Google Analytics data from multiple accounts

Google Analytics is a powerful, free tool. Because it isn’t charged by account, and because there are lots of good reasons to create multiple accounts, often power users can find themselves with more than one. Sometimes lots more than one. The web front-end lets you look at data in one profile at a time, but if you want Google Analytics data from Multiple accounts, what are your options?

You login to Google Analytics using a Google user account.  That Google Account can have access to one or more Google Analytics accounts. 

This post covers both cases where you need to access data from more than one Google account or more than one Google Analytics account in the same table or report.

One method of getting data from all of your Google Analytics accounts into one report is to create a ‘Roll-up’ Account by adding the same UA tracking code to more than one site.  

This has the appeal of being able to see all data under one account in the Google Analytics web interface or in tools like Google Data Studio. But this approach also has some significant downsides:

Disadvantages:

• You have to add javascript code to all of the websites you want to consolidate
• You have to manage the javascript code and profiles of the consolidated sites as things change
• You will only have data starting AFTER you added the code, no historical data

The second option is to use software designed for advanced extraction using the Google Analytics Reporting API.

Advantages:

• No messing with javascript
• You get full history, of any and all Google Analytics data in any and all of your accounts
• You can define analysis that isn’t possible within the Google Analytics front-end and reporting depending on what tools you use

Disadvantages:

• Most API connectors, including Spreadsheets, Tableau, and Data Studio, only allow you to query one account at a time.  You must manually combine the results.
• Spreadsheet based connectors have volume limits that cannot be overcome. 
• "Live" connectors, where historic data is not cached, are slow to refresh.

With Analytics Canvas Desktop, you can query from multiple Google Analytics accounts in the same Canvas file.  Using Analytics Canvas Online you can get data from multiple Google accounts and multiple Google Analytics accounts in the same table.  

Better still, Analytics Canvas Online will: 

• Pull all your data without the limitations of spreadsheets
• Reduce or eliminate sampling from each View 
• Reduce or eliminate “(other)” where possible 
• Store the data in Analytics Canvas Smart Tables or your own databases and files
• Keep the datasets up to date, accounting for data reprocessing 
• Export the combined Views to Data Studio, Tableau, BigQuery, SQL Server or other data sources for visualization and further analysis 

Shown above is Analytics Canvas desktop where you can select as many profiles as you want, define a query, and you have all your data, all in one place.

Include account number, web property, and profile information into the data set as if it were a dimension, for even more flexibility and analysis potential. A key example here is including the currency code. Once you have that, you can do currency conversion on your eCommerce data, opening up all sorts of possibilities for reporting and analysis.

If you want to consolidate Google Analytics data from multiple accounts, and then write the data into a database, Analytics Canvas makes it easy.

You will see all the profiles you have access to, you just select the ones you want to include (all of them if you like), define the query, and let Analytics Canvas do all the work, making as many API calls as needed, and caching all that data locally or in Canvas Online so you don’t need to query it every time. You can connect directly to Oracle, SQL Server, BigQuery, MySQL, MS Access, and to pretty much anything else using the ODBC capability and write all that data into a table- millions of rows if you’ve got them.

Imagine the reporting on multiple profiles you can do when everything is combined into a single table, with profile, account, web property and currency information included as dimensions.

Check out this screen shot from Analytics Canvas Desktop: A multi profile query that pulls over 30 thousand rows from 18 different profiles across four Google Analytics accounts, and then writes the result into an SQL server database, all in one step.

Wrapping Up

If you need to get data from the Google Analytics APIs, you want to ensure that the data is being pulled in accordance with practices established by data engineers who specialize in Google Analytics.

When you’ve got lots of Google analytics accounts, with lots of data, you need to give Analytics Canvas a try- all that data can be consolidated, with a lot less effort than you are probably putting out right now if you are using other tools and methods. Signup for the free trial, and you’ll be consolidating in no time.

Also, be sure to check out our tutorial videos on the support page– tutorial 1 and 2 show you exactly how to do it with Analytics Canvas Desktop, or visit our Knowledge Base to see how to do it with Canvas Online.

You can enjoy all the benefits of visual data-prep software and have access to a best-in-class Google Analytics data connector from as little as $49/mo.  

Sign-up to start your free trial, contact us with your questions or book a time to connect with one of us for a demo or discussion about your Google Analytics reporting needs.