2 examples on Google Analytics Filters
Many things are known in Google Analytics, but I think the “Filters” field is not used efficiently enough. In the Google Analytics course I took in the CXL training, I gained different perspectives on Google Analytics.
If you don’t know how to read data correctly, that data is just a stack. Therefore, when it comes to web analytics, we should use Google Analytics as efficiently as possible.
In this content, I will show you how you can make better decisions by making a few changes to the “Filters” area of Google Analytics.
“In Google Analytics, Filters are used by Views to segment the data into smaller groups. Filters can be used to include only specific subsets of traffic, exclude unwanted data, or search and replace certain pieces of information.”
Let’s say you have an e-commerce site and you want to see which t-shirt is the best-selling in Google Analytics. You came to Behaviour — Site Content — All Pages and entered the date range you want to see the report. You came across a t-shirt with a Y model of the brand X. From this point of view, you decided to make new agreements on this Y model, you met with the brand and established new partnerships. What if I told you that this analysis might be wrong if you don’t use the “Filters” section in Google Analytics…
As you may notice, some links in Google Analytics have a “/” slash sign at the end, and some do not. You can see this slash difference by re-examining the links and titles in the Behaviour — Site Content — All Pages field.
Let’s say there is a slash problem in the links of the product of the brand A with model B. Due to this slash problem, clicks coming here are not calculated exactly on a link, so this product does not appear in the first place in your reports. This means that it is a misconception that the Y model of the X brand is the most popular model.
/tshirt/y-pattern
/tshirt/y-model/
Now let’s see how to solve this problem. If Google Analytics reads as if all links have slash at the end, the problem with all non-slash-end links is gone. We need a regex to do this, but first, let’s look at what a regex is.
“In the context of Analytics, regular expressions are specific sequences of characters that broadly or narrowly match patterns in your Analytics data.”
Click on Admin -> View -> Filters and say “Add Filter”. From here we will remove the slash problem. To avoid confusion, you can enter the name of the filter as “Add a Slash”.
You should mark the Filter Type as Custom. Then click on the “Advanced” field.
We will need to specify Field A -> Extract A, Field B -> Extract B and Output To -> Constructor. The fields that will be useful for us here will be Field A and Output To fields. After selecting the Field A URI, you should write the following code: ^(/[a-zA-Z0–9/_\-]*[^/])$
Field B will remain blank and you should write $A1/ in the “Output To” field. So it will be like this:
Make sure the Field A Required and Override Output Field buttons are checked.
Thus, you have solved the slash problem, you will no longer doubt whether there is a slash at the end of the link in all user actions from now on. Of course, as it is known, Google Analytics is a data storage tool, so you cannot manipulate the previous data, so you have recovered the next data.
Let’s come to the second filter suggestion. One of the must-haves for a marketer is UTM. UTMs measure where the inbound conversion comes from and the quality of the inbound traffic. Therefore, the determined UTMs should be the same, but in large formations or formations that have not yet established the UTM style, a UTM crisis is experienced. Many problems may arise, such as the content editor capitalizes the initials of UTM, and the brokerage firm that carries out your partnership business writes “Partner” as Source.
These two are saved as two different sources:
Partner
partner
Click on the Admin -> View -> Filters field to solve the capitalization issue in UTM.
Again, enter something specific as the filter name, such as Lowercase (Source). I have sourced it here because we will have to do it all one by one. Select Lowercase after selecting Custom. You must also select Campaign Source as Filter Field. After this process, all source parameters in UTMs will now appear in all lowercase letters.
You should do the same for the Filter Field field Campaign Medium, Campaign Adgroup.
In addition to these, I would like to point out that UTM is one of the sine qua non of marketing. It’s a good choice to use UTM to see how well which platform works for you, but it’s important to have a clear style here.
For example, what to write in the source section varies from company to company. Therefore, if you are a new venture, you should determine a clear template and share those templates with all your teammates and prepare all UTMs in accordance with this template. You can even do a short workshop with your teammates. UTM is an absolutely critical area in Google Analytics.
After these actions, you cleared two different confusions. You will no longer misread data due to Slash issue in Google Analytics data. In addition, you will solve the capitalization problem of the confusions in UTM.
“By developing and following a proper strategy to add UTM parameters consistently to your inbound links, you not only gain clarity into your traffic sources, but you also save time and money cleaning up your data in the future.”
In addition it would not be a good option to add UTM to internal links to see the flow on the site better. Because Google looks at UTMs when examining movements on your site. If a user from a Facebook ad clicks on a UTM link on the site, your data will be contaminated.
See you in next week!
