Fun And Helpful Updates To The API

Recently, we released important updates to the Google Analytics Data Export API and our developer documentation. Here are some highlights.

1. If you are pulling large amounts of historical data, we've increased the the total amount of data you can request from the API from 1,000 rows to a new the new maximum of 10,000 rows. This is a great feature to reduce the amount of work needed to pull large amounts of data from the API.
   
   
2. The Data Export API uses dimensions and metrics and we've relaxed the restrictions on what combinations of these you can request. For example, you can now request (D1. Visitor) and (D3. Content) level dimensions in the same request. This update allows you to answer questions like:
   
   
   • For page, what keywords had the highest bounce rate (ga:bounces/ga:entrances)?
   • For a group of pages, what large companies (ga:NetworkLocation) were viewing my content and how enagaged (ga:TimeOnPage) was one company vs. another?
   
   
3. Finally, for each profile listed in the Account Feed, we've added the profile's configured timezone and currency settings. Here is an example in XML of the updated account feed.

Documentation:
The Export API exposes data through feeds, and we've updated our API reference section making it easier for developers to understand how they work. Each feed now has it's own section and you can click on each feed's parameters to learn how it works. Here's where the feed documentation section appears:

Of note is that all of the above updates were prioritized based on feedback we received from developers. Thanks! If you have any comments or requests specific to the Google Analytics Data Export API, please let us know through our Data Export API User Group. Also, you can stay up to date with the details of these updates by joining our analytics-api-notify group.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team