New GA Feature: Sticky Filters
June 1, 2007 by Justin CutroniThis is a pretty cool feature that most people don’t know about. I’m not really sure if it’s officially called ‘Sticky Filters’, but that’s the term I’m going to use.
If you apply a filter to a report, and then add that report to a dashboard, the filter will be applied to the data in the report widget. Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a list of keywords, and you only want to see brand keywords. Go to the Keyword report and apply a filter to isolate your branded keywords.
Then add the report to your dashboard. When the report widget appears on the dashboard it will contain only the keywords that match the filter.
What’s really cool is that you can create multiple widgets, each with a different filter. So, if there are multiple groups of keywords tat you want to see on your dashboard, you can create multiple widgets. Just keep applying different filters to the keyword report.
What would be even better is if GA let me choose what integer value is displayed in the widget. So, rather than see visits, I could see conversions, or pageviews. What do you think Google?
‘Sticky’ filters work for all reports. Here’s another example. Let’s say you want to see geographic data segment by north american city. You can filter the Map Overlay report by city and then add the report to your dashboard. (I know this is technically segmentation and not filtering, but the results are similar).
Not only does this add more detailed information to my dashboard, but it also let’s me access a segmented Map Overlay report with one click.
No Responses to “New GA Feature: Sticky Filters”
Hi Justin,
this is really a great feature! Thanks for that, it will help a lot in my day-to-day duties.
By Daniel Waisberg on Jun 1, 2007
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the feedback, you made my week :) Glad I could help make lief easier.
Justin
By Justin on Jun 1, 2007
I agree, “sticky filters” are great. It would really be awesome if they took it one step further and made “sticky dates” – I’d love to be able to have some widgets on my dashboard showing comparing dates.
By Tyson on Jun 2, 2007
Justin,
Is there any way to combine the city and state segmentation? What I’m looking for is a report with city AND state that shows people that viewed a particular page. I know how to show just city or just state, but not both on the same report.
By chriSchaeffer on Jun 6, 2007
Hi Chris,
Sorry for the delay… I was out of the loop for a while…
You want to use a series of advanced filter to create the data you need. This series should combine the City, State (Region) and the Request URI. You’ll need two advanced filters:
1. This filter will combine city (Field A) and state (Field B) and output it in the Custom Variable 1.
2. This filter will take the Custom Variable 1 (Field A) and add it to the Request URI (Field B). Then OUTPUT it to the constructor. I would use the Request URI.
Make sure you add this filter to a new profile as it WILL mess with your data.
Justin
By Justin on Jun 17, 2007
need to find out if there is a possibility of pulling ‘city’ stats after the fact.
By rhonda moret on Aug 21, 2008
Hi Rhonda,
Not sure what you mean by after the fact, but you can always access city level data using the Map Overlay report.
Thanks for the question,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Aug 22, 2008
Another great tip. I can see how this can really help when you have 100′s or 1000s of keywords and you want to compare them with each other!
By Marketing CD on Dec 18, 2008
Hi Justin,
it was really useful to add the report to dashboard. I was wandering if I could give name to those reports reflecting applied filter.
thanks..
By Sarwar on Jul 6, 2009
Sarwar,
No, you can’t actually change the widgets that appear on the dashboard. The only reports that you can name in Google Analytics are the custom reports.
Thanks for the question,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Jul 8, 2009