Using metric ga:users with filter by ga:pagePath?

[Jerry W]

Hi,

I'm wondering whether I may use ga:users as metric and filtering by ga:pagePath to get the amount of users visiting a certain page.

When I use the "dimension & metric reference" (https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets#cats=user,session,page_tracking) it seems to me that it's allowed.
But according to it I also may use ga:sessions and ga:pagePath. But that results in wrong data (as I read here: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/hits-sessions-metrics-dimensions-web-analytics/)

I understand that I must not mix hit-level and session-level metrics/dimensions. But according to https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-analytics-data-export-api/nXfstERQu-o  the ga:visitors (now ga:users) seems to be okay.

So why does the Reference allow sessions and pagePath? And may I use users and pagePath?

Cheers,
Jerry

[Mike Sullivan]

Yes, you can use User and Page together.  Sessions are counted only for the Landing page, but users appear for all pages.  You can confirm this with a custom report, list page, session and user for a filtered/low-volume session on a test web property.  Users will display a 1 for every page, but Sessions will display 1 only for the landing page.

The reference used to restrict what could be used with what more aggressively, but then the rules got too complicated, so they simplified it and now permit most combinations. That doesn't necessarily mean they result in good data, or even any data; just that you won't get an error if you use them together.