Comments on: How to Avoid Common Pitfalls When Analyzing Custom Report Data

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 13:06:10 +0000

In reply to Rama. Good shout, it should say '6' instead of '5'!

By: Rama

Rama — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 11:45:19 +0000

Hi Paul,
Thank you for your article, it hels me understand much more scopes. But I don’t understand why Unique Pageviews are not = 6 instead of 5 as the 2 users went trough the 3 pages at least one time (2*3=6) OR maybe I still didn’t get the difference between pageviews and unique pageviews.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 10:48:38 +0000

In reply to Arif Ahmed.

Hi Arif,

There could be a variety of (technical) reasons. Please read this thread as it might apply to your situation as well:
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/65462/why-does-google-analytics-show-more-users-than-sessions/87323#87323

Best,
Paul

By: Arif Ahmed

Arif Ahmed — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 18:44:15 +0000

How come number of users is higher that number of sessions in Google Analytics audience overview or channel acquisition report? I know this might be an issue when using pageview level dimension. However, this is not the case in my situation.

What could be the issue?

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 11:45:13 +0000

In reply to Brad.

Hi Brad,
I would highly recommend to set up these custom reports and go through a few sessions by yourself to see what data is coming in and whether it matches with your thoughts.
It is very hard for me to exactly predict the outcome here. Further, keep this in mind (tweet from Peter O’Neill):
“Telling clients yet again to ignore the Unique Events metric in @googleanalytics as it is a meaningless metric & that they will need to use Unique Dimension Combinations itself to get at the information they need to make business decisions”

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 20:59:04 +0000

Great article. I was wondering if you could answer a couple questions for me?

1) If I build a custom report with Event Category/Event Action or Page as the Dimensions and Users as the Metric will that give me an accurate number of users that fired those events or viewed those pages?

2) If I build a custom report with Event Category/Event Action or Page as the Dimensions and Sessions as the Metric that will not give me an accurate view of sessions that fired for each event or page since sessions are only recorded on the first hit and that is why you would use unique events or unique pageviews instead?

3) If I build a Segment and using Conditions I filter by sessions that include a specific event category/label or Page will this be accurate or is it like the issue on number 2 where sessions are only counted on the first hit? So do I need to filter by Users instead to be accurate?

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 11:20:19 +0000

In reply to Bob1. Thanks for your comment. Yeah, I have experience working with both tools and there are quite some differences indeed!

By: Bob1

Bob1 — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 10:21:29 +0000

Interesting read – especially as Google handles Sessions very differently from how Adobe handles Visits (which to the uninitiated might appear to be the same metric!).

By: Paul Koks

Paul Koks — Thu, 04 May 2017 08:07:22 +0000

In reply to Manuel.

Hi Manuel,

Good remark! I think I made a mistake here. It’s changed now.

Thank you,
Paul

By: Manuel

Manuel — Tue, 02 May 2017 14:40:15 +0000

Hi there!
I don’t understand why total pageviews are not = 7

Thank you very much