Be aware of mixed-scoped reporting
Previously I showed you a trick to visualize the difference between Session and Hit scopes in Google Analytics. In one of the examples, I used this illustration:
If you look at:
- GA report= All Pages
- Primary dimension = Page (hit)
- Secondary dimension = Landing Page (session)
To help you visualize, the Landing Page will be unmerged, and you will get all rows in the results as expected:
However, if you look at:
- GA report = Landing Pages
- Primary dimension = Landing Page (session)
- Secondary dimension = Page (hit)
To help you visualize, this is what will happen:
Almost all of the time, you will see the first row being picked, like:
But the correct answer is — It’s unknown.
People familiar with SQL will know that this query:
select * from employeesdoes not guarantee that the results will be sorted by the INSERT order.
So if you look at the GA report above, it could be highly misleading. In other mixed-scoped reports, you might see that all combination of rows are returned.
This is just one of the many reasons why you should not have mixed-scoped dimensions/metrics in your Google Analytics reports.
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