Frequently asked analytics questions and where to find the answers

Notes from the analytics breakout session.

Questions and answers

Can I save my Google Analytics reports to look at again later?

Yes. It is recommended to always save your reports so you can look at them again later.

How can I look up traffic by organization?

There are a couple of ways and one of them is creating a custom report:

The view in Google Analytics should look like this:

Steps:

Click on customization
Then Custom Reports

Click on Custom Reports

Add metrics and dimensions (metrics are things you count, and dimensions are ways to slice the data)
Add a metric: for example Pageviews

Put in Page as the dimension
Add Organization as a dimension (This should give you all the traffic by organization)
To get all the organizations on the site
Go back to edit
Add Organization as a dimension
Then filter on Organization

To filter by your own Organization, use the name of your Organization as it is called in the “offered by” field on mass.gov. To find this name right on the web page: Right click anywhere on the page and view page source on Mass.gov
Using Ctrl-F to bring up a search bar, search for the phrase: "mg_organization." After the colon you will see the Organization that shows up in “offered by”

If you would like to see traffic by a particular page, then add a second dimension, called Page, and slice it up even more

How can I make a report that looks at more than one organization?

If you want to look at a report for more than just 1 organization in the filter, change to RegEx. RegEx is a series of regular characters or phrases that can create a search string.
In the RegEx field, go the end of the search string and add a pipe “|” which you can usually find on the keyboard right above the enter key. You could add a search terms like MassHealth. Anything with that additional search term will show up in your results.
RegEx works with URLs

What can I do with a reports tab?

Use Organization and Page Type as the Dimensions
Use Pageviews as the Metrics
This report breaks out Pageviews by Content Type

What if I want to create a report for multiple pages?

I want a report for just 3 pages
Search for the URL after the domain name (/orgs/office-of-the-governor)
Add a filter for Page
Change to RegEx
Paste in the URL
Add a vertical bar or pipe
Add the next URL, then a bar, and then the last URL
No need to add a pipe at the end because that tells RegEx you are trying to say “and/or” and will return everything.

Is there a way to export data from Google Analytics?

You can export anything here in Google Sheets and Excel, and CSV

Is there a way to export a table from Mass.gov?

You can export data from Mass.gov as a CSV. If you see this image at the bottom of a view in the CMS, you can filter and export data from that view. For example, you can export data from the “All Content,” “My Content,” and “Feedback” views.

Where can I see how often a document has been downloaded?

You can see this data in the Analytics Dashboards (Beta). It's limited to 6 weeks’ worth of data
In Google Analytics, you can select it as a custom filter. Please refer to this Knowledge Base article for more details.