FAQ

GA3-exporter will provide a ZIP-file with approximately 20 Excel sheets covering a wide range of Google Analytics dimensions and metrics and monthly granularity covering most Marketing Analytics use cases. For reports stored in pre-aggregated format in Google Analytics, the exports will contain data for the full historic time range available in Google Analytics. For more detailed data sets, only the time range defined in the retention period in your Google Analytics property is available.
Based on these data sets, a comprehensive PDF report is created which allows you to easily dive into your business' history without wrangling any Excel data first.
Furthermore you will be able to export the data into your own Google BigQuery project which may allow an easier integration into your existing data landscape and perform more complex analysis and data exploration.
Some of these features are available in paid packages only.

No, the full reports of GA3-exporter only require a one-time payment. There is also a free (limited) package available

No. First, because this is technically impossible as the Google Analytics API does not allow to download raw data for Standard properties (Free Google Analytics). It only allows to download aggregated reports where a limited number of dimensions and metrics are chosen. Note, also all other methods of downloading GA3/Universal Analytics data have the same limit.
Second, GA3-exporter also does not try to download as much as possible data. This is because it would involve thousands of possible combinations of dimensions and metrics which would be neither feasible nor useful. Instead we used the knowledge of our web analytics experts to define a most reasonable set of reports that cover most marketing analytics use cases for all kinds of businesses. Here you can see what is contained.

Yes, booking one package allows for up to 3 downloads of different Views or new versions of the same View of a single GA property. If you would like to download Views of a different GA property you need to book an add-on package for a reduced price.

GA3-exporter will download the maximum date range possible which depends on the type of report. Google Analytics holds certain pre-aggregated reports with common dimensions and metrics. Those can date back several years. GA3-exporter will download these as part of the overview reports. For detailed reports containing combinations of multiple dimensions as well as details on events, products, etc. only the time range defined in the data retention settings of your Google Analytics property (14, 26, 38, 52 months or unlimited) will be available.

GA3-exporter exports monthly and yearly data only. This is a compromise of the expected row numbers in the Excel files, the request limits of the Google Analytics API and the expected usage of the historic data in future and the fact that GA3-exporter as a self service tool must serve users with a wide range of data situations. If you need more detailed data this requires manual services which we can also support you with at support@ga3-exporter.com

Yes, but once you have purchased a full package you can buy add-ons at a low price for further properties. Checkout our pricing section for details. Note, you can use your 10 retries to download different GA views of the same GA property.

Yes, we need to store your data temporarily. When the report is generated, the zipped Excel files as well as the PDF file will be stored password protected on our servers in order for you to download them. They will be automatically deleted after 30 days. Note, GA3-exporter will only download the data from the GA property and view you explicitly select for export.

No, Google Analytics Reporting API only allows to download monthly aggregated data. This limitation holds for any tool or program that will extract GA data. In order to capture the most of your business digital history a large number of reports with exhaustive numbers of dimensions and metrics have to be chosen and extracted. GA3-exporter takes over this selection process for you.

You will need to or have someone to setup a Google Cloud project, enable BigQuery, potentially enable Billing on that project and give our service account access to your BigQuery. We provide a step by step guide for you but depending on your knowledge you may need to ask someone from your data or IT team to help you.

Yes. However Google Analytics 360 provides a BigQuery export which is more powerful that what GA3-exporter can provide using the Google Analytics Reporting API. We recommend using this export unless you would like our beautiful PDF report which would be a lot of work to generate manually from the BigQuery data.

No. The purpose of GA3-exporter is to provide an easy to use solution not requiring specific knowledge on dimensions and metrics of Google Analytics. We have chosen a large set of reports including an extensive number of dimension and metrics combinations based on our experience in web analytics consulting projects over the last years. If you find an generally useful report missing in the set, please contact us at support@ga3-exporter.com and we will assess if this should be added to the product.

Yes. This depends on the amount of data stored in your Google Analytics account and is a limitation of the Google Analytics API rather than of GA3-exporter. Sampling is generally not a big problem for the resulting report. It means that the report is based only on part of the data but is scaled such that the reported numbers match reality approximately. General tendencies and correlations in the data will be retained though numbers may deviate a bit. For some reports with a large number of rare items (e.g. lots of individual events) the precision of the report for these rare items will be decreased or they may not be shown (high cardinality issue).

Yes, though they should affect only very large account and then also only certain reports. GA3-exporter will download a maximum of 1.000.000 rows of data per report. This may impact in rare cases reports with an excessive number of different values, for example different events or different page paths.