Google Analytic Advanced Segments

Segmenting traffic into categories

[rwilson]

I'm trying to use Analytics to section off traffic by product category. I'm not sure why but in the content overview I see urls different to the specific urls I set up. Did I do something wrong or am I misinterpreting the data?

I have several "OR" statements with the exact url for each product.
This is how I have it set up:

I have the dimension set to "Page"
the condition "matches exactly"
the values are my exact urls "/products/product.php?id=1"

Any help would be appreciated!

[still]

Could you please provide a bit more detail on the discrepancy in URLs displayed?

How much data are we talking about? Do you get the same result if your daterange is one day?

[rwilson]

I think I figured it out, I've read that advanced segments is collecting session variables. If that's the case then any other page a user visited before or after hitting the specified url will be logged in that report. I only wanted the data for the specified urls.

I think the solution is to create a specific profile for the page(s) I want to track. seems like more work but at least the data should be true. If there's another possibly easier solution to this I'd love to hear it!

[still]

Ah I see, so you were wanting only those product pages to show up in the Content section? Yes, you are right, in this case Segmentation won't work as it will include all pages that users visited before and after the product pages.

You have two options, as you mentioned you can either make a new profile that filters only those which is not retrospective, or you can filter content via regular expressions akin to (.*)products\.php\?id=(1|2|3...)$

[rwilson]

Thanks! my site is only part dynamic (the product section), so I probably will end up creating the profiles. I will definitely keep that in mind though!

So does the variable session data affect that whole report or only the content section? If it doesn't affect anything else i.e. the visits, time spent, and bounce I'd be happy

[still]

I guess it depends on how many items you have, and the paths users take to get to them. What are you wanting to report on?

As for the data effect of Segments, it filters all displayed data.

[rwilson]

I'm looking to gather visits and bounce rates for the specific pages. I've created both segments and profiles. I might be wrong but it looks like both get the visits and bounce rates specifically for the requested page. One benefit I see from the profiles is that time on site will be time spent on that specific page as opposed to the users entire session.

[still]

If thats the case, then filtering top content traffic by that regex string I mention, then scheduling the report to run every (week/month) would be the optimal way to go.

[rwilson]

That works perfectly. Thank you very much!