Google Analytics API data for goals (funnels) doesn't match - how do they reconcile?
- by bkgraham
I have a Google Analytics account with a well-functioning funnel made up of 4 goals. I can query the API and get the data out, but it does not match the funnel report in Analytics. Without getting into specific values, I can give you an example with faked data.
Here's how the funnel might look:
Shopping Cart
100 > 100 > 20
80 (80%)
Address Page
5 > 85 > 25
60 (71%)
Payment Page
2 > 62 > 10
52 (84%)
Checkout
1 > 53
(49.07% funnel conversion rate)
Okay, so you would expect the API to output data something like this:
goal1Starts goal1Completions goal1Abandons
100 80 20
goal2Starts goal2Completions goal2Abandons
85 60 25
goal3Starts goal3Completions goal3Abandons
62 52 10
goal4Starts goal4Completions goal4Abandons
53 53 0
Instead, it's different. Firstly, the abandons are associated with the following goal (so goal1 always has 0 abandons and goal4 always has 0 abandons. Okay, I can work with that. What's confusing is that the numbers are always a little different. The goal1Completions always match the report, as do the goal4Completions, but everything else is off by a small amount. Sometimes it's only 2 visits, other times it's off by 50.
For the report above here's the kind of results I would tend to get:
goal1Starts goal1Completions goal1Abandons
100 100 0
goal2Starts goal2Completions goal2Abandons
105 84 21
goal3Starts goal3Completions goal3Abandons
90 65 25
goal4Starts goal4Completions goal4Abandons
58 53 5
Here's what I know:
Goal(n)Completions + Goal(n)Abandons = Goal(n)Starts
Goal(n)Starts = Goal(n-1)Completions
Goal(n)Starts - Goal(n-1)Completions != reported number entering at that level
That third one is particularly disappointing. So, here's my question:
What data do I need to pull from the API in order to recreate the counts in the Funnel report in Google Analytics? I don't need the pages exited to entering from - just the counts at every level.
