CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-analytics-api
Dmitry Levykin
Dmitry Levykin

Reputation: 31

Google Analytics Reporting API different results for one period

I tried to perform two requests to Reporting API:

  1. startDate=2016-01-01, endDate=2016-08-26, ga:users, ga:yearMonth
  2. startDate=2016-01-01, endDate=2016-08-26, ga:users, ga:yearMonth, ga:year

The metric results do not match. Why?

Example on https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/query-explorer/

Result for request one:

ga:yearMonth    ga:users
201601          1372
201602          1701
201603          1980
201604          1779
201605          1465
201606          1336
201607          1402
201608          1595

Result for request two:

ga:year ga:yearMonth    ga:users
2016    201601          1372
2016    201602          1525
2016    201603          1761
2016    201604          1531
2016    201605          1239
2016    201606          1084
2016    201607          1157
2016    201608          1365

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1587

Answers (2)

anekix
anekix

Reputation: 2563

This answer maybe useful to someone having the same problem.Whenever there is mismatch in data between api and data on dashboard do following things.

Make sure you are using right parameters for both of them (similar metrics and dimensions).

If after step one still there is mismatch then its probably because sampling has been kicked in internally by the google , this is because even the smallest query requires heavy computation. To make sure sampling is being done there will be a field samplingSpaceSizes in the response .

To avoid sampling make sure you loop over dates and query for each day independently.

in your case its most probably the issue of sampling because of huge date range (and this is because you GA account has lots of data), so intead of querying for a bigger range , loop over date range.

Also remember it may tae upto 48 hours for the fresh data to be processed.To make sure if your data is processed one look for a field isDataGolden in response if its present that data is processed and so results will match. if that param is absent it means some of your data has not been processed yet.

Upvotes: 2

etemple1
etemple1

Reputation: 1788

Have you checked for sampling? The date range you're working with is on the large side, so you might consider testing with a smaller range to see if the totals become more consistent.

Another thing to consider is that Users metric can be pre-calculated or calculated on the fly. More information on the Users metric here

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions