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We are using Google Analytics for our website. If I go to the Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Channels view, and apply a custom dimension to the report as secondary dimension, the filtered result say the following:

  1. In the 'Users' column, all the 100% of users are shown. (% of Total: 100.00%)

  2. In the 'Sessions' column, only about 24% of sessions are shown. (% of Total: 23.90%)

Assuming that every user is a part of a session, why don't all the sessions have the value for that custom dimension recorded?

Currently, we send that particular custom dimension as part of an event, but we don't send any custom dimension as part of pageviews (I'm not even sure if we can send custom dimensions in pageviews.)

Snap from GA dashboard

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  • Does the date query for this result exceed 90 days? Have you enabled session stitching?
    – L Martin
    Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 9:34
  • No, the query results are for ~40 days. I'll check on session stitching, will have to look that up.
    – upInCloud
    Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 10:00

2 Answers 2

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I believe your are mixing names of the columns, because there are no "Users" column in "Channels" report. I believe you are comparing "New users" vs "New sessions". In this case number which you provided make total sense, as all users in the reported period can be new, but each can generate several sessions, meaning, that only some part of the sessions will be new.

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  • Hi Tony, I have updated the question with required details
    – upInCloud
    Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 5:08
  • Is there any segment applied to the report?
    – Tony Simonovsky
    Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 13:57
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Assuming that every user is a part of a session, why don't all the sessions have the value for that custom dimension recorded?

Just for you to understand GA better. This statement has an error. It is not the user who is part of a session, but vice verse - a session is a "part" of a user (meaning that there can be several sessions for 1 user, but never - several users for 1 session).

Looking at your report, I see 2 possible reasons why for your situation: 1. There is a segment applied to the report (which excludes part of the sessions). 2. ProductType is set for all users but not for all sessions. This theory can be easily be justified by removing second dimension - ProductType from the report. If there is no segment and sessions will show 100%, then this is the case and you need to check how you are setting ProductType values.

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