Hi, Matomo is showing large differences between my custom reports and segments.
I have a segment set up based on a URL, i.e. page URL, starts with, ‘URL NAME’.
I also have a custom report set up with the same criteria.
The report is showing that 70,808 visitors had 84,697 page views over the time period I’ve set (1st Nov 2023 - 31st April 2024).
The segment shows 61,440 visits and 173,367 page views.
How is this possible?
What’s even stranger is when I’m in the custom report and I apply the segment (which is set up with the same parameters as the custom report) the numbers visiting certain URLs change or Matomo gives me an error saying ‘There is no data for this report. As the report was created or updated only recently, it may take a few hours for the data to become available when you are viewing today’s reports. The report data for dates before this report was created won’t become available’. However this is untrue, as the data does exist, just not when the segment is applied.
I know segments are visit based, but if the segment is picking up everyone who visited pages that started ‘URL name’ and the report is based on ‘URL name’ then why are the numbers so different?
I feel like I must be misunderstanding something! Any help much appreciated!
Hi @ajvarin
There is a difference between segmentation and filtering.
Segmentation is based on visits whereas filter is on “events”.
In the segment based on “page A”, you’ll get all visits where users passed through “Page A”. But if one user visited A, then B and C, you’ll see 3 pages views for this user. The filter will only get Page A. That’s why you get more page views in your segment than in your filter.
Just to make sure I’ve understood, if say a user was to go to a page that starts with the URL defined in the segment/filter, let’s call it ‘https//definedurl’ and then to two other pages that /don’t/ start with the ‘https//definedurl’ - this would be counted as 3 pageviews by the segment?
If so, I understand this, and that explains the higher number of pageviews in the segment.
However I am still confused as to why the number of visitors is higher for the report?
I thought maybe it could be that the segment only counts a person as a visitor once, no matter how many times they go to pages that start with https//definedurl, whereas the report is counting every visit to each page starting with https//definedurl. Is this correct?
Yes… But I don’t really understand why the number of visits is lower than the number of visitors. A visitor makes at least one visit and A visit can be made by only one single visitor…
I think you should ask to the support team by email, as Custom Report is a premium plugin (Then share the answer here for the community).
