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Dear Community,
We are currently encountering an issue in Looker Studio where a RegEx rule in a calculated field has unexpected effects on the metrics "Total Users" and "Sessions."
We would greatly appreciate your support!
Context: We want to group the URLs of our domain in a GA4 data source so that we can filter them globally (e.g., via a drop-down list filter).
To achieve this, we created a calculated field in the GA4 data source with a RegEx rule to identify specific URL groups and assign names to them.
This new field (with the URL groups) is then used as a global filter for various charts where we display metrics like Views, Total Users, and Sessions per URL group.
The Issue:
- The Views metric in Looker Studio matches the GA4 data nearly (not 100%).
- However, Sessions and Total Users deviate significantly from the GA4 values once we use the RegEx-based calculated field as a global filter (via the drop-down list).
Observation:
- When we apply the same filter criteria at the chart level (without using the additional RegEx-based calculated field), Views, Sessions, and Total Users align perfectly with the GA4 data.
- The discrepancy arises only when the URL grouping is performed via a custom RegEx rule at the report level (to enable the global drop-down list). In this case, Sessions and Total Users are incorrect, while Views remain accurate.
Questions:
- Is this a bug in Looker Studio that causes "Total Users" and "Sessions" to display incorrect values when using a RegEx-based calculated field?
- Has anyone experienced similar issues with RegEx grouping in Looker Studio and found a solution or workaround?
- Do you know of alternative approaches to group URLs from GA4 while ensuring reliable user- and session-related metrics in Looker Studio?
We would appreciate any tips, feedback, or even a simple "Me too!" to help us understand this better.
Thank you very much in advance for your help!
@lauratilton
@ArkadyZagdan
