Using analytics for non web-related project

Question

I'm looking to use google analytics for its web interface only. A large dataset such as gasoline prices would be submitted to analytics via the api and viewed. Is this possible? Or is analytics purely tailored to viewing website statistics?

Answer 1

It is possible to send all kinds of hits with the Measurement Protocol. But Philip is correct in stating that the data model is largely geared towards users, sessions and hits. But you could probably get a good ways with custom dimensions and metrics.

Answer 2

The Google Analytics data model is really geared toward datasets that can be thought of in terms of users, sessions, and hits (hits being things like pageviews and events).

If your data can be thought of in these terms, it will probably work. If, on the other hand, you're trying to do things like joins or calculate averages or other statistical operations, you're probably better of using something else.

Answer 3

While the others are correct, Google Analytics is geared towards users, sessions, and hits. It is none the less simply an application for data analysis. The question will be how to get the data into the system.

I think you need to give us a little more information about your data set. But let me assume a few things.

1. You have a dataset with gasoline prices over a period of days.
2. you have a dataset with gasoline prices for different gas stations.
3. It would be really nice if this wasn't old data that this is new gas prices coming in.

If I had this dataset I could insert it into Google Analytics. Directly using the measurement protocol.

The measurement protocol has a few required things, the first being hit type. 'pageview', 'screenview', 'event', 'transaction', 'item', 'social', 'exception', 'timing'. the second would cid or session id.

Now cid I think I would probably set to the different gas stations and probably add a custom dimension with the gas station name.

As for hit I think I would probably say screenview and make an application Google Analytics account. Mainly because well this isn't a website its a little different.

Then every time the price of Gas changes I would send a screenview, cid of the station with the custom dimension of the station, add a custom metric with the price.

The main problem you are going to have is that Google analytics doesn't handle old data well. If you are going to insert this data with a date associated the date and time cant be grater then 4 hours ago or the server wont process it.

Have you considered putting it in big Query instead?

This question really is to broad or opinion based, but it was fun to consider.