Data sets in Google Analytics are allow to import external data into your account. An example of such data could be your costs, spend on SEO or Facebook campaign. Keeping all data in one analytical system allows for comprehensive analysis of all your advertising channels.
So, that`s how to create a Data Set in Google Analytics:
- Sign in to your Analytics account, click “Settings” and navigate to the property.
- In the property column click “Data Import” on the bottom of that column.
- Click “Create”.
- Choose the data set type, which you want to import to your Google Analytics account. For example “Cost data”, if you want to import spends on your advertising channels.
- Choose suitable name for your data set and the view, in which you want so send your data.
- In next step you can choose columns, that your data set would have. Three of them are required – date, medium and source. It`s quite logical, cause system should know which data it can use as the key, to connect your imported data with that in the system. Than you should choose at least one of the columns: clicks, costs or impressions and any other extra data from list, that you want to import.
- In the end you should choose what Google Analytics should do with duplicate data. If you will choose “Summation” import behavior – system would sum old and new duplicate data. So I suggest to choose “Overwrite” – in this case system would replace old data with new ones.
- Click “Save” and than “Finished” – that`s it!
Click “Get schema” – and you will see headers of the columns, which your dataset table should have.. If you want to import data, they should have the specific format. Better to do it with the help of your programmer, external tool or add-on.