Google Analytics Export

As powerful as Google Analytics is, it has some quirks that can make it a little difficult to use at times. One of those quirks is that by default Google Analytics only allows you to export up to 500 lines to CSV. This can be very frustrating when analyzing keyword data or content pages or any other metric for that matter. Any site with decent traffic will exceed the 500 row download limitation for most topics that you attempt to download. There is an easy fix that I would like to share that has been a life saver for me and eliminated a lot of frustration once I  figured it out.

To export more than 500 rows from Google Analytics at one time you simply need to add a small snippet to the end of the URL to let Google Analytics know what the new limit should be. Te snippet should look like this:

&limit=10000

where the number represents the number of rows that you would like to download. If that number needs to be higher than 10000 then increase it to the limit that you need. After you add this string to the URL, hit enter so that the URL will reload. This works best if you are exporting CSV for Excel rather than and Excel export. If you computer settings are set to open CSV files in excel then exporting to CSV should be an non-issue.

This is a simple fix, but huge time saver if you were struggling to download more than 500 rows as I was. Hopefully, you find this beneficial and are able to use it during your analysis of your Google Analytics Data in Excel.

Update – 9/22/11 – In the new version of Google Analytics Version 5), the above fix is no longer accurate. To export a large number of rows in the new version, you must scroll to the bottom of the report you are trying to export and change the number of rows that are shown from 10 to 500. Once that is done, the URL will change and include a string that looks like this “Fexplorer-table.rowStart%3D0%26explorer-table.rowCount%3D500/.” This is the row count that is being exported and needs to be manually changed if you need more than 500 rows which is the limit of number of rows to be shown on the page. If you need 5,000 rows, simple change the string in the URL to 5,000 and export as CSV. IF you attempt to use the export to Excel, it probably will not work correctly.

For reporting purposes, when you export data from Google Analytics, the information is not in the format or structure that you need. Google Analytics is a little limited on the reporting functionality and often requires some manipulation in Microsoft Excel to massage the data in the the format you need.

Often I am trying to find a text string within a dataset without being able to match the entire string.

What I am trying to do is determine if a value from a list exists in a range of columns and return a value from a corresponding column.

In my list from sheet 1 column A I have values like:
U04370
W71191
X770DJ

In sheet 2 I will have in column A:
TESTING INC #U04370 / JMO  / BLISH-MIZE
TESTING INC #X848MM/RADIUS /WEGMAN’S FOOD 
TESTING INC #W71191/INFOL/FIELD CONTAINER 
TESTING INC #X770DJ/PROPH/MAGNUS INDUSTRIES
TESTING INC #X9950H/RUSH /ODOMS TENNESSEE PRIDE 

and in sheet 2 Column B I will have
28832
46375
47524
49119
49166

I want to return to sheet 1 column B the value from sheet 2 column B when sheet 1 column A is contained in sheet 2 column A.

This function helps to solve that problem

=INDEX(Sheet2!$B$2:$B$6,MATCH(“*”&A2&”*”,Sheet2!$A$2:$A$6,0))

where “A2″ corresponds to the cell of the text string that you are trying to match. This function only works if there is only one matching cell in Sheet 2, Column A. If there are multiple instances of the text string in Sheet 2, Column A, then another function will have to be used for accurate results.