CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-apigoogle-analytics-api
ForeverGolf
ForeverGolf

Reputation: 57

fullRefferer data are missing on a very large timerange

We have a very big analytics account with a lot of referal traffic.

We do the following API Queries to get fullRefferer with Session count for the last 30 days and the whole timeframe:

https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v3/data/ga?ids=xxx&start-date=30daysAgo&end-date=today&metrics=ga%3Asessions&dimensions=ga%3AfullReferrer&sort=-ga%3Asessions&samplingLevel=HIGHER_PRECISION&max-results=10000

https://www.googleapis.com/analytics/v3/data/ga?ids=xxx&start-date=2005-01-01&end-date=today&metrics=ga%3Asessions&dimensions=ga%3AfullReferrer&sort=-ga%3Asessions&samplingLevel=HIGHER_PRECISION&max-results=10000

Especially the whole timeframe query takes a lot of time (what is clear). The strange thing happens is that there are referal URLs inside the 30DaysAgo Results ... but not inside the 2005-01-01 Results. This is very unlogical :).

does anyone has some ideas why those data are missing? maybe google dont deliver all referrers when there is a big timeframe?

thank you very much, Bastian

Upvotes: 0

Views: 41

Answers (1)

Linda Lawton - DaImTo
Linda Lawton - DaImTo

Reputation: 117146

How sampling works

Sampling in Analytics is the practice of selecting a subset of data from your traffic and reporting on the trends available in that sample set. Sampling is widely used in statistical analysis because analyzing a subset of data gives similar results to analyzing all of the data. In addition, sampling speeds up processing for reports when the volume of data is so large as to slow down report queries.

When sampling is applied

Specifically, Analytics inspects the number of sessions for the specified date range at the property level. If the number of sessions in the property over the given date range exceeds 250k sessions (25M for Premium)1, Analytics will employ a sampling algorithm which uses a sample set proportional to the distribution of sessions by day for the selected date range. Thus, the session sampling rate varies for every query depending on the number of sessions included in the selected date range for the given property.

You cant prevent sampling.

HIGHER_PRECISION — Returns a more accurate response using a large sample size, but this may result in the response being slower.

Check your response it will tell you if the data is sampled

Upvotes: 0

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