website’s sitemap files to extract a full listing of pages. More →

Running Macros from VBA

With Analytics Edge Add-in, you can run an Analytics Edge macro (e.g. “MyMacro”) from Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), using code More →

Running Queries from Buttons

With the Analytics Edge Add-in, it is now possible to run a specific Analytics Edge query from a button on your worksheet (the Analytics Edge Add-in must be installed). More →

Selecting a Date Range

In most Analytics Edge wizards, you can select a data range for your query. There are a large number of combinations possible, but here are the most common selections. More →

Sending Excel Reports To Clients

Many analysts, consultants and agencies use Excel to create reports for their clients because it allows them to deliver a unique solution, tailored to the client’s needs. By using Analytics Edge to generate and automate the report refresh, the monthly process becomes a lot easier and doesn’t require any changes to the client’s environment. More →

Simplified Core Web Vitals Reporting

Google released new guidance on how to collect and report Core Web Vitals using Google Analytics 4, but the approach makes use of some pretty complicated concepts with BigQuery. In this article, I want to show you how to make similar reports in Excel using Analytics Edge with a lot less work and complexity. More →

Sistrix API Query – No Connector Needed

The Sistrix API uses an ‘API Key’ (secret code) to authenticate their API queries; the Analytics Edge Add-in can easily automate your downloads using the ‘Read Text/Web File’ function — no connector required! More →

Story: Computers Should Automate Tedious Tasks

Do you find yourself becoming a slave to the computer? That is not how it is supposed to be. This is the first of a new series of articles where I share some of my life lessons; I hope you enjoy and benefit from them. More →

Terminology

The Analytics Edge Add-in uses some common Microsoft Excel terminology, but the meanings are slightly different. More →

Using Append to Worksheet

The Analytics Edge Add-in allows you to append the results of a query to the existing data in a worksheet. While the function is simple, there are some scenarios where you can experience problems. This article describes the problems you could experience and the solutions. More →

Using Interactive Range Names

When you use Analytics Edge in the Interactive mode, the data from the selected workbook is available for the wizard you open. For some wizards, like the new Google Search connector’s URL Inspection query, this allows you to process multiple URLs at once. More →

Using the Append Function

append4-300x230The Analytics Edge add-in lets you easily append data from one table to another, aligning the common columns but appending the new rows to the bottom. More →

Using the Combine Function

combineThe Analytics Edge add-in lets you easily combine data from two tables, aligning the common rows in key columns, and aggregating the cell values in other columns. More →

Using the Compare Function

compareThe Analytics Edge add-in lets you easily compare data from one table to another, calculating growth or change in numbers as well as time differences in dates. More →

Using the Convert Function

The Convert Function of the Analytics Edge Add-in lets you convert text, numeric and date columns in a wide variety of ways. This article describes how it can be used in your Analytics Edge macros. More →