One of the specialty connectors included with Nextanalytics for Excel is a Google Analytics query. This connector makes it possible to download your data direct from Google Analytics on the internet using their Data API*, and delivers it directly into Nextanalytics for Excel. Once loaded, you can perform whatever analysis of your data that you want – completely customized to your needs, and easily refreshed with new data at the click of a mouse.

To get started, click on the Google Analytics connector icon and login to your Google Analytics account. Upon successful login, your website profiles will be loaded.

Profiles and Segments

If you are tracking multiple web properties, you can pick the profile of interest from the drop-down. Select from one of the default Google segments or a custom segment you have defined (now available with v2 of the API Feed).

Date Range

The date range can be selected either by picking specific from/to dates or by picking from a preset period (e.g. Past 7 days). By selecting a period, the query can be refreshed at a later date and it will always provide the relative period to today’s date. Since there is a lag between when a web site hit occur and when the data is available, today’s data is not a complete picture of site activity. Sometimes you just can’t wait, and want to see activity as soon as it is available. In other cases, you may only want to see full days’ numbers. In this latter case, uncheck Include Today and the date range will start from yesterday.

Dimensions and Metrics

The Data Feed API allows up to 7 Dimensions and 10 Metrics to be downloaded at once. Clicking on the list at the left will copy items to the right boxes, which will be used in the query. Note that there are many rules about which Dimensions and Metrics will work together (see the web reference at the end of this document).

Fetch Data from Google

When you click the Fetch Data button, the query is made over the internet, the results are downloaded and saved to the CSV filename entered, and Nextanalytics for Excel is launched with your data. Note that the data feed is limited to 10,000 rows for each query.

If you try a combination that is not permitted or there is a problem with the query, an error message will appear.

Saving Your Selections

If you want to save the combination of selections on the panel, the Saved Selections tab allows you to assign a name to them and save them for future use. Picking from the Previously Saved Selections list, you can run saved queries directly.

Analyzing Google Analytics Data with Nextanalytics for Excel

Now that your data has been downloaded, Nextanalytics allows you to create custom 2-dimensional views in any combination of the dimensions you have loaded. While the most typical combination is a trend over time, you could just as easily view keywords used by country or perform a detailed campaign or segment analysis. Since your data is always available in Excel, you can easily use Excel features like AutoFilter or charting to continue your analysis.

Noteworthy

The Google Analytics feed includes a date field with daily resolution, and Nextanalytics for Excel will automatically put this date across the columns. By default, Nextanalytics for Excel displays only the last 7 periods, so you need to change settings if you want to see more than 7 days of information.

You can change the date format to display only years (‘yyyy’) or months (try ‘MMM yy’) for a summarized view. You can also perform day-of-the-week analysis (‘ddd’ or ‘dddd’).

* For more information about the Google Analytics Data API, see http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataReference.html