Helpful Articles (filter at right)

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 →

Multi-Source Waterfall Report

The wizard-based automation provided by the Analytics Edge Core 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 →

Optional Connectors

Analytics Edge has a variety of connectors available. They can be installed, updated and uninstalled using the License wizard. When you add a paid connector, it automatically starts a 30-day free trial period. More →

P25 and P75 Aggregations

With the release of the Analytics Edge Core Add-in v10.0.6, the Combine, Duplicates, Lookup, Pivot, Subtotal and Total functions have new “P25” and “P75” aggregations options. 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 Core Add-in can read the website’s sitemap files to extract a full listing of pages. More →

Reporting Bounce Rate in Google Analytics 4

If you have transitioned to the new Google Analytics 4, you have probably noticed that there is no Bounce Rate metric available. Instead they push an ‘Engaged Sessions’ number, which is kind of like the opposite to a Bounce Rate. What if you really want the old metric? Well, a little math and you get your answer, but you probably won’t like it. More →

Running Macros from VBA

With Analytics Edge Core 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 Core Add-in, it is now possible to run a specific Analytics Edge query from a button on your worksheet (the Analytics Edge Core 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 →

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 Core Add-in uses some common Microsoft Excel terminology, but the meanings are slightly different. 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 →

Understanding Why Google Analytics 4 Is Necessary

The key to understanding the difference between Universal Analytics (previously known as Google Analytics) and Google Analytics 4 is that UA had things like a Session object, and GA 4 does not. Everything becomes so much easier to understand once you realize this fact. It also becomes clear why GA 4 is needed now. More →

Unsampled Data From Google Analytics For Free

Google Analytics sampling can really mess up a custom Excel report! The Free Google Analytics Connector included with all Analytics Edge Add-ins has the ability to minimize sampling problems with large sites and long time frame queries. More →

Using Append to Worksheet

The Analytics Edge Core 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 Functions in Macros

The real power of the Analytics Edge Core Add-in are the other functions that let you sort, filter or pivot your data. You can convert text to dates, and dates to first-of-the-month. 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 Core 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 →

Using the Group Function

The Group function in the Analytics Edge add-in lets you easily group or categorize data. It evaluates the values (text, numbers or dates) in a selected column, and adds a new column with group or category labels. The simple wizard interface gets the job done in seconds. More →

Using the Run Macro Function

The Run Macro Function in the Analytics Edge Core 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 Core 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 →

Using [Range Names]

Report automation goes to a whole new level when you discover [range names] in the Analytics Edge Core Add-in! This capability is embedded throughout the product, and it allows you to grab values from your data to be used in subsequent functions, like filtering one query based on the result of another query.  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 →

Write the Results into Excel

The Analytics Edge Core Add-in is holding your query results in memory, where you can easily manipulate it with other Analytics Edge functions. When you are ready, you will want to write the results into an Excel worksheet. 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 →