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I am currently trying to configure a User Scope dimension that is set on an Admin section of a website. Reason being, so that I can filter out users that edit the site, i.e. Administrators, from reports.

Using Google Analytics Debugger I can see that the dimension is set on the page that sets the dimension.

As I understand the User Scope dimension should exist between sessions.

If however, I check for the dimension on a non-admin section of the site using Google Analytics Debugger I cant see that the Dimension persists.

Is there a way for me to check this?

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  • I find scopes very confusing. I would also like to know the answer to this question.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Dec 13, 2016 at 11:54

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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You will not see the value persist in the Google Analytics debugger as the dimension's persistance it set within the Google Analytics platform.

The simplest way to explain dimensions, is that they will always be set at the last value sent for the relevant scope. For example:

User Level: The last value sent about a single user. This value will be attached to all sessions regardless of whether this value is sent again. If a new value is sent to Google Analytics, this new value will override the previous value.

Session Level: The last value sent within the session. This value will be attached to the entire session, regardless of what was sent to the session earlier. For example, if a random number is sent to Google Analytics as an ID on every hit, the last value sent through to Google Analytics will be the 'ID. for the session.

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  • Right, I think I understand what may be going wrong. A user logs in the User Dimension is set - as expected. When they log out and access a page the user dimension is reset, too nothing or unknown. Even though I would like to continue tracking that particular user.
    – noelmcg
    Dec 20, 2016 at 15:28
  • As Killerpixler mentioned. It might be because your public pages are overwriting the values in the custom dimension slot. Once a user level dimension is set, it will persist until it is overwritten.
    – sdhaus
    Dec 20, 2016 at 21:49
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If you just want to filter out a certain section of the site (like /admin/ for example) you can do that with a filter in Google Analytics of type traffic to the subdirectories.

If it's not as straightforward as that You could use a Hit scoped custom dimension for individual pages and pass values like admin, content, archive, etc. and use that to filter your reports.

Also I assume you actually have an exclude filter set for this dimension in the GA back-end?

EDIT

This is important since the debugger will not show you the relevant information since the user scope of this is handled by GA in the back-end, not the front-end. Keep in mind that seeing dimension: 'admin', page: '/xyx.html in the debugger is expected behavior since everything is sent to GA and GA then does the post-processing of deciding what should be included in your view and what should not.

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  • Yeah what I am trying to achieve is filter out users who can access the admin area i.e. are administrators of the site. Any pages that they access (including non-admin pages) can then be filtered out from results, as that traffic isn't really relevant. A user scope dimension should do this, but checking analytics result and debugging it doesn't appear to be so.
    – noelmcg
    Dec 20, 2016 at 15:24
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    check if you are overriding the user-dimension when they leave to non-admin pages. Since Google uses a "Last Interaction` attribution model for these things if you set the dimension to non-admin user on regular pages and the admin goes to these GA would set the dimension to that last value.
    – Killerpixler
    Dec 20, 2016 at 17:03

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