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Our commentary: In this post I share a quick tip that often crops up on Google Analytics courses. It is relevant mainly to larger sites with multiple products, but even smaller sites with limited products can benefit from this analysis.
Google Analytics limits the display and export of search keywords, landing pages and entrance landing pages to 500 within its reports.
While the 500 limit will still certainly give you insights on the most important keyphrases and pages, you are still missing an opportunity.
If you do export more than 500 rows of data, these are just two of the options available to you:
Please share other approaches you use for mining SEO insights from Google Analytics.
You have two options, first, and simplest is to use an "undocumented hack" to increase the limit.
If you add the "€œ&limit"€ query parameter to the end of the URL for the report you want to export, then this will increase the number of rows returned on export (it doesn"€™t affect the onscreen version and you have to choose the .csv, not .csv for Excel option for it to work).
For example, add &limit=20000 to the end of the query string to export 20,000 rows.
Update: I have changed this example to 20000 since @danbarker alerted us to this being the maximum - see 20000 maximum limit Google Analytics support post.
The other option is to use a service that uses the Google Analytics API. The limit of the API is 10,000 though, which is less than the limit through adding to the query string.
Recommended link: Official Google Analytics recommendation on 500 row limit.
By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.
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