Google Analytics bug when choosing country segment

Question

In Google Analytics, when I use country segments, as I change the date range to have more days worth of data, the value of Transactions in the graph that appear for the selected period of time, does not keep a consistent value. It does not make any sense. For example, for for yesterday Tuesday, May 8, 2018, I found a value in the graph. Then I changed the period, to a have three months worth of data, and in the graph when I put the mouse over the date corresponding to May 8, 2018, the number of transactions was not the same anymore. I kept changing date periods and the number of transactions for May 8, 2018 kept changing. This is definitely a bug. The values stay consistent when I do not choose country segments. It looks like a Google Analytics bug when choosing country segments as filters for different periods of time. Anyone experiencing the same situation? Thanks.

Answer 1

I understand your concern and let me clarify few things before we jump to conclusions.

• The values for the geo dimensions in Google Analytics are automatically derived from the IP address of the hit and thus IP-based locations are approximate.
• If you are using GA free, then data needs 24-72 hrs to get fully dumped/updated. So if you take yesterday's data and then after a week you compare the same report, the reports would be different.
• Sampling: Please have a look at the results. Are they based on 100% sessions or you see sampling? Sampling will affect your metrics

Custom Reports:

• For your problem, I would suggest creating a custom report for transactions per geolocation. That would be more accurate.

I can continue as there can be multiple reasons for the data discrepancy, let me know if you have any specific points to talk.

Answer 2

See the question/answer at Discrepancy in Google Analytics data when using segments, related to this issue I had. As I said in my comment to one answer, I did not expect a perfect match as if it were an accounting application. But a discrepancy of 143 versus 114 for the number of transactions in a segment for a single day May 8th seemed inacceptable to me for these Google Analytics reports, regardless of how Google Analytics does its work to compute and present those values.