Helpful Articles (filter at right)

! Keep it Free and Unrestricted !

The Analytics Edge Core Add-in has a Free license option, and it includes a Free Google Analytics Connector. There are no account restrictions, no query restrictions, and the product is updated, maintained and supported. To keep it that way, I need your help to SPREAD THE WORD!  Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, at conferences, in meetups, or just mention it over a beer with colleagues. 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 →

Caution: Last Day of Data May Not Be Accurate

According to a tweet by John Mueller of Google (2017-06-23), the most recent day of data from the Google Search Analytics API may contain partial results, so you should plan to refresh that data the next time you run your report. More →

Challenges with Annual Reporting

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 →

Custom MailChimp Multi-Campaign Reports

A flurry of interest in the Analytics Edge MailChimp connector over the past few weeks has made me realize that most of the email marketing automation examples I have posted have focused on the Constant Contact connector. 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 →

Definitive Guide to Removing All Google Analytics Spam

This is a PROVEN WORKING SOLUTION to remove referral spam in your Google Analytics. Updated for 2021: Bothered by referral spam from the likes of bottraffic.live, bot-traffic.xyz or other domains? Implement a Custom Segment as described in #3 below or, if you catch the spam traffic on the day it happens, a Spam Crawler Filter (#4). More →

Direct ‘Spam’ in Google Analytics

A number of my clients have seen unexplained direct traffic in their Google Analytics accounts. There is no apparent purpose or reason behind this traffic — it just exists; sometimes for a short period of time, and sometimes for months. 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 →

Google Analytics Premium Support

The Google Analytics Pro connector from Analytics Edge supports the extra dimensions and metrics available to Google Analytics 360 customers. It also supports the new resource quotas, allowing GA 360 customers to get unsampled reports up to 100 million sessions! More →

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 →

Measuring Time On (Bounce) Page

For people measuring their website traffic with Google Analytics, there is nothing more frustrating than building a really popular web page that gets tons of visits, but GA shows Session Duration close to ZERO! The problem is that Google Analytics doesn’t measure the time on the last page of a visit, so even if they read your article for 5 minutes, if they don’t click on another page, their session is recorded as 0 seconds. Sigh…. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: 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 →

Misunderstood Metrics: Bounce Rate

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

Misunderstood Metrics: Google Analytics Users

Why do the Users numbers in my report not add up to the total in Google Analytics? This Misunderstood Metrics article explores the Users metric in Google Analytics, why the numbers are different, and why both of them are probably wrong. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: New vs Returning Visitors

Why do New + Returning Visitors add up to more than the total Users? How can I have more New Users than Users who are ‘New Visitors’? This Misunderstood Metrics article explores the Behavior > New vs Returning report in Google Analytics, and why the numbers can be confusing. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: Next Page Path

In Google Analytics, the Previous Page Path shows what page was visited just before the current Page, but Next Page Path seems to be broken or not working. The problem is that it doesn’t hold what the name implies. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: Sessions for Pages

Build a custom report to see how many Sessions included your top pages, and the result is confusing! Chances are you will see the number of Sessions drops sharply once you get below your primary landing pages. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: Time on Page / Average Session Duration

avg-session-duration-vs-avg-time-on-pageHow can the Average Session Duration be less than the Average Time on Page?  In Google Analytics, seeing the time spent on your website or on individual pages is not as obvious as it first appears. This Misunderstood Metrics article explores the concept of time in Google Analytics…or lost time as the case may be. More →

Misunderstood Metrics: Unique Events

Google Analytics has recently changed, introducing a new Unique Events metric calculation. This article has not yet been updated to reflect that change — Mike Sullivan.

As a follow-up to my previous post on Google Analytics events, this article will look at the unique problem of “Unique Events“…the metric that defies understanding by many. 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 →

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 →

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 →

The Hidden Value of Nofollow Blog Comments

When I was working on a new Excel report for my Google Webmaster Tools connector, I started seeing traffic from a specific query phrase that didn’t make sense, so I dug a little deeper, and what I found made me question the very foundation of conventional SEO wisdom and the meaning behind Google Webmaster Tools data. More →

Why You Should Not Use the Referral Exclusion List for Spam

While all of us fight to get Google Analytics referral spam under control, one piece of well-intentioned, but bad advice comes up over and over again: use the Referral Exclusion List. Some people (myself included) have stated that is a bad idea, but no one has taken the time to really explain why. Here is the Why… More →