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 →

Creating an Excel Dashboard KPI Card

Creating a dashboard KPI/metric card or widget 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. This article discusses 3 ways to build a widget for your Excel report.

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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: 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 →

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 →

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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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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Year-Over-Year Reporting

If you are trying to build a Google Analytics report comparing one year to the previous one, you can use the Pivot operation to make charting easier. The trick is to choose your dimensions wisely. More →