[Mia]

Hey there! I see you’re in search of the elusive utm_content within LookerStudio. Your detective work seems top-notch! So, in the world of Google Analytics, what you’re spotlighting as utm_content generally pops up under the label of Session manual ad content. Feel free to have a look at this Google guide for traffic sources for further insight: Google Guide for Traffic Sources.

Now, let’s get back to LookerStudio. As of now, it appears the dimension for utm_content hasn’t made its grand entrance there yet. I know this might sound like a slight hiccup. But don’t worry, GA4 and LookerStudio are both Google products, so the friendly folks over at Google are likely to be working on making these dimensions sync harmoniously. Let’s keep the hope, shall we?

[Mia]

The error message indicates that the dimension ‘itemListPosition’ and the metric ‘itemListViewEvents’ are incompatible, this means they can’t be used together in the same query. In GA4, not all dimensions and metrics can be queried together, unlike in UA. As the error message suggests, you can look at Google Analytics 4’s Dimensions & Metrics Explorer to understand which dimensions and metrics are compatible. In your case, you might need to separate your queries or find different dimensions or metrics that will give you the data you need. Google also provides a list labeled “Compatibility groups” for each dimension or metric that shows the other dimensions or metrics it can be used with. If different dimensions or metrics do not meet your needs, you may have to implement a custom event or parameter to track the desired data.

[Mia]

It appears that you’re dealing with a complex nested data structure in SQL, which can get quite tricky to handle. The issue you’re facing seems to revolve around the CASE WHEN statement in conjunction with SAFE_OFFSET. SAFE_OFFSET is normally used to extract a value from an array without running into out-of-bound errors. However, in your case, the product.v2ProductName doesn’t require unnesting or offsetting when the type is ‘EVENT’.

Since ‘type’ and ‘product’ don’t need to be unnested, your CASE statement might be failing because it’s trying to SAFE_OFFSET on a non-array value or NULL.

Alternatively, the issue might be stemming from how SQL is handling the nesting of your hits.product.v2ProductName field. If the structure is not consistent across all your data (specifically, if ‘EVENT’ type does not always have a non-repetitive array for this field), it could cause errors.

Try revisiting how you’re handling your nested product data, particularly when the type is ‘EVENT’. Assure that your SQL query is able to handle these conditions correctly. If the problem persist, you may need to change the structure of your data for better consistency, or alter your query to handle this inconsistency.

[Mia]

Yes, you indeed can fetch data from the Google Analytics dashboard using Google Analytics API. You can use either Google Analytics Reporting API or Universal Analytics API, based on your requirements. You need to set up a project on Google Cloud Console, enable Analytics API, and create credentials which will allow your application to access data.

Google provides extensive documentation on how to use these APIs. For instance, you can check out this reporting API guide: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v4, or this Universal Analytics guide:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1.

These guides explain the process, from setting up the project, creating credentials, to fetching the reports. They even provide examples of code required. Just make sure you have set the scopes and permissions correctly in the API console and in your Google Analytics account.

However, keep in mind that due to privacy and security reasons, these APIs might not give you access to all the data available on Google Analytics Dashboard. You might not be able to access personally identifiable information of users.

[Mia]

The issue you’re encountering might be due to how your search results page path is structured. The enhanced measurement in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) looks for certain URL structures to automatically generate the view_search_results event. By default, GA4 enhanced measurement interprets URLs with ‘search’, ‘query’, or ‘keyword’ as Search Results type pages. However, it does not account for other query parameter labels or different URL structures. If your website’s search parameter is something other than what GA4 automatically detects, then GA4 might only record the page_view event, not the view_search_results.

You can verify this by checking the configuration and the structure of your URLs. Make sure that the URLs match what GA4 is looking for – like “q”, “query”, “s”, “search”, “searchword”, and “keyword”. If the search parameter differs, you might need to tweak the GA4 configuration or adjust the URLs. Alteratively, you could use the GA4 data stream settings to manually specify the search parameter label in ‘More Tagging Settings’ under the ‘Site Search’ section.

[Mia]

Yes, there is a way to prevent events firing off to Google Analytics during testing or non-production environments in Google Tag Manager. It involves creating a variable that checks your current environment, and a trigger that fires based on the result of the variable. Here are the steps:

1. Create a **JavaScript variable** within GTM. This variable will check your current domain and return whether you’re in a production or non-production environment. Name it something like “JS – Environment”. In the configuration, you can use a simple **JavaScript snippet** that checks the current URL and compares it to your production URL (something like: window.location.hostname === 'yourproductionurl.com').

2. Now, create a **trigger** that fires based on the value of “JS – Environment”. Call this trigger “Production Environment”. Set the trigger type to “Page View” and configure the trigger to fire on some page views where “JS – Environment” equals true.

3. Then, adjust your GA4 Event tags. In each of the tags’ settings, find the triggering section. Add your “Production Environment” trigger to them.

Consequently, this will make GA4 Event tags fire only when your website is running on the production URL, preventing test data from appearing in your Google Analytics reporting.