{"id":21762,"date":"2015-09-29T10:41:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T10:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/blog\/extract-data-from-google-analytics-with-r"},"modified":"2026-05-13T16:38:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:38:36","slug":"extract-data-from-google-analytics-with-r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/blog\/extract-data-from-google-analytics-with-r","title":{"rendered":"Extract data from Google Analytics with R"},"content":{"rendered":"R is an object-oriented language intended for statistical analysis. A,<\/a>in all likelihood, one of the most used programming languages by statisticians and is used in many fields, from biotechnology to web analytics.\n\nOne of the great advantages of R is its versatility. If you’re not a programmer, it’s a language that shouldn’t scare you, and, if you follow this little tutorial, you’ll be extracting data from Google Analytics with R<\/strong> in less than an hour.\n

Table of Contents<\/h4>\nFor this we will first install R.\n

1. Download and install R<\/h2>\nYou will find the latest version for your operating system (Linux, Mac or Windows) on the official website of the R project\n\nhttps:\/\/cran.r-project.org\/bin\/windows\/Rtools\/<\/a>\n\nNext we will install RStudio. RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R, which will allow us to operate with R in a more intuitive way. You can download its latest version on the official site:\n\nhttps:\/\/www.rstudio.com\/products\/rstudio\/download\/<\/a>\n\nOnce we have RStudio, we must install RTools:\n\nhttps:\/\/cran.r-project.org\/bin\/windows\/Rtools\/<\/a>\n\n2. Using R with RStudio\n\nOnce we have installed the software we can start the RStudio program.\n\nIn the left console, after the symbol > we will enter the following commands:\n\n1) We install and load the devtools package<\/strong>\n\ninstall.packages(“devtools”)\nlibrary(devtools)\n\n2) We install and load the rga package<\/strong>\n\nThis package will be the connector that allows us to start the extraction of data from Google Analytics<\/a>\n\ninstall_github(“rga”, “skardhamar”)\nlibrary(rga)\n\n3) Authentication in Google Analytics<\/strong>\n\nrga.open(instance=”ga”)\n\nThen a tab will open in our browser requesting access and we will be provided with a password that we will enter in the console.\n\n4) View ID selection<\/strong>\n\nWe need to define what the id of the view on which we are going to perform the query will be. We can get a list of all the views with the command:\n\nga$getProfiles()\n\nWe will obtain a list, from which we will choose the profile we want (for example: 12345678), and we will save it in a variable with the following command:\n\nid < – “12345678”\n\n5) Data query to Google Analytics<\/strong>\n\nFor the query we will use the command ga$getData.\n\nLet’s look at a query as an example:\n\nga$getData(id,\nstart.date=”2015-01-01″,\nend.date=”2015-03-31″,\nmetrics=”ga:sessions,ga:bounceRate, ga:percentNewSessions,ga:avgSessionDuration”,\ndimensions=”ga:yearMonth”,\nfilters=”ga:source==google”,\nsegment=”gaid::-5″)\n\nThis query will return the monthly data of sessions, bounce rate, % of new sessions and average duration of the session of the first quarter of 2005, for organic searches of the Google search engine.\n\nParameters that have been used in this query:\n