Comments on: Segmentation Options in Google Analytics

By: How to Analyse Web Analytics Data pt 3 | L3 Analytics

How to Analyse Web Analytics Data pt 3 | L3 Analytics — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:26:18 +0000

[...] This post has covered the third key technique in analysing web analytics data, segmentation. This can be performed by refining the set of data being reviewed or by isolating a subset of data, whichever is appropriate to answer the business question under investigation. Without going into detail, I mentioned the potential need to group variables referring to other blog posts that go into more detail on this topic. As mentioned, Avinash’s books and blog are a great source for learning about segmentation while if you use Google Analytics, Justin Cutroni has written about the six ways you can do segmentation in GA. [...]

By: SEO Freelance

SEO Freelance — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:54:08 +0000

Whoa! Thanks for sharing this interesting post about the effect of filters on transactional data. I wish all posts are just like this – very informative. Two thumbs up.

By: we are cloud

we are cloud — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:43:12 +0000

Hi Justin,
We thought this was a really good blog post – so good, in fact, that we referenced it in our post entitled “9 resources explaining when to use segmentation or filters in Google Analytics”. You can find the post at http://analytics.bimehq.com/ if you’re interested to read it!

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:54:42 +0000

@phil: Advanced segmentation is visit level segmentation. GA is pulling back all data from all visits that include the pages that you specified. If you need to create a department specific report use a filter and a new profile.

@ Yazmin: You should change your approach and use the new custom variables to track the different product categories.

@Wendy: Yes, your original profile should still have data. I would make sure that you did not add the filter to the wrong profile. Also make sure that the filter is correct. But you’re approach is spot on and the right way to do it.

By: Shenzhen Marketing

Shenzhen Marketing — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:52:34 +0000

Thankyou Justin,
your post help me know more about analytics. Hope it help more and more people.

By: aimClear’s 2009 Daily Training Link Library » aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:33:41 +0000

[...] http://www.epikone.com/blog/2009/04/21/segmentation-options-in-google-analytics/ [...]

By: Phil Speth

Phil Speth — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:17:17 +0000

I attempted to create a custom advanced segment to filter pages who’s path contains specific words. For example ParksRecreationArts.
I look at the results and find pages like /police/.

These pages don’t have the term I asked for and don’t contain information or links with the term.
Any Idea why this is happening and how I can get around it.
My goal is to create Department specific reports on internet traffic.

By: Yazmin Wickham

Yazmin Wickham — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:46:26 +0000

Justin -

Thanks so much for your ShortCut book. It’s really helped me out a lot.

I do still have a question regarding segmentation. Gavin above mentioned the user defined variable which is what reminded me of it.

I have a site that has different types of product categories. In trying to track the traffic to these pages, however, the URLs don’t have any category specific text such that I can create a filter for these categories.

What I did was set the category in the cookie via ‘pageTracker._setVar(“category”);’ and then reset it with ‘pageTracker._setVar(“”);’. Since the variable doesn’t automatically get reset in the cookie when a user visits a page with a different variable, I felt I had to manually reset it.

Problem is, I’m not sure I’m getting good information and when I look at the data I’m collecting in my User Defined Report, I’m seeing a portion being reported as “(not set)”.

Do you think I’m going about this segmentation correctly?

Thanks!

By: Wendy

Wendy — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:19:08 +0000

I could use your help.

Within our GA account, we started with profile ‘www.fraserinstitute.org’, which was set up by our developer, and has no filtering at all so includes all traffic (internal and external).

A few weeks ago I created a new profile, which filters all traffic from our IP address and named it ‘All External Traffic’.

Since that time, I noticed this morning that profile ‘www.fraserinstitute.org’ started flatlining on July 29 and profile ‘All External Taffic’ started tracking on July 30th.

Shouldn’t profile ‘www.fraserinstitute.org’ still be tracking all traffic, internal and external? I thought you could create a maximum of 100 profiles, with a max of 5 filters per profile to give you a quick snapshot of different website activity?? HELP!

By: Justin Cutroni

Justin Cutroni — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:55:34 +0000

SEM Expert,

I haven’t heard about any issues with Custom Reports and the browser. IT may be due to a plugin or some extension that you have.

Sorry I could not be more help,

Justin