CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-analyticsdom-events
Drewdavid
Drewdavid

Reputation: 3192

Could "filling up" Google Analytics with millions of events slow down query performance / increase sampling?

Considering doing some relatively large scale event tracking on my website.

I estimate this would create up to 6 million new events per month in Google Analytics.

My questions are, would all of this extra data that I'm now hanging onto:

a) Slow down GA UI performance

and

b) Increase the amount of data sampling

Notes:

I have noticed that GA seems to be taking longer to retrieve results for longer timelines for my website lately, but I don't know if it has to do with the increased amount of event tracking I've been doing lately or not – it may be that GA is fighting for resources as it matures and as more and more people collect more and more data...

Finally, one might guess that adding events may only slow down reporting on events, but this isn't necessarily so is it?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 158

Answers (2)

Eike Pierstorff
Eike Pierstorff

Reputation: 32770

Slow down GA UI performance

Standard Reports are precompiled and will display as usual. Reports that are generated ad hoc (because you apply filters, segments etc.) will take a little longer, but not so much that it hurts.

Increase the amount of data sampling

If by "sampling" you mean throwing away raw data, Google does not do that (I actually have that in writing from a Google representative). However the reports might not be able to resolve all data points (e.g. you get Top 10 Keywords and everything else is lumped under "other").

However those events will count towards you data limit which is ten million interaction hits (pageviews, events, transactions, any single product in a transaction, user timings and possibly others). Google will not drop data or close your account without warning (again, I have that in writing from a Google Sales Manager) but they reserve to right to either force you to collect less interaction hits or to close your account some time after they issued a warning (actually they will ask you to upgrade to Premium first, but chances are you don't want to spend that much money).

Google is pretty lenient when it comes to violations of the data limit but other peoples leniency is not a good basis for a reliable service, so you want to make sure that you stay withing the limits.

Upvotes: 1

Petr Havlik
Petr Havlik

Reputation: 3317

Drewdavid,

The amount of data being loaded will influence the speed of GA performance, but nothing really dramatic I would say. I am running a website/app with 15+ million events per month and even though all the reporting is automated via API, every now and then we need to find something specific and use the regular GA UI.

More than speed I would be worried about sampling. That's the reason we automated the reporting in the first place as there are some ways how you can eliminate it (with some limitations. See this post for instance that describes using Analytics Canvas, one my of favorite tools (am not affiliated in any way :-).

Also, let me ask what would be the purpose of your events? Think twice if you would actually use them later on...

Upvotes: 1

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