Data discrepancy of unique visitor in the same week with different date range selected

[user87585]

Hi, I found the uv of the same week dosen't match with different time range selected (filters and segments are the same). A screenshot is attached for reference. Could someone help to clarify whether this is a bug or if there's a specific reason behind it?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hmm, can you share the definition of your segment?

Keep in mind, that if the segment is Visit or Visitor Scoped, it might be picking up some additional users who meet the criteria from Dec 8th.

Let's look at a simple example.

Let's say I create a segment like this:

VISITOR

       Page Name equals "shopping cart"

This will pull ALL UVs that hit the shopping cart page with my selected time frame (Dec 8 - Jan 4)

Visit 1 - Dec 9

• Page A
• Page B
• Shopping Cart

Visit 2 - Jan 3

• Page C
• Page D

This user will be included in your table, and show in both the Dec 8th week AND the Dec 29th week; despite not having been to the Shopping Cart that week... the user is part of the table data set because they saw the Shopping Cart in the last 4 weeks. However, in the table that only looks at the week of Dec 29th, they didn't hit the Shopping Cart, and so they won't be included in the data.

Segment Scope can be difficult to wrap one's head around... but a "VISITOR" scoped segment looks at the Visitor as a whole.

This is likely the scenario you are experiencing... it's not a bug.... it's a scoping issue.

[Harveer_SinghGi1]

Totally agree with what @Jennifer_Dungan has shared. When you are looking at segmented data at a visitor level scope, different periods can produce different numbers and it is working as designed.

Let's take this very simple example,

Now let's say we have a segment with below definition,

Segment: Visitors WHERE pageName = "Cart Page"

Here's how the data will change with changing the reporting period for above segment,

Note that both visitors 1 and 3 have seen Cart Page during the reporting period "Week 1 and Week 2", they qualify for the segment and as both of these visitors have visited during both the weeks they count against the UVs for each week.

if we create the segment with below definition,

Segment: Visitors WHERE pageName = "Home Page"

Here's how the data will change with changing the reporting period for this segment,

Here if you see, although visitor 2 qualifies for segment for reporting period "Week 1 and Week 2", this visitor is not counted against UVs for week two as the visitor haven't visited the site during that week, if this visitor had visited the site during week 2 through any page then UV count for that week will be 3 as well.

So, based on your segment scope and reporting period you can notice the Visitor and Visit based numbers to change. However, any hit based numbers (like page view, instances) should stay same for a given period.

Cheers!