Different results with same query using Google Analytics Built-In Connector

[angelakephart]

I've read various articles on the data extraction of Google analytics.  It looks like the to get correct results for Sessions, all the Event-related dimensions need to be removed from the query.  So  I would like to add just one dimension which is Gender.  Is this not possible?  When I compare my Google Analytic report and Power BI report they do not match.  

Does anyone have any experience with this?

[michaelbilling]

Generally the built-in Google Analytics connector is a really bad idea. You have to be careful all the time when using it since you will either overcount or get sampled results and both at the same time.

Gender and other demographics dimensions even has a more sinister built-in challenge from GA's side. If your results contains less than 10 users then they round of to 10. The demogfx data is approximated by GA so it's very limited and very unreliable in it's nature. It's usefull on a high-level. But NEVER aggregate over it! 🙂

But its worse. Check this example. This is what happens behind the scenes in the PBI connector.

Date	Gender	Users	Sessions
Mar 1, 2018	male	13	19
Mar 5, 2018	male	17	21
Mar 6, 2018	male	11	14
Mar 7, 2018	male	13	16
Mar 8, 2018	male	14	19
Mar 9, 2018	male	14	20
Mar 10, 2018	male	13	17
Mar 11, 2018	female	11	11
Mar 12, 2018	male	22	31
Mar 13, 2018	male	13	27
Mar 14, 2018	female	10	15
Mar 14, 2018	male	23	31
Mar 15, 2018	male	19	31
Mar 16, 2018	male	15	20
Mar 19, 2018	male	19	23
Mar 20, 2018	male	15	17
Mar 23, 2018	male	10	12
Mar 26, 2018	male	13	26
Mar 27, 2018	male	16	24
Mar 28, 2018	male	22	34
Mar 29, 2018	male	19	22
		322	450
	Gender	Users	Sessions
	female	96	234
	male	210	562
		306	796
Diff		-16	346

In the first result set I've extracted data broken down on day's and summed it up to totals

The other result set contains the same timeframe but just totalled by GA.

The diff tells everything! It's useless.

Try scitylana.com services.

You can extract all the GA data (except the demographics data) in a format that is reliable in ALL types of calculations.

Try it here

I wrote an article some time back is this problem. 

[v-yuezhe-msft · Accepted solution]

@angelakephart ,

In Power BI Desktop, the built-in Google Analytics connector relies on Google Analytics Core Reporting API. Please review this article to check if you can combine Gender dimension and Sessions metrics using Google Analytics Core Reporting API.

In addition, for the difference between Google Analytic report and Power BI report, please check product team's response.

"The API we're using for Google Analytics is the one available to free users, and that API is known to return less accurate values for high volume sites due to the way it samples data. Unfortunately, the API for Google Analytics Premium customers is significantly different than that for the free users, so we'd need to implement a new connector specifically for Premium in order to get the more accurate values. This is not currently on our roadmap. Customers who would like to see this feature should request it or upvote it (if already there) at ideas.powerbi.com."

Regards,
Lydia