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 →

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 →

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 →

With the surge in working-from-home employees, many people are trying to figure out how to exclude this “internal” traffic from their Google Analytics reports. There is a simple option for sites with low to moderate traffic. More →

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 →

Making a what? I saw an article on the E90E50fx guys blog about making a bilateral flow chart — a cosmograph — in Excel, and it made me think of the behaviour flow chart in Google Analytics. More →

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 →

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 →

If you’ve made the leap into custom dimensions with Google Analytics, you’ve probably also tried to make a custom report to segment your traffic with the new dimension. More →

Google Analytics allows you to track user interaction “events” independent of a page view, such as file downloads or video plays. More →

The Google Analytics report for Frequency displays a Count of Sessions dimension that is misleading in several ways. More →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

How 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 →

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 →

If you just logged into Google Analytics from the Analytics Edge connector, you may get a warning email from Google, confirming the action you just took. More →

Analytics Edge no longer offers a spam filter service to new clients. If you need help implementing filters in your account, I recommend Carlos Escalera’s service. More →

Yes, the popularity of Google Analytics has gotten to the point that it has become a popular target for spammer. More →

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 →

Analytics Edge makes it easy to get data from Google Analytics into Excel, and here are a few tips to make it easier to build impressive reports. More →

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 →