Helpful Articles (filter at right)

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 →

Account Deletion

To delete a saved account from Analytics Edge products, open the Accounts wizard for the service/connector involved, select the saved account from the list, and click the delete button. 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 →

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 →

Google Search: ABCD Categorization Report

When you are looking for a simple way to categorize items, a simple technique is to use cumulative percentage contribution, which is commonly used to demonstrate the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule). In this case, we create 4 simple categories, A, B, C, and D, that each correspond to a percentage. More →

Google Search: Active Pages Report

Google Search Console can only report about pages that appeared in search, but your sitemap contains all the pages on your site. This report combines the two to show which pages are active in search, and those that aren’t. It also summarizes how many pages had zero clicks and zero impressions as well as in various positions. More →

Google Search: Brand vs NonBrand Weekly Report

This report combines branded and non-branded Google search results into a single table for easy comparison charting, pulling data from the Google Search Console API with Analytics Edge. It demonstrates how Analytics Edge makes multiple data transformations simple so you can quickly get the data in the format you want. More →

Google Search: Cannibalization Report

This report shows pages that are competing for clicks (or impressions) for the same query. When there are multiple pages with similar content appearing for the same query, they can ‘cannibalize’ each other, reducing their effectiveness in search. More →

Google Search: Causal Impact Report

What happened to Google Search performance before and after an event? Analytics Edge makes it easy to compare 2 date ranges in Google Search. This report shows a very simple example. More →

Google Search: CTR Yield Curve Report

Plotting click-through-date against position lets you confirm the effect of position on your content’s performance in search. This Analytics Edge report shows you both how CTR changes with position, but also how the keyword count varies as well. 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.

More →

Using the Repeat Macro Function

The Repeat Macro function in Analytics Edge lets you cycle through a list of items, repeating the rest of the Analytics Edge macro for each line in the source list. This article shows you how to use it. More →

Using the Run Macro Function

The Run Macro Function in the Analytics Edge Add-in lets you run other Analytics Edge macro or Excel VBA macros. This would typically be used to create a ‘master’ macro that runs through a specific sequence of other macros. With v7 of the Add-in, you can also trigger Excel VBA macros, which opens the door to running custom VBA code that does things Analytics Edge does not enable. More →

When Is a Space Not a Space?

Trying to replace spaces in your text, or split text by the spaces, but it won’t work? Did you get the text from a web page? Then the ‘space’ is probably not a ‘space’ — it is a ‘non-breaking space’. Here’s how to deal with it. More →