Google Analytics Account Structure

Lets discuss how Google Analytics account is structured and the implications this has for data collection, processing and reporting.

Accounts

Your access point for Analytics, and the topmost level of organization. A Google Analytics account is simply a logical way for a business to group data from all of its digital assets together. There are also certain configuration settings that you apply to your entire account, like managing the users who have access

Properties

Within each account, you can have one or more properties that independently collect data. Each property is assigned a unique tracking ID that tells Google Analytics exactly which data should be collected, stored and reported together.

Typically you create separate accounts for unique businesses or distinct business units. Then you can create unique properties within that account for the different websites, mobile applications, or other digital assets that belong to the business.

This approach makes it easy to view the data from an individual digital asset. However, it doesn't allow you to view data in aggregate for multiple assets since the data for properties is physically stored and reported in different places.

Rollup reporting

If you do decide you want to view data for two assets together instead of separately, you must adjust your implementation to collect the data together in a single property using the same tracking code across bothassets. For example, if you use this technique to track two different websites with the same tracking code, Google Analytics collects and reports on both websites in the same property. This is commonly called rollup reporting. We will discuss it later.

Views

For each property, you have the option to create different views of your data. A view lets you define a unique perspective of the data from a parent property. You use the configuration settings in your account to define each view. A view is a defined perspective of the data from a property, and provides access to the reports for that property.

For example, within a property you might have:

One view of all the data for www.example.com

One view of only AdWords traffic to www.example.com

One view of only traffic to a subdomain like www.sales.example.com

You define a view by applying filters.

Best practices for creating views

Usually you create multiple views for each property in order to protect and manage your data.For example, if your organization has different sales teams for various geographic regions, you might want to create a specific view for each region. I recommend that you have at least three views for each property.

• By default, you have one unfiltered view that is automatically generated when you create a property. Don’t apply any settings or configurations to this view since it is the backup for your data.
• Second, you should have a master view. This view should have all of the settings needed to transform your data into useful information.
• Finally, you should have a test view. If you need to make changes to your configuration test them using this view first. Once you know the impact to the data you can then apply the same change to your master view.

This type of account and view structure helps protect your data. Remember, once Google Analytics processes data from your website or app the data can never be changed. So, if you have a bad configuration setting, and Google Analytics processes your data, you could have inaccurate data.

Tips: 

• when you create a new view Google Analytics does not automatically copy any of the historical data in the original view to the new view. You’ll only have data from the date you create the view onward.
• If you delete a view, that specific perspective of the data is gone. Forever. Don't delete a view if you think you might ever want to report on that particular perspective of the data.