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![Regex Strings
Example:
pjstar.com/news/20160816/louisiana-governor-40k-homes-damaged-by-
historic-flooding
REGEX:
/(news|sports|lifestyle|entertainment)/(d{8})/([a-zA-Z0-9%-]+?)(.*)
To learn more about regex strings to build custom reports and dashboard
widgets:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034324?hl=en
* Lays out different characters and their meanings
http://regexr.com/
* Lets you test and play with different URLs to build a regex string you can use
in your reporting](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/freepaperpresentation2-170425013026/75/Google-Analytics-Isolating-and-Analyzing-the-Data-8-2048.jpg)
Uploaded bySherri Horton
Google Analytics: Isolating and Analyzing the Data
Sherri Horton gives a presentation on using Google Analytics to isolate and analyze data. She covers the basics of Google Analytics including key metrics like pageviews, sessions, and users. She then demonstrates how to create custom dashboards and reports to view data in different ways. Horton also explains how to use segments to compare data subsets and apply those segments to dashboards and reports. Finally, she provides a brief preview of using Google Data Studio for additional data visualization and analysis.
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Google Analytics: Isolating and Analyzing the Data
- 1. Google Analytics Isolating andAnalyzing the Data Sherri Horton, Data Analyst at GateHouse Media
- 2. About Me DataAnalyst & SEO Manager for GateHouse Media Over 400 digital newspaper sites and growing Experience doing SEO, Social Media, Content Marketing and Analysis for publication, e-commerce and lead gen companies 7 years in the Digital Marketing Industry Google Analytics Certified
- 3. Session Overview GoogleAnalytics The Basics Creating Custom Dashboards Building Custom Reports Using Segments to isolate and compare data sets Data Studio Preview Questions
- 4. GA: The Basics Pageviews: An instance of a page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser. Sessions: Visits; period of time a user is active on your site or app. By default, if a use is inactive for 30 minutes or more, any future activity is attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes are counted as part of the original session. Users: Unique Visitors; The unique browsers that visit your website or mobile app. Bounce Rate: The rate at which someone visits your site/app and leaves. Avg. Session Duration: The average time a user spent on your website or app.
- 5. Reporting Dashboard Basics Real Time Used to see who is viewing what in the last minute Audience Pageviews, Sessions, Users, Mobile Info, New/Returning Users, Location Acquisition Where traffic is coming from; how they got to your site Behavior Where you can find how a person is interacting with your site Customization
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- 8. Regex Strings Example: pjstar.com/news/20160816/louisiana-governor-40k-homes-damaged-by- historic-flooding REGEX: /(news|sports|lifestyle|entertainment)/(d{8})/([a-zA-Z0-9%-]+?)(.*) To learnmore about regex strings to build custom reports and dashboard widgets: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034324?hl=en * Lays out different characters and their meanings http://regexr.com/ * Lets you test and play with different URLs to build a regex string you can use in your reporting
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- 11. Segments Segments letyou isolate and analyze subsets of your Analytics data. You use the segment builder to configure the individual filters that together constitute a segment. You then apply segments to your reports and dashboards so you can see that specific data.
- 12. Segments Pre GeneratedSegments GA has already created segments that you can use to compare data sets Custom Segments Build your own segments by using custom report and dashboard widget logic How can you use them? Data Comparison
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- 14. Custom Segment Creation Desktop Device Only Segment
- 15. Segmenting Your Dashboards Mobile vs Desktop Segments on your Custom Dashboards
- 16. When to UseWhat Use your custom dashboards everyday for basic level reporting Use custom reports when you need to apply complicated filters to the data Also to do page level reporting at a larger scale Top 100 stories, etc. Time based reporting Best hour of the day for article traffic Use segments when you need to compare session or user based metrics/data such as device categories (mobile, desktop) or traffic sources (direct, organic, social) or demographics (age, gender, etc) Use segments with your dashboards for quick reporting!
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Editor's Notes
- #6 Now that we know about the metrics we are looking for, let’s quickly look at the left rail of your dashboard. This is where we will go to locate our means of finding our metrics → We are going to briefly go over Real Time, Audience, Acquisition and Behavior. We will also show you how to set up a personal dashboard, next, so you can find information from these tabs quickly. Real – Time is used to see who is viewing what in the last minute on your site; Audience is where you will find your major metrics – pageviews, sessions, users, device info, and other demographics like age, location and gender Acquisition is where you will find where your users are coming from and how they arrived at your site; social network? Google? Directly? Behavior is where you can find how a person is interacting with your site; what content do they read the most? Did you make a design change that is leading people to bounce from your site or leave your site quicker than normal? Maybe theres an intrusive ad causing users to leave from a certain page. This is where you’d find the answers to those questions. And Customization we are going to go over in the next few slides.
- #7 Here is a screenshot of a Dashboard I made for our one of our sites. It includes most of the top metrics a newsroom needs to report on each month: Pageviews, Visits, Unique Visitors, Average Time Spent on Site, Pageviews by device, Time spent on each device, Top stories and below the fold are bounce rate and Social Referral data. You can customize each of these boxes and widgets to show metrics and dimensions you want.
- #8 I don’t show it in this video but there is a spot within the Custom Dash underneath the title that says EMAIL – you can schedule your dashboard to go out in daily, weekly or monthly time frames. If you hate analytics you can essentially create your dashboard, set up your emails and never log in again. A lot of editors like this option
- #9 Just a little about the Top stories regex string we used in the widget last slide. This is an example of a story URL for one of our gatehouse sites. We have the site, section, date, then the story title. This is consistent for all story pages. To query all story pages for an aggregate total we need to create a string of code to form a regular expression that follows that pattern. In the Regex string, you see the red matches the ‘news’ section of the URL or the section front name. It includes all of our top level section front names so we can get site wide data. If we want to know just about sports articles, we could remove all the other section front names and leave sports only. The blue pulls in only ‘d’ or dates with 8 characters. The green bulls in any character a-z lowercase, A-Z uppercase, numbers 0-9 and any special characters. >>Finding the patterns in your URL structures is easier than creating a regex string to pull them in, especially if you have no development experience but these two links can be really helpful.
- #10 Ok so moving on to Custom Reports! Basically, what we have done with our dashboards is create mini custom reports. Im going to show you how to create a Social Referral Report so you can See which articles are getting the most pageviews from Social Sharing Other custom reports you can make are: > Device Category to see Mobile Tablet and Desktop Traffic > Google News Referral Traffic > Section Front Traffic > Author Reports with the implementation of Custom Dimensions -- this is something you’ll need a developer for or Google Tag Manager > Pageviews by Day, Week or Month- - even Month of the Year > 404 Reports so you can site any redirect or removal issues with your site There are really endless possibilities for these reports. I recommend going to the Google Analytics help center and reading up on the different metrics and dimensions that can be combined.
- #11 This is a more complicated report I created for our New England Sales & Marketing department. They wanted to know where most of our readers were located in the region. They wanted site level reporting, Regional Reporting, City Reporting and a map if possible. Tall order but possible. To build this report, we are going to go into the backend and look at the guts of the thing instead of creating from scratch. Herewe have 3 different tabs within one report. First is Site Metrics. We choose our standard metric set. Hostname or full site stats will be included as our Dimension along with City and Region, in case you want to see individual geographical stats. Then lets apply our filters - We only want our New England sites so I choose their sitenames and build a Regex with their hostnames. Each hostname is separated with a Pipe which means OR in Regular Expressions. > Then we want to strip out any 3rd party URLs that might get caught up in the report. Next we’ll move to the 2nd tab “City Metrics”. This is basically the same as the first tab except we want the Dimension to be CITY. Next we want the City Map in the 3rd tab. Again, the same as the first tab in terms of metrics and filters. But this time we want a Map Overlay. We only want the US with a dimension of Region. Click Save. > Now we are looking at all of the data our marking reps need for the entire region down to the individual site or city we are targeting. This is just an example of the power of custom reports and how nitty gritty you can get with this data. Moving on to segments -
- #12 > Segments let you isolate and analyze subsets of your Analytics data. You use the segment builder to configure the individual filters that together constitute a segment. You then apply segments to your reports and dashboards so you can see that specific data. >The red box is where we will be spending the rest of the session. These are where your segments live - where we create, apply and remove any kind of segmentation.
- #13 > When you click [Choose segment from List] you will see a bunch of pre-generated segments. In most cases, these will serve your purpose. This has device segments so you can compare mobile vs desktop vs tablet traffic, they also have mobile and tablet traffic combined, marketing channel traffic segments, and more. >We can also create custom segments for specific sets of data from a particular traffic channel - like only Facebook traffic vs. Twitter traffic for instance. > Segments are a great way to compare 2 or more sets of data in one view. Segments carry with your dash as you click through different parts of GA as well. So if you apply a segment to the Audience overview, you can then go to Acquisition and compare data that way without having to re-create or re-apply any segments.
- #14 So now I am going to show you how what the segment creator looks like and where you can find any pre-generated segments or custom segments you create. Click Add Segment. Then System in that drop down. Here you will find all of your pre-generated segments. If you hover over them, you can see the filter patterns that are being applied to each segment. So like we did with the dashboard widgets and custom reports, we are using filtering and different rules to get to different data sets. Select Mobile and Tablet Traffic. There are also other segments that are available like Direct Traffic or Tablet only traffic, or table and desktop traffic combined. >Once you have selected the segment you want just click “Apply” >Then you will have your ALL User traffic which is all over you data vs. Mobile and Tablet only traffic. From this screen you can really see what portion of the data is made up of mobile or tablet traffic out of your overall traffic numbers. > These segments carry over to other sections of the reporting dashboard. So if we were to go to Acquisition Channels, we can see how much of each type of traffic comes from which channel without having to re-do your segments.
- #15 You may have noticed on the last slide that there is no desktop device only segment in the pre-generated selection. I’m not sure why - it seems like an obvious choice to create that but alas, they did not. So this is one you may want to create right now while we’re going through it together because I imagine you’ll need it at some point or another. > Click the plus sign to add additional segments. > Here we will click New Segment. There are many fields for every segment you might want to make, from Demographic specifics, to Technology like OS or Browser or Device Category to Behavior like how many sessions a user has had or date of first session or traffic sources like direct or organic, and then the more advanced sections where you can create your own super customized segments. >For this one, we are going to make a Desktop Device Only Segment. So go back to Technology and look for Device Category. We can this to Exactly Match: Desktop. Click Save.
- #16 The most practical use for segments when you are compiling reports as opposed to digging through data is by applying your segments to your custom dashboards. Instead of creating a desktop dashboard and a separate mobile dashboard, you can ultimately have them both on one report by applying both segments. Just hop into your custom dash and apply which segments you want. Some widgets may be redundant if you made any with device type filters but that’s an easy fix. or you can leave them. Its all about customization and making GA work for you. This is just one way the make your reporting both more robust and easier. Pro Tip: The segments do stay with the report if you schedule to send it out. This could help cut down on email waste too!
- #17 So just to summarize both webinars--- > Use your Custom Dashboards everyday for basic level reporting > Use Custom Reports when you need to apply complicated filters to the data [give example] > Also to do page level reporting at a larger scale > Top 100 stories, etc. > Time based reporting > Best hour of the day for article traffic > Use Segments when you need to compare session or user based metrics such as device categories (mobile, desktop) or traffic sources (direct, organic, social) or demographics (age, gender, etc) > Use Segments with your Dashboards for quick reporting!
- #18 Data Studio is the newest product launch from Google. I have been using it to develop cleaner and easier to read reports for our editors and newsrooms. The dashboards and custom reports we went over this session are the building blocks for this report you are viewing now.