Google Analytics: understanding dimensions and metrics?

Posted by flossfan on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by flossfan
Published on 2014-06-05T14:35:49Z Indexed on 2014/06/05 15:39 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 167

Filed under:

google-analytics

|

analytics-api

If I run a query on the Google Analytics API and set the dimension to ga:pagePathLevel1 and the metric to ga:avgTimeOnPage, I get results like this:

{ pagePathLevel1: /about, avgTimeOnPage: 28 },
{ pagePathLevel1: /contact, avgTimeOnPage: 10 }

I'm not completely sure how to interpret this.

Is the value of avgTimeOnPage the average time spent by any user on all pages that match that path?

Or is 28 seconds the average time spent by any user on any single page that matches that path?

I'm looking for the average time spent across all pages matching that path, but the time estimates look shorter than I'd expect.

I hope that question makes sense! Please tell me if it doesn't.

© Pro Webmasters or respective owner

Related posts about google-analytics

Problem with Google Analytics for Android : "Dispatcher thinks it finished, but there were 543 faile

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Anyone know how to solve this problem? 03-23 13:03:20.585: WARN/googleanalytics(3430): Problem with socket or streams. 03-23 13:03:20.585: WARN/googleanalytics(3430): java.net.SocketException: Broken pipe 03-23 13:03:20.585: WARN/googleanalytics(3430): at org.apache.harmony.luni.platform… >>> More
Site too large to officially use Google Analytics?

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
We just got this email from the Google Analytics team: We love that you love our product and use it as much as you do. We have observed however, that a website you are tracking with Google Analytics is sending over 1 million hits per day to Google Analytics servers. This is well above the "5 million… >>> More
Google Analytics and Whos.amung.us in realtime visitors, why such an enormous discrepancy?

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
Since years I use in a site both Google Analytics and Whos.amung.us, both Google analytics and whos.amung.us javascripts are inserted in the same pages in the tracked part of the site. In real-time visitors, why such an enormous discrepancy ? for example at the moment, Google analytics gives me 9… >>> More
Change domain in Google Analytics [closed]

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, I have changed my website domain. Do I have to create another GA account or it is possible to do this in settings. Thanks in advance, Etam. >>> More
Google Analytics - Can I download the logs?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Can I download the raw logs of my Google Analytics data? I want to do some processing on the data. >>> More

Related posts about analytics-api

Google Analytics API - Tying Behavior to Specific Dates

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am using the API to understand the performance of Adwords ad campaigns. I need to know how to attribute metrics back to the date dimension. For instance, for a given date, if I have 20 clicks, 18 visits, and 3 goal completions, does it mean that: 1) All of these actions happened on the day… >>> More
Google Analytics API - Super simple?

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
Google Analytics API - Too complicated? I've read about Google Analytics API but heard of others that it is a bit complicated to make it work. I use PHP. Copy / paste example My question is if there is a copy / paste example anywhere on the web for getting a stats curve of the latest month, or… >>> More
Updates To .NET Library For The Google Analytics API

as seen on Google Code - Search for 'Google Code'
We’re incredibly proud of the diversity of applications and tools making use of the Google Analytics Export API. We also know that several of you have been asking... >>> More
Google Analytics API and Internal Search question

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to use Google Analytics API to query internal searches that happen on my site. I'd like to be able to query the keywords and the number of times that keyword was used in internal search, based on URL of a page on the site. The idea is to find out which keywords direct the user to a particular… >>> More
Cannot get Google Analytics API to register page views on iPhone

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I would like to gather usage statistics for my iPhone app using Google Analytics so I'm trying to configure it using the following tutorial: http://code.google.com/intl/fr-FR/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/mobileAppsTracking.html I think I did everything they indicate in the documentation, and I get… >>> More