Submitted by Kelly Holcomb on Wed, 2018-11-14 13:57

After you have access to the university-wide analytics account and logged in, you can create a segment to narrow down the data pertaining to your website. However, because this account gathers data from most sites here at Oregon State University, you will see data from other OSU websites (explanation below).

  1. Log into Google Analytics
  2. Click on the property menu in the upper left-hand corner
  3. Select the University-wide property and the Unfiltered view

     

  4. Click on the Audience, then click on Overview

     

  5. Click on +Add Segment
  6. Click on New Segment
  7. Type a name into the Segment Name next to the blue Save button.
  8. Click on Conditions under Advanced
  9. Then click on Ad Content to change the dimension that you will filter by. 
  10. Click in the search bar and start typing Hostname
  11. Click on the search result to select it. 
  12. Change Contains to Exactly Matches
  13. In the text box, type in your site's hostname. For example: communications.oregonstate.edu. Don't include "www" or "https." 
  14. Then click the blue Save button.

You can now apply this segment to any report in Google Analytics.

  1. Click on the All Users segment, which is selected by default. 
  2. This will bring up a list of all the segments you have created. Select the one you just created to see only your website data. 

     

  3. Click on Apply, which will apply the segment to the data in the report. You can apply this to any report in Google Analytics, such as Behavior or Acquisition.

WordPress blogs

To see stats about an individual WordPress blog, you'll follow the steps above and set the hostname to "blogs.oregonstate.edu." Then, under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages, search for the name of your blog to see only your blog pages.

Why segments include other website data

Segments group Google Analytics data based on a user’s session, which can include other OSU websites. A session starts when someone goes to a page on your website. It ends when they either leave your website or become inactive for 30 minutes. Because this is a university-wide analytics account, "your website" is any OSU Drupal 7 website. For their session to end, they would need to go to a non-OSU Drupal 7 website, like google.com.

Example: say someone visits your homepage, that means they are a user that has started a session. Let’s say they click on a couple of links in your menu on your homepage. That user’s session now has 3 pages for their session. But let’s say they click on a link that goes to another OSU website. When they click on a link to another OSU website, it is also counted because it is part of the same session of that user. Their session is still ongoing and they now have 4 pages for their session.

This is actually really good information to know how visitors are navigating through related material on OSU websites. You can see possible roadblocks or pinch points to see if people are getting the information that they need. It does add pageviews to your totals when in Google Analytics, but it also gives you rich information about how people are using your site.

How to filter for only your website

To see data for only your website:

  1. Use the analytics dashboard and filter by your site.
  2. Create your own Google Analytics account and add the tracking ID to your website.
  3. Add an advanced filter when viewing reports in Google Analytics.
    1. Go to the University-wide property and then to the Unfiltered view and apply your segment for your site.
    2. Go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages from the sidebar.
    3. Add hostname as a secondary dimension.
    4. Click on “Advanced” next to the search bar at the top of the data table to set the filter
      screenshot of Google Analytics dashboard, highlighting the advanced filter next to the search bar
    5. Then start typing the name of your domain, i.e. "communications.oregonstate.edu" and select the option from the drop down.
      screenshot of Google Analytics advanced search for hostname

       

    6. Click Apply
    7. You can now verify in the hostname column and see that all the pages listed are from your website.
      screenshot of Google Analytics showing that all the pages listed are from a single domain

       

These pageview numbers will then match much closer the found in the analytics dashboard. The numbers will never match exactly and that is to be expected. A segment is based on a percentage of sessions, not all of them.

If you want to delve deeper, check out Google's documentation on segments.