Inconsistent data when report shows multiple months vs. single month

[Jannette]

I have a GA report in Sheets that's looking at blog pageviews from social source referrals. I used to do it manually but just learned about automatic reports. However, I noticed the sheets data was inconsistent with the older numbers I manually pulled.

So if I run a monthly history report for the past 3 years with the starting date of 1/1/2014 and end date of 11/30/2016, and include the ga:yearMonth dimension to give me page views by month, I get one set of data that's different than if I ran the exact same dimensions/metrics for one month.

My metrics are: ga:pageviews

My dimensions are: ga:hasSocialSourceReferral, ga:SocialNetwork, ga:yearMonth

My sort is: ga:yearMonth

My filters are: ga:hasSocialSourceReferral==Yes;ga:PagePath=@/blog/

The Monthly history report has a Start Date of 1/1/2014 and an End date of 11/30/2016.

The one month report has a Start Date of 11/1/2014 and an End date 11/30/2014.

The dates are the ONLY difference.

So the monthly history report shows 1418 pageviews during 11/2014, but if I ran the one month report setting the date for just 11/1/2014 to 11/30/2014, I get 1350 pageviews.

Any ideas why these numbers wouldn't be the same? It's driving me crazy.

Thanks!

[Ryan Praskievicz]

Hi Jannette,

Sounds like a sampling issue. Check your GA Sheets report and see if it has:

Contains Sampled Data 

Yes

You can break your GA sheets query into smaller date range to get around sampling.

Best,

Ryan Praskievicz

www.ryanpraski.com

[Jannette]

Thanks Ryan, I have Sampling Level set to HIGHER_PRECISION.

I noticed that if I went into Google Analytics for the 3 year date range, and viewed by Month, the data points for each month match the history report in sheets, rather than the individual month report numbers.

Breaking the GA sheets query into multiple reports 1 month at a time or viewing it in GA one month at a time gives me the numbers I am looking for. 

So, even if you set for Greater Precision, is GA pulling different sampling numbers for a 3 year date range split into months versus 1 month at a time? That would explain the difference in numbers - not a sheets add-on issue, but a GA issue.

Jannette

[Ryan Praskievicz]

Hi Jannette,

Setting the report config to Greater Precision doesn't guarantee your report does not get sampled.

You need to look in the header info of your report in Google Sheets for Contains Sampled Data. See cells A6 and B6.

Best,

Ryan