Analytics-Smart

The segment overlap technique lets you compare up to 3 user segments to quickly see how those segments overlap and relate to each other. This can help you isolate specific audiences based on complex conditions. An analysis technique that visualizes the relationship between multiple segments of users is known as a segment overlap report.

New segments can be created based on what kind of business you are running and what findings you have after tracking. This report helps you understand specific audiences by isolating them based on complex or advanced segments.

Reports in GA4

Path exploration report in Google Analytics 4

Free form report in Google Analytics 4

Funnel Exploration Report

A sample segment overlap report looks like below

The capability of segment overlap report in GA4:

Only 3 segments can be added to compare

You can break down your report using another dimension, such as country, age group, gender, etc.

Can create a new segment or audience using the overlap or intersection users and then use this audience across Google Platforms like Google Ads, Display ads, etc.

Components Available

After logging in to your GA4 account on the left sidebar you can see the Segment Overlap. If you choose that you will see a sample data report from your account with some configuration. If click on blank then you have to start everything from scratch.

As you click on the Free form report you can see 3 sections available.

Variables

Tab settings (Tools)

Output (reports generated based on tools selected in the tab)

Variables

The variable is basically data points available in your analytics tracking whether it is dimensions, metrics, user property, or events property. It is the place where you decide on what data points you want to do analysis. It can be date range, segments, Dimensions, Metrics

You can change the name & Date range of your analysis report from the top-left interface.

Segments

If the analysis is needed to be done on different types of visitors like logged in, guest, or anonymous, You have to include those segments. You can choose from several segments that are already included or if you have any custom segments created.

3 kinds of segmentation attributes are available

User Segment: Here you can match user data based on certain criteria

Session Segment: Here you can include sessions matched data points of the Audience

Event Segment: Here you can only include event-based data points

Dimensions and metrics

Dimensions in Google Analytics are basically attributes/ parameters of an event, product, transaction, user, etc.

Event Name

Category

User properties

Event properties

Metrics help to measure the numeric values against dimensions like how many events were captured yesterday, campaign count, click count, and campaign conversion value.

Number of events

Active user count

Total transactions

Campaign click

Tab Settings

In this column section, you can configure what the report will look like. There is a technique drop-down from there you can select the report type it can be Free form, funnel Exploration, or Path exploration. I am doing this analysis in the Google Analytics Demo account.

Segment

In this Tab, you can add segments you want to analyze only up to 3. Three segments can be compared in the analysis.

Breakdown

In segment overlap analysis, you can further break down reports based on the dimensions selected. I have selected the Device Category to see if segments overlap b/w devices.

If the dimension cardinality is huge then there will be several possible values you can select the number for rows per dimension to display.

Values

If you wanted to see values related to certain metrics then you can select metrics and drop them in the value tab. It shows the number involved related to segment overlap.

I have selected Active users & transactions as values, for them, we can see values in the analysis report.

Filters

If you don’t want to see any data like (not set) you can apply filters to restrict the data shown in the analysis according to the conditions configured.

If your filter has multiple conditions, all conditions must be met to apply the filter.

Reporting

The segment overlap diagram is interactive. If you hover your mouse on to segment or union or intersection of two or more segments you can see numbers for that intersection.

As you can see in the Image the intersection highlighted is a combination of all three segments. A total of 55 transactions from Direct mobile traffic and 5 active users on mobile.

You can also move your pointer to the border of segments to see inclusive numbers for that segment: this even includes any overlap with other segments. The below image highlighted active users with transactions and direct traffic excluded.

You can also see the correlation between these overlapped segments in the table created but you have to remove the breakdown.

You can also creat custom segments from data visible and save it for further use in campaigns

More from Analytics-Smart

I have more than 12 years of experience in Martech solutions. In tools and applications like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Adobe Analytics, campaign & T

2 days ago

Secondary Dimension in GA4

Secondary Dimensions in Google Analytics GA4

Secondary dimensions in GA4 are very flexible when it comes to sending data to Google Analytics accounts. It is tracked as a part of parameters with events and all these parameters will also be available in the BigQuery Data stream.

Types of Dimensions in GA4

Default Dimension

Custom Dimensions

User acquisition

Session acquisition

User Engagement

Monetization

Demographic

Geographic

Technology

Devices

User-Scope custom definition

Event- Scope custom definition

How to Use Secondary Dimensions in GA4

Viewing a secondary dimension to your GA4 report is simple. You can get to table reports for Acquisition like user traffic acquisition reports, engagement reports, or monetization reports. I am taking an example of traffic acquisition to understand how users are directed to the site and from which sources and mediums. Google user Acquisition dimension

You have to click on the plus icon on the right top of the primary dimension field. This will open a new tab of dropdown for the selection of secondary dimensions. Either you can click or use a search field to select one of the categories of dimensions you wanted to explore for analysis. I think to Add if you are interested in Custom Dimension you have to choose a secondary dimension under the Custom (Event-Scope) or Custom(User-Scope).

You can then select the secondary dimension you want to analyze your data and that will going to load new information on each row of data and the line item is broken down. As each primary dimension item is now broken down into secondary dimensions, the overall number of rows in the report will grow.

In the above report, I break the traffic acquisition report which has a default primary dimension of 'Default Channel Grouping' down by source/medium. I have selected countries in order to know how my acquisition channels are performing for different countries.

For another example, below screenshot, I have breakdown my events  report custom(events-scope) dimensions Page Title. This allows me to understand which Page titles are getting most number of event hits for view_item, select_item, and search_term.

If you want to apply more than two secondary dimensions in the GA4 report

By default, you can only apply a maximum of two dimensions to a GA4 report ie. the primary and secondary dimension, which is visible and can be explored in the report section.

But there will cases where you want to aplly more than two dimensions then you can do that via the Exploration reports. Free form report is best example for this case

Conclusion

For maketers or analysts the secondary dimensions must always the way to look at the reports. Only viewing out of box report is often very high level and it never offer good insights. Breaking down your data by additional dimensions can help you make more targeted marketing decisions based on granular user or traffic data.

Custom Dimension in GA4

Google Analytics GA4 provides great flexibility when it comes to sending data to Google Analytics property. You can send custom parameters the way you want and the same will be available in the Bigquery streaming connection also it will ad more in-depth to the data you are collecting.

Google Analytics GA4 gives you the capability to collect and then analyze the data that is not generated in the default setup of GA4. Custom dimensions are easy and simple to configure in GA4 and it's an extremely great way to get deeper insights into the use and events data collected on your website.

The GA4 custom dimension involves setup:

Register a parameter as the custom definition in the GA4 config Tab

Setup custom parameters in events tracking

The registration of custom dimension is not retroactive so if you configure it today, previous data can not be visible in reports.

How to configure custom dimensions in Google Analytics GA4? Register custom dimension GA4 property

This can be applied to any event parameter that you send to the GA4 property. If you want to use them in explorer reports like Funnel exploration, Path Analysis, Free Form report, or Segment Overlap.

Step1

Configure Section:

The first thing you need to do is to click on the "configure" section on the left sidebar. Then choose the "Custom definitions" option, from there you will land on the custom dimensions page.

There is also a tab for custom metrics in case you want to configure custom metrics click on "Custom metrics" instead.

Step 2

Event Parameter selection:

Now click on the "Create custom dimension" button on the top right corner. You will see the next box will slide in to fill in the information for the custom dimension.

Here you have to fill in information Like "Dimension name", Scope, and the most important Event parameter, Event parameter tab will show the list of parameters available to create custom dimensions.

Name Parameter: You can enter whatever you want. This is how you want your dimension to be displayed in your reports.

Scope: If you want to apply this parameter only to one event

Event parameter: This is the place where you mention specifically which parameter you want to add a secondary dimension

Setting up Custom parameters in Event tracking

You can define custom parameters in your event tag configuration as shown below. As I have configured the Page type in my Ecommerce tracking tag, it will show me how my page types are performing for customers like search page, listing page, category page, details page, filter pages

If you want to send more parameters, you can do that also. you can send up to 25 custom parameters with a single event. These two parameters will eventually become custom dimensions in Google Analytics 4.

Where to find the custom dimension in Google Analytics 4 reports?

Note: Newly added custom dimension will only be able to appear in reports after 24 hours in some cases maybe 48 hours as GA4 events analysis takes up to 72 hours.

As you know GA4 is an event-based analytics platform, every report in the property is affected by the events you send with custom parameters.

Configure > Events reports

Reports > Engagement > Events

Explore (exploration reports)

Conclusion

In Google Analytics GA4 custom dimension is now fundamental functionality that is a part of your initial implementation plan. If you wanted to track an event with additional information then you have to deal with custom dimensions.  

Google analytics has Google consent mode. It has its own control over your data collection set up on your site. But it does not protect the privacy of the end-user and doesn’t strictly follow GDPR or CCPR regulations. Even if the end-user explicitly selects “No” or “Never” for being tracked, Google Analytics still continues to collect data.

Google Analytics Consent

Google applies Google consent mode that is not a Consent management platform. Like Onetrust, Cookiebot, Didomi etc. These tools show a banner when a visitor first arrives at the site. These tools collect and save a visitor’s consent by providing an explanation of what kind of technologies are used for data collection by providing explicit opt-in/opt-out, saving these choices for the customer and later allowing the customer to change or edit consent choices later if they wish to.

After that organization is responsible as the data manager/processor for your info and how it gets integrated CMP with other tools the like TikTok pixel, hotjar, FB, Analytics

How Google Consent Mode Works

Google Analytics consent mode is available in all GTM tags. You can access it under Advanced settings -> Consent Settings. It says the tag you use must be ‘consent aware’ in order to do anything with these settings. As you know google has 4 products: Floodlight, ads, Analytics & conversion linker.

Google consent mode in GTM for Analytics tracking:

In this consent section, only Built-in Consents checks are available. It’s just to inform you what consent settings can be used in the Tag setup like ad_storage & analytics_storage. This built-in consent can’t be modified. So logic of what data to send and when is determined by Google.

Google Hits Break Privacy Laws

This is the biggest concern with this minimal setup in Google Tag Manager, Google is continuing to collect data when the visitor has explicitly mentioned not to track. The same is also explained in the official documentation. The idea is to collect “anonymized” data from non-consenting visitors so that they can create a behavioral model in Google Analytics. As I have shared the same in my Reporting Identity Post

Most important is that non-consented data collected does not get to your Google Analytics account – it is for Google use only, they just provide you insights on that. The data hit sent is the same as regular hit level tracking in Google analytics just following the anonymization process.

Modeling in GA4

“When users don’t grant consent to the use of Analytics cookies or equivalent app identifiers, events are not associated with a persistent user identifier. For example, if Analytics collects 10 pageview events, it can’t observe and report whether that’s 10 users or 1 user. Instead, Analytics applies machine learning to estimate the behavior of those users based on the behavior of similar users who do accept analytics cookies or equivalent app identifiers.”

Point to Note:

No tracking = Without Consent

In the context of GDPr/CCPR/ePR, this is a citizen’s right to privacy written into EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (Article 7) Applied to web analytics collecting visitor data, it is generally accepted to mean that the website controller should ask its visitors for explicit consent before collecting any personal data. Personal data means any data that can directly or indirectly identify the individual. this is also given to anonymous data points.

How to Block Google Ghost Hits

To stop Google consent mode from collecting data when it should not, you have to strictly apply settings and it requires additional consent for the tag to fire:

This Requires additional consent & allows you to force Built-in checks only to evaluate if they are explicitly set to true. You have to add the same check names as the built-in checks. Then the built-in checks will only be used if these are explicitly set by the visitor i.e. consented. If required, this setting can also be used to add different consent requirements e.g. personalization storage that must also be evaluated as true for the tag to fire.