Google has announced new updates today in their Analytics Help center.
Google Analytics introduces the following new features that enhance the reporting experience, especially for properties with large and complex data:
Data quality icon at the individual card level. Previously, the Data quality icon appeared at the top of the Reporting snapshot report and the overview reports.
However, different messages can apply to different cards. With this update, Google Analytics more precisely shows which messages apply to each card in a report.
Why data quality is important. If a data quality icon appears on a particular card, it may indicate that the data for that card is incomplete, inaccurate, or not up-to-date.
This could be due to a variety of factors, such as tracking issues, data processing errors, or user behavior changes.
By identifying these issues early, you can take corrective action to improve their data quality and ensure that they are making accurate decisions based on their data.
In addition, the data quality icon can also help you identify areas where you need to focus your efforts to improve data quality.
For instance, if multiple cards in a report have data quality issues related to a particular data source or tracking tag, you may need to address those issues and improve data accuracy and completeness for that source or tag.
A new “(other)” row message in the data quality icon. The “(other)” row appears when a report is affected by cardinality limits, which results in the less common data beyond the limits grouping into an “(other)” row.
In this new message, you now have several ways to reduce or eliminate these cardinality limits.
All properties now have a one-click option to create the same report in Explore.
The “(other)” row never appears in Explore because it uses raw, event-level data.
For 360 users.
Google Analytics 360 properties also have access to expanded data sets, allowing you to flag up to 100 reports per property as high priority.
Google Analytics permanently removes the “(other)” row from the reports you’ve flagged.
The new message in the data quality icon provides several ways for you to reduce or eliminate the cardinality limits, allowing you to have more complete and accurate data.
For example, all properties now have a one-click option to create the same report in Explore, which uses raw, event-level data and does not have the same cardinality limits as the regular reporting.
This can help you get a more accurate view of your data and avoid the “(other)” row issue.
For 360 users.
For Google Analytics 360 properties, there is also an option to flag up to 100 reports per property as high priority, which allows Google Analytics to permanently remove the “(other)” row from those reports.
This can be particularly helpful for advertisers who need to have very accurate and complete data for specific reports.
New sampling controls for Google Analytics 360 properties. The following new sampling controls allow you to adjust the level of precision and speed in your explorations:
- More detailed results: Uses the maximum sample size possible to provide results that are the most precise representation of the full data set
- Faster results: Uses a smaller sampling size to give faster results (option selected by default)
Sampling is a process that Google Analytics uses to estimate data when the amount of data is too large to process.
Sampling is useful for making data processing faster and more efficient, but it can also impact the accuracy and precision of the data.
With the new sampling controls, advertisers using Google Analytics 360 properties can adjust the level of precision and speed to best fit their needs.
You can choose to use the maximum sample size possible, which provides the most precise representation of the full data set (this option is useful for advertisers who need very accurate and detailed data for their analyses and decision-making).
Alternatively, you can use a smaller sample size to get faster results.
This option is selected by default and is helpful for advertisers who need to get results quickly and do not require the highest level of precision.
Learn more.
Visit the Google Analytics Help center here.
Why we care.
With the new updates, you should be able to quickly identify and address potential data quality issues, allowing you to make more informed decisions and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.
