Thanks for your comment Fanny. I am glad you enjoyed the read!

Thanks for the article, it was great.
I liked how you linked GA to AB testing. It showed how all those data can come in handy. It was also great to link it to an article about event tracking (the best!)

Cheers,

Hi Paul, thanks for the thoughtful response.

In regards to API filters – they still have the same sampling issue that segments do (according to the documentation)

Thanks for your comment Richard.

With regards to filters I didn’t mean view filters, but the filter option in Google Analytics API:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v3/reference#filters. Not sure whether it would work for you, but you can give it a try!

It really depends on your actual data needs and website traffic whether data export automation could work or not. For very large websites you could still get into problems indeed.

Good luck with finding a solution here!

Hi Paul,

Given that filters are for going forward data only and is really meant for a separate property or sub section of a property; it is a bad use case to get around this issue (and you will still have sampling issues with a filtered view. (You can’t make a single filtered view for each dimension – that would be an admin nightmare).

Even automating on a regular an export isn’t without errors as sampling gets into that causes problems. But these problems are worse because you aren’t expecting sampling.

Thanks – checked your link out. Although the work-arounds/hacks to get around sampling still don’t solve the problem. Google analytics is not an optimal tool for this use case.

Two things to keep in mind here:
– Use filters over segments in the API to keep sampling to a minimum. Segments are really a pain for sampling
– Automate your data export on a weekly or even daily basis to further limit the effect of sampling

If you haven’t read it yet, check out one of my latest articles about sampling:
https://online-metrics.com/eight-smart-ways-to-deal-with-google-analytics-sampling/

Best,
Paul