This slide covers the fundamentals of Google Analytics and unveils the misconceptions around most of the metrics and dimensions. A must-read guide to understand how each and every metric gets calculated in Google Analytics.

1. Google Analytics
Training

2. Topics
● Introduction (20 mins)
a. Account Setup (5 mins)
b. Tracking Code (5 mins)
c. Data Processing (5 mins)
d. Configuration Settings (5 mins)
● Reporting ( 1 hour 40 mins)
a. Metrics & Dimensions (20 mins)
b. Scoping (10 mins)
c. User Interface (30 mins)
d. Channel Grouping - UTMs (15 mins)
e. Page & Event Report (15 mins)
f. Goals (10 mins)
● Debugging (10 mins)
● Features (1 hour)
a. Graph Plotting & Advance Filters (5
mins)
b. Segments (10 mins)
c. Custom Reports (10 mins)
d. Custom Dimensions (10 mins)
e. Real Time Reports (5 mins)
f. Custom Tables (10 mins)
● Tag Manager Introduction (30 mins)
● Q&A (20 mins)

3. Introduction

4. Introduction
What is Google Analytics?
A Google product your web developer can install on your
website to collect users data (not PII) from your website.
The data is then used to gather insights into how visitors
are using your website
.

5. Account Setup
Organization
Account
Property
View
An organization represents a company, and
lets you access your company’s product
accounts (e.g., Analytics, Tag Manager,
Optimize)
An account is your access point for Analytics,
and the top-most level of organization. One or
more Analytics accounts can belong to an
organization.
A property is a website, mobile application, or
device
A view is your access point for reports; a
defined view of data from a property.

6. <script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXXX-2', 'auto');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>
Property - Tracking Code
JavaScript snippet used for account verification and the collection of user browsing data.
Needs to enabled on every page of the website as high as possible
Enable a ‘tracker’ for that session upon execution
Can be modified to collect additional information. (e.g. demographic, cross domain linking, custom
dimensions
Also come with a <noscript> tag for javascript disabled browsers.

7. Data Processing
Data is collected through a image request
(beacon) sent to the GA server
It is configured with various filters &
modification rules (explained later)
Then it is processed to form meaningful tables
with appropriate dimensions and metrics
After processing, it is available in the GA UI for
reporting purpose.
➽ No Personal Information is collected through
beacon
https://www.google-
analytics.com/collect?v=1&_v=j63d&a=839866892&t=timing&_s=2&dl
=https%3A%2F%2example.com%2F&ul=en-us&de=UTF-
8&dt=example%20-%20Global%20Page&sd=24-
bit&sr=1920x1080&vp=1920x653&je=0&plt=5580&pdt=2&dns=0&rr
t=1&srt=3412&tcp=0&dit=3984&clt=3984&_u=QCCACEABJ~&jid=&g
jid=&cid=1609202597.1503049672&tid=UA-xxxxxx-
2&_gid=1174415076.1506315474&gtm=GTM-xxxxx&z=10xxxx1
Configuration
Processing
Collection Reporting

8. Configuration settings while processing will
permanently include, exclude or change your
data
Filters:
Include: Country, Domain, Sub-Domain
Exclude: IP of vendors and employees
Change: lowercase campaign names
Cross Domain Tracking:
Change: how the sessions will be counted for a
user coming from different domain
Configuration Settings
Customer
data into
report view
Employee
data out
Customers Employees

9. Reporting

10. Dimensions
Qualitative measurement of your data
e.g: dimension City indicates the city,
“Paris”,”New York”, from which session
originated
Dimension Page indicates the URL that is
viewed
Dimensions & Metrics
Metrics
Quantitative measurement of your data
e.g: metric Users tells us the number of visitors
on your website
Pageviews gives us how many times
webpages have been viewed

11. Why understand scoping?
Not every metric can be combined with every
dimension. Each dimension and metric has a
scope.
In most cases, it only makes sense to combine
dimensions and metrics that share the same
scope
These dimensions and metrics are kept
separate from one another due to the way data
is defined and collected in Google Analytics
Scoping
Scope is a characteristic/persisting behavior of
each dimension and metric and each dimension
or metric can only have one scope. GA data is
organized into 3 scope-types:
1. Hit data
2. Session data
3. User data
User
Sessions
Hits

12. Hit Level Scope
A hit is defined as any single action on a website
such as a page view or an event triggered by
watching a video or downloading a pdf. Hits can
also have products associated with them.
Session Level Scope
A session is defined as one or more hits within a
certain time frame. One person’s actions on your site
during a single browsing session, the pages they
load, the files they download, are all connected into
one session.
User Level Scope
A user is the highest level of data collected, and is
the crucial piece that connects previous and future
web behavior. Specifically, Google Analytics stores a
client ID in a cookie for each user that visits your
site, and then joins together all of the sessions with
the same client ID
Scoping contd.

13. User Interface

14. UI - Audience Overview Report
Understand Each Metric:
Users
Identified by Client ID stored in cookie
No matter how many times a user come to your
website, it will be considered as 1 for the selected
duration
Hence, not an additive metric (across different
duration)
➽ New User + Returning Users != Total Users

15. UI - Audience Overview Report
Understand Each Metric:
Sessions
Identified by visitID.
A session originate whenever first hit to GA server is
going from your first website.
It’s a group of interactions that take place on your
website within a given time frame
➽ Expiration Criteria:
● 30 mins of inactivity (no hit to GA server)
● Source/Medium/Campaign/Keyword value
change
● Midnight - 11:59:59 PM
● Closing the browser
● Domain Change

16. UI - Audience Overview Report
Understand Each Metric:
Pageviews
No. of time a page loads and execute the GA script
on browser (including reloads)
A unique pageview for a page is actually number of
sessions in which that page is being viewed one or
more times

17. UI - Audience Overview Report
Understand Each Metric:
Avg. Session Duration
Time spent on your website during a session
collected by monitoring the timestamps of first and
last hit to GA server.
➽ quite inappropriate information as explained
below:
Session Duration = 10:05 - 10:00 = 5Mins
*Not considering the time spent on D page before leaving
10:00 10:02 10:03 10:05
Exit
A B C D
Spent 2 Mins
here

18. UI - Audience Overview Report
Understand Each Metric:
Bounce Rate
Single hit (server call to GA server) sessions are
considered as Bounce
Bounce Rate = Bounces/Sessions
Not associated only to Pageview & not at all with
time spent

19. UI - Channel Report
Channel Grouping
Categorization based on values of source and
medium stored in cookie at the time of session start
Can be overridden by UTM Parameters
➽ Do not track internal campaigns with utm
parameters as it originate a new session every time

20. UI - Channel Report
Channel Groups Definition
Direct: Source exactly matches direct AND Medium
exactly matches (not set)
OR
Medium exactly matches (none)
Organic Search: Medium exactly matches organic
Referral: Medium exactly matches referral
Social: Social Source Referral exactly matches Yes
OR
Medium matches regex ^(social|social-
network|social-media|sm|social network|social
media)$
Email: Medium exactly matches email

21. UI - Channel Report
Channel Groups Definition
Paid Search: Medium matches regex
^(cpc|ppc|paidsearch)$
AND
Ad Distribution Network does not exactly match
Content
Affiliate: Medium exactly matches affiliate
Display: Medium matches regex
^(display|cpm|banner)$
OR
Ad Distribution Network exactly matches Content
Other Advertising: Medium matches regex
^(cpv|cpa|cpp|content-text)$
(Other): Session doesn’t match any description

22. UI - All Page Report
GA shows page path by default
● ga('send','pageview'); //defalt
● ga('send','pageview','/index.cms'); //passing
page path
Can be modified using filters in admin section
Perform “regex” search for pages
L1,L2.. Indicates page path level which provides
categorical performance of the website under
content drilldown report
https:// timesofindia.indiatimes.com
/india/sc-verdict-on-electoral-bonds/liveblog/68842711.cms
Protocol Hostname
Pagepath
L1 L2 L3 L4

23. UI - Event Report
All interactive activities on the website can be
tracked through events e.g form submission,
button clicks, video views etc.
● ga('send','event','Event Category','Event
Action','Event Label','Event Value');
● ga('send','event','Event Category','Event
Action','Event Label',,'Event
Value',{‘nonInteraction’: 1});
By setting nonInteraction=True, all the session
scoped metrics are no longer affected by the
event
➽ The first 20 event hits sent to Analytics are
processed immediately, thereafter processing is
rate-limited to two event hits per second. A
maximum of 500 hits per session are processed.

24. Goals measure how well your site or app fulfills
your target objectives. A goal represents a
completed activity, called a conversion, that
contributes to the success of your business
4 Type of Goals can be set for each view
● Destination Type
● Events
● Pages/Session
● Session Duration
➽ Funnel (conversion path) can be setup for
Destination type goal only
UI - Goal Report

25. Useful Features

26. Graph Plotting and Filters
Graph Plotting
Useful in analysing the trends of at-most (6+overall)
dimension values at once
Advance Filter
Can be used to search and analyse specific
dimension values
Secondary Dimension
Analyse two dimensions within a single report

27. Segment
Segments let you isolate and analyze subsets of
your dataset so you can examine and respond to the
component trends in your business
Can be applied for any scope
● Hit
● Session
● Users
➽ With user-based(individual/group) segments, you
can apply a maximum date range of 90 days to your
reports. For that 90 days, Analytics reports on only
the first 1000 sessions for each user.
➽ When you include user- and session-based rules
in the same filter, those are joined with AND logic.
Data is included when it meets both conditions.

28. Custom Report
A custom report is a report that you create. You pick
the dimensions and metrics and decide how they
should be displayed
You have the control, to some extent, of mixing the
dimensions and metrics of different scope. But it can
show unexpected numbers, hence read the report
wisely.

29. Custom Dimension
A custom dimension is a regular dimension except
you create it to track the things GA doesn’t track
automatically.
● ga('set', 'dimension6', dimensionValue)
Mandatory to provide a scope with every dimension
which will define the behaviour and collection of the
dimension
➽ Once created, Custom dimensions cannot be
deleted, but you can disable them
➽ Available for reporting as Secondary Dimension
in regular reports or in Custom Reports
➽ few e.g Author Name, Login Status, User ID,
Client ID, Page Tag etc..

30. Scoping:
Hit:
When a custom dimension has hit-level scope, the
value is applied only to the hit with which the
value was set.
BA
Custom Dimension Contd.
Index 1
Value: A
ASession 1
Index 1
Value: A
Session 1
Index 1
Value: B
A Hit

31. Scoping:
Session:
When two values with session scope are set at
the same index in a session, the last value set gets
precedence and is applied to all hits in that
session.
AA A
Custom Dimension Contd.
Index 1
Value: A
A ASession 1
Session 1
A Hit
B BB BSession 1
Index 1
Value: B

32. Scoping:
User:
If two user-scoped custom dimension values are
set within the same session, the last value set
gets precedence for the current session, and is
applied to future sessions for that user.
AA A
Custom Dimension Contd.
Session 1
Session 2
A Hit
A AA ASession 3
Index 1
Value: A

33. Real-Time allows you to monitor activity as it happens on your site. The reports are updated continuously
and each hit is reported seconds after it occurs.
➽ Non Interactive hits doesn’t appear in Active Users section, however you can see the hits in 30 min list.
Real Time Report

34. A custom table provides you the unsampled data for
the specified combination of dimensions and metrics
on daily basis.
➽ Once created, Custom Tables cannot be edited,
but you can delete them
➽ Any report that matches a subset of the
configuration of your Custom Table will then access
that table by default, giving you fast, unsampled
data
➽ has a limit of 1M unique rows per day. Above 1M,
Analytics creates an (other) row for the remaining
value
➽ not all reports can benefit from Custom Tables.
E.g user based segment, flow visualization,
attribution and multi-channel funnel
Custom Tables

35. Debugging

36. Allows you to check what data is getting collected
with every hit.
➽ Browsers Developer Console (Network Calls)
➽ Google Analytics Debugger (by Google)
➽ Google Analytics Debugger (by keithclark.co.uk)
➽ Google Tag Assistant (by Google)
and many more….
Debuggers
➽ link
➽ link
➽ link

37. Google Tag Manager

38. Why GTM?
Myth: It’s a replacement for Google Analytics
No, it’s a replacement of the way you are adding
Google Analytics to your website.
Pros:
● Reduce developers involvement
● Robust and reusable tag configurations
● One container for different tools
● Asynchronous tag flow
Cons:
● Though most of the tags can be managed
easily, few complex tags need little technical
knowledge

39. Thank You