For example, /default.aspx and /Default.aspx are considered two different pages in Google Analytics. If you’re used to exporting your content or landing page reports without taking this extra step, you’re probably reporting inaccurate data.

Deduplicating With Pivot Tables

A simple solution to this would be to create a pivot table. This will automatically merge your data — and isn’t case sensitive.

However, that won’t help you in a situation where you need to do VLOOKUPs to stitch your data together; so I’m going to tell you about a cool tool in Excel that few seem to know about but is very useful. It’s the Consolidate command, and you can find it under the Data tab.

Common Use For Consolidate Command

The most common use of the Consolidate command is to merge datasets from different worksheets or even workbooks (i.e., completely different files). So let’s say you have a reporting dashboard that has a separate worksheet for each month of data. You could use the Consolidate command to combine all of the monthly datasets into one aggregated dataset. You can even create links so that the consolidated dataset is updated whenever its individual elements are.

However, it also very useful in deduplicating datasets without losing any of the data. If you just have a list of, let’s say, keywords you’re bidding on, and you want to deduplicate that list, you’d use the Remove Duplicates command. This command is also found under the Data tab. But if that list also includes traffic and revenue metrics, you do not want to merely dedupe the list; you want to merge those values. See the difference?

Consolidate Landing Page Reports

What I’m going to use in this demonstration is a list of landing pages from Google Analytics that includes visit and revenue data. You can see below that we have two instances of duplicated data. The second landing-page01 was actually the result of removing all query parameters from URLs. (Then I, of course, anonymized the data.) If your data is littered with unnecessary query parameters (the values that follow a question mark in a URL), you can use Text to Columns to remove everything after the “?” symbol. (However, you should really be filtering out any query parameters you don’t need to report on in your profile settings.)

Step 1: Copy your column headings over to where your new, deduplicated dataset will ultimately live. Then put your mouse cursor where the dataset will begin.

Step 2: Choose Data > Data Tools > Consolidate, which will bring up the Consolidate menu.

Step 3: Since we’re going to want to add the visits and revenues for the duplicate rows, we’ll choose Sum from the Function drop-down menu.

Step 4: For the Reference, click-and-drag over your dataset. Or, if you’re working with a formatted table (which you should always be), just select any cell inside your dataset and press Ctrl-A (Mac: Command-A) to select all of the cells. Lastly, you could use a named range and reference that.

Step 5: Since we’re only dealing with one dataset, we won’t need to add more references. But if you were merging multiple datasets, you would select the Add button to add them.

Step 6: Since the values we’re using to deduplicate the list with are in the left column, we’re going to use that option under “Use labels in.” Here’s what the dialog should look like when you’re finished. Press OK to let Excel do its magic.

Step 7: And voila! Your consolidated data.

I use this command most frequently to deduplicate content reports in GA. If your URLs don’t automatically redirect to lowercase, or you don’t have a filter in place in GA to force URLs to lowercase, it’s really important that you take this extra step to make sure you’re presenting accurate data.

That’s no big deal if we’re talking about just 20 to 30 pages. But, when a site has 404 pages in the thousands, and you tell the developers to fix these pages, you’re going to look more than a little ridiculous. So, how can you find out which of those 404 pages are actually important?

Two of the most important metrics to look at are backlinks to make sure you don’t lose the most valuable links and total landing page visits in your analytics software. You may have others, like looking at social metrics. Whatever you decide those metrics to be, you want to export them all from your tools du jour and wed them in Excel.

Gather 404 Pages

There are several different sources you can use to find your site’s 404 pages. My two favorites are Screaming Frog and Google Webmaster Tools (GWT).

To find your site’s 404s with Screaming Frog, after running a scan of the site, go to Response Codes > Filter: Client Error (4xx) > Export.

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To flesh out your site’s 404 pages with Google Webmaster Tools, go to Health > Crawl Errors > URL Errors > Web or Mobile: Not found > Download.

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Strip your csv download of everything but the list of 404 URLs, and save the file as an xlsx file.

Pull Landing Page Data

If you’re only responsible for SEO, you may want to restrict your export to organic traffic. In Google Analytics (GA), you’d navigate to Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic > Primary Dimension: Landing Page.

But, I think that approach is a bit shortsighted. I much prefer looking for all important landing pages, which you get to by navigating to Content > Site Content  > Landing Pages.

To pull all of them, you need to look at the total number of landing pages in the bottom-right corner of the report (e.g., 1 – 10 of 441). If you have more than 5oo landing pages, you’ll need to use this trick to get them all.

To get the full URL of your landing pages, you’ll need to use this technique in the third section of the post, especially if your site uses subdomains and you’re not including hostname in your content reports.

Get Your Backlink Data

First, pull backlinks from your favorite tool. It’s outside of the scope of this post for how to do that; but, here are links to learn more about how to use each of the tools:

• Open Site Explorer
• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• Google Webmaster Tools (Traffic > Links to Your Site > Your Most Linked Content > More)

Pull It All Together

Once you know that all of your URLs follow the same syntax (by either having them all start with http:// or removing the http:// from all of the URLs), you’re ready to stitch all of these metrics together using VLOOKUPs in Excel. If you’re new to VLOOKUPs, check out this introduction on the Microsoft site.

Make sure you format your dataset as a table so that you can sort the data by the number of landing page visits, backlinks, or page authority — or whatever else you want to pull into the dataset.

By taking this kind of data-centric approach, you can fairly easily identify the backlinks you actually need to address and fix.

Helpful Export Tip

Before you even get started creating these reports, you’ll need to know how to get all of the rows from your report into your export. The GA interface caps you out at 500 rows. However, to get more, just look at the bottom-right corner of your report to see how many rows you have.

Then, choose 25 from the “Show rows” drop-down. At the very end of the report URL, you’ll see this: table.rowCount%3D25. This tells GA that you want 25 rows. Change 25 to however many rows you need in your export — which would be 6001, in my case.

Get Full Referral URLs

This isn’t immediately apparent, but if you’re in the Referrals report (Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals), the standard report is set up so that if you click on one of the referral sources, you’ll see the URI(s) visitors clicked through from.

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However, if you export the report (by clicking Export from the top navigation bar), you’re only going to get the URIs for the referral source you clicked on, not the sources and not the URIs for any of the other referral sources. Not very useful.

If you want the full URLs, you’ll need to create a custom report. If you’re not comfortable with creating a custom report in GA, I created a video walkthrough. You’ll never want to suffer the confines of standard reports again.

Here’s how I set up my custom report:

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Or, you can apply it to your own GA account by using this share link. Important: make sure you’re logged in to GA when you open the link — or copy it into a browser where you’re logged in. Otherwise, you’ll get a 404 error.

Pro Tip: If you want to create a pivot table with both the referral source and the full URL, use this custom report. This custom report will give you the ability to create a pivot table that lists the full referral URLs under the source to easily group multiple links from the same site. Your pivot table would look something like this:

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You can learn more about how to create pivot table-friendly reports in GA using the flat table option.

Get Full URLs Of Landing Pages

You may be asking yourself, Why would I need to capture the full URLs of my site’s landing pages? By default, unless you have a filter in place to capture the hostname, GA only captures the URI in its content reports.

If your site has multiple subdomains, and you’re not capturing the hostname in your content reports, this can create two issues:

• There’s no way of knowing which homepage the landing page report (or any other content report) is referring to because the homepage of each subdomain will show up as a “/” in most cases.
• Visits to your different domains are very difficult to segment for analysis purposes. And, visitors to a store subdomain are going to behave very differently than they will on a blog or forum subdomain. For this reason, analyzing data from all subdomains in aggregate is usually pretty ineffective.

So, to include the hostname in landing page reports, you need to create a flat table custom report that looks like this:

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I threw in a filter that isolated organic traffic, but you could use whatever you need. Or, you could apply this report to your account. Click the Edit button at the top of the report to modify it to meet your needs.

To create a column with full URLs in Excel, using the hostname and landing page outputs, you will need to concatenate the hostname with the URI in Excel using either the ampersand or the CONCATENATE function.

Get Full URLs Of Pages

To get the full URLs of all pages on the site (not just landing pages), you’ll follow the same steps you did with landing pages, except choose the Page dimension instead of Landing Page, as demonstrated below.

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Eventually — and it’s really inevitable — you will actually have to dive deep into the data and cull out a smaller dataset or manipulate it in some way to make it cough up what you need. And, as freaking intimidating as they can be, formulas become your lifeline in these moments.

Admittedly, the learning curve with formulas can be pretty steep, but the only way they’ll become intuitive is exposure to them and practice.

Excel Formulas Still Scare Me Yet I Did This (You Can Too!)

However, when I was first learning them, I’d see a formula like the one below, which I wrote to find the last directory in a URL (just to see if I could, not for any particular use), and think that I’d never ever be able to do anything like that. Turns out I was dead wrong.

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Before you throw in the towel, let me tell you a trick I first saw Bill Jelen (AKA Mr. Excel) do that makes writing formulas — even advanced formulas like this one — much simpler.

If you put this hideous monstrosity in front of me with no context and asked me to explain step by step what each part of that formula means, I probably wouldn’t be able to do it. Not because I copied it off the Internet. I can honestly say I didn’t get any help with it at all. And I purposely chose something kind of esoteric so I wouldn’t be tempted to look it up and to test myself to see if this approach would work for a really advanced formula. And it did. Like a charm.

So, enough pontificating. Let me show it to you in action. But first let’s cover some terminology. And don’t worry; we’ll start with a much simpler task than that data voodoo.

Definitions

Formula: Formulas provide some kind of instructions for Excel to calculate something. They always start with an equal sign. It can be as simple as =2+2 or ridiculously complex like the one above.

Function: In the simplest terms, functions are formulas that come prepackaged in Excel. I mean, you could create your own functions, but most of the time you’ll be using one of the 80 bajillion offered natively in Excel (unless, of course, you want percent difference, which Excel doesn’t offer … go figure). With the more advanced formulas you’ll write, you will use multiple functions in one formula.

Argument: Each function starts with the function name, followed by a set of parentheses, e.g., =SUM(A3:A67) or =CONCATENATE(B2,C2,D2). The individual elements inside those surrounding parentheses, separated by commas, are arguments.

Square brackets: Sometimes you’ll see arguments listed in square brackets in the tool tip or on the Microsoft site. The brackets indicate that the argument is optional.

Boolean: Returns a TRUE or FALSE value.

Helper cells: Okay, this isn’t an actual term; it’s what I call the cells you use to break down a complicated formula into easy-to-understand steps.

Download

If you’d like to download the Excel workbook I worked from in the following examples, you can access it here. I even included the crazy formula you see above. You’ll see on one tab I break the process down into simple steps (which is exactly what I did first thing) and then step by step with all the helper cells.

Then in the last tab I replace all of the helper cells with the formulas they contain and just kept sweeping right until I got to the final formula. But,for whatever reason, I kept coming up with one extra character that I didn’t need. I checked my formulas several times and tried retracing my steps.

Finally, I just subtracted 1 on the end, and it all worked as planned. At the end of the day that’s what matters, so I went with it.

Task 1: Extract Domain From URLs

Let’s say you have a list of URLs (perhaps backlinks), and you want to extract just the domain. I did this recently so that I could use that column in a pivot table to group all target URLs that were linked to from a particular domain.

For example, let’s say www.linkingsite.com linked to www.mysite.com/landing-page-02 and www.mysite.com/landing-page-45. The two landing pages would show up under the www.linkingsite.com domain in my pivot table, the way I had it organized.

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So, how’d I extract those? Easy. But first some background.

Important Stuff You Need To Understand

When you need to extract a string of text from a longer string in Excel, the three primary functions you want to use are LEFT, RIGHT, and MID. You can get tricky with REPLACE, which works a lot like Find and Replace in Excel or Word, but we won’t get into that here.

So basically what each of these functions does is asks you:

1. What cell you want to extract the text from
2. How many characters you want to extract

With the MID function you also specify the starting place because, well, you’re pulling from the middle of the string.

That’s all well and good, but with our column of URLs the number of characters we need to extract changes from URL to URL, so we can’t use a static number. That’s where the SEARCH function comes in.

Quick aside: If you’ve dabbled in formulas much, you might be asking why I don’t use the FIND function. Well, the SEARCH and FIND functions are very similar, only the FIND function is more limiting in that it’s case sensitive and it doesn’t support wildcard characters. Lame. So the only time I use FIND is when I want to specify case, which the last time I did that was last … Lessee here … Yeah, never.

So what we’re going to do is use the SEARCH function to specify the number of characters we need because it returns the position of whatever you ask Excel to find. If it doesn’t find what you’ve searched for it returns a nasty #N/A error, which we’ll actually USE in the next example. However, for the task at hand, what we need is the position of the first forward slash after the domain.

Buuut, there’s a problem.

See those two forward slashes before the domain (http://)? Yeah, those are going to trip us up. But no worries. The SEARCH function has an optional argument for the starting number (start_num), which we’ll use to our benefit.

The Playas

So for our formula we’re going to combine two functions: LEFT and SEARCH. Here’s the syntax for each:

LEFT(text, [num_chars])

SEARCH(find_text,within_text,[start_num])

Okay, so let’s get poppin here …

The Strategy

So, the secret sauce is we’re going to split the formula into two steps. Then when we’re finished, we’re going to combine them into one formula.

Excel helps you each step of the way by highlighting the argument you’re working on at the time. Here are what we’re going to use for each:

find_text: “/” This says we’re looking for a forward slash.

within_text: B3 This is the first cell we’re going to extract the domain from. When we finish, we’ll hover over the bottom-right corner of the cell to drag the formula down the column.

start_num: 9 We need to just choose a number that’s after the last / before the domain. We could have used 8 here, but if any of the URLs are secure, you would need one more character. Check it out for yourself.

https://* <– The * is in the 9^th position, which is where we want to start looking for the / that comes after the domain.

So, the final formula looks like this:

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This tells us what position each of the forward slashes directly following the domain is in. And we’ll use that to provide the number of characters to extract in the LEFT function.

Here are the arguments we’ll use for the LEFT function:

text: B3

[num_chars]: C3

So, the final formula looks like this:

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Now, all we need to do is combine the two so that instead of referencing cell C3, we’re embedding the SEARCH function into the final formula. To do that, just hit the Esc key to exit out of the cell you’re in, then copy the SEARCH function to your clipboard (not the = sign, though).

Next, hit the Esc key again to back out of that cell, and go back to the cell that houses your final formula and replace the C3 reference with the formula you just copied from C3. Your formula should now look like this:

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Task 2: Compare Two Datasets

In my audit Google Doc, one of the tasks I include is a check for orphan pages on the site (on the Links tab). One way to check for those is to compare your site’s sitemap against a site crawl, which can be performed with a tool like Screaming Frog. (Disclosure: I’m not affiliated with Screaming Frog in any way.)

If you find that there are URLs in your sitemap that weren’t found in the Screaming Frog crawl (or whatever tool you use), there’s a good chance that these are orphaned or blocked pages. Either way, they warrant investigation and probably shouldn’t be in your sitemap.

Playas

For the formula, we’ll use the following functions:

IF: IF(logical_test, [value_if_true], [value_if_false])

ISNA: ISNA(value)

MATCH: MATCH(lookup_value, lookup_array, [match_type])

For the sake of time, I won’t go into all the details about what these mean. Each of the links takes you to the page on the Microsoft site that explains all about that particular function.

Since this formula requires a couple more steps, I’ll break them out into steps.

Step 1: Look to see if the URL in C2 is anywhere in Column B.

The MATCH function is just another lookup function Excel offers, and it’s especially versatile. But, what it returns is the row number of whatever you’re looking up.  If it can’t find it, it returns an #N/A error (which we’ll use).

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Step 2: ISNA simply returns a Boolean value that just lets you know if the value in the cell you’re referencing is an #N/A error.

Step 3: Write an IF statement that assigns the value “Orphan” if the URL isn’t in the Screaming Frog column (in other words, is returning an #N/A error) and “Found” if it is found.

Step 4: Replace every helper cell reference with the formula inside that cell (everything but the =). If you spread your helper cells from left to right across your spreadsheet, like I do, start to the far-left and work your way to the right.

If you spread them out vertically, start at the top and work your way down to the last formula you wrote. That way, you won’t accidentally miss any helper cells.

Resources

The definitive guide to Excel for marketers is Distilled’s Microsoft Excel for SEOs guide. It’s a great jumping-off point if you want to start your journey by focusing on functions marketers use most.

If you really want to go hardcore, I highly recommend Bill Jelen’s YouTube channel. His playlists are especially helpful if you’re looking to concentrate on a particular, weak area. Another podcast I really like is Mike Girvin’s ExcelIsFun YouTube channel.

I also regularly publish Excel video tutorials on my blog.

Final Thoughts

If you didn’t understand all of the nuances of the two formulas we worked with, don’t worry about it. Just grasp the principle of using helper cells to test your functions along the way and to break your process down into easily, digestible steps. I used to try to jam everything into one cell and would find myself all tangled up in the formula, even with the tool tips.

Now, I’m much more comfortable with navigating my way through somewhat complex formulas, but when they get too tortuous, I start parsing pieces into their own cells.

(Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with the SeoTools plugin in any way.)

However, as it turns out, Excel offers an alternative to regex that gives you all the same functionality — and is available on all operating systems. They’re called advanced filters. And, they’re actually more flexible than regex and much easier to learn. (If you do want to learn how to leverage regex as a marketer, though, I wrote this post on regex for n00bs last year that makes regex achievable for even the most developer-challenged marketer.)

Some Groundwork

Okay, let’s cover some basics, so we can get to the cool stuff.

First of all, if you’re formatting your data as a table, you’ll already have access to quite a few filters. However, sometimes those filters fall short, especially because Excel doesn’t make the filters sensitive to regex. You have two wildcards to work with:

• *: 0 or more characters (equivalent to .* in regex)
• ?: any one character (equivalent to . in regex)
• ?*: 1 or more characters (equivalent to .+ in regex)

Another benefit to advanced filters over a table (as much as I love tables) is that you can easily copy your filtered data to another location, which can be really handy. If you apply a filter of any kind to a formatted table, you can’t put data on either side of it, or you’ll find some of your rows of data disappearing on you. It would be embarrassing to admit how many times I’ve done that. So we just won’t go there, okay? :)

To illustrate the awesomeness of advanced filters, I downloaded an SEMRush organic keyword report for Hipmunk.com. I’m not affiliated with either of these sites, though I love both of them. I just needed a good dataset to work with. You can download the Excel workbook I use to follow along.

Getting All Set Up

All you need is a dataset that you need filtered. I still format it as a table, but it’s more for aesthetic purposes since applying an advanced filter will strip out your table filters. (You can always reapply them when you’re finished spawning new datasets if you want.)

You’ll find the Advanced Filter option under Data > Sort & Filter > Advanced on a PC, and Data > Filter > Advanced Filter on a Mac. Mac users can also right-click on their table and choose Filter > Advanced Filter from the contextual menu. PC users don’t have that option for some reason.

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Your dataset needs to have headings to use advanced filters, as mine does.

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A Few Tips

More information about filters is provided below under the headings of key players, headings and multiple criteria.

Key Players

In addition to the wildcards mentioned above, there are a handful of notations you will need to use for your filters:

• =: equality, meaning you want to match whatever comes after it, e.g., =*hipmunk* [include all keywords that contain hipmunk]
• <>: inequality, meaning you want whatever comes after it to be filtered out, e.g., <>http://blog.* [don't include landing pages from the blog]
• ‘: converts formulas to text when you put it in front of an = sign, e.g., ‘=flight search
• >: greater than, e.g., >500
• >=: greater or equal to, e.g., B4-C4>=3
• <: less than, e.g., C6<D6
• <=: less than or equal to, e.g., <=3

Headings

The way advanced filters work is you copy the headings for the columns you want to filter somewhere outside your dataset. Typically, you’re only going to just need one instance of each heading; but there are times, as you’ll see, where you’ll need to use more than one. You’ll align your heading(s) along the top row, with the criteria immediately below. Don’t worry — I’ll provide you with tons of real-world examples.

Multiple Criteria

There are three basic constructs for multiple criteria:

Or: If you have multiple criteria you need to apply, and either of the criteria could be true, you align these vertically. You can see an example of such a filter from our example dataset below.

This filter will grab keywords that either rank between 1 and 3 OR have a monthly search volume of greater than 1,000 searches. You could also have multiple “OR” criteria in the same column. If you do, they would all be listed under that column heading.

And: If you have multiple criteria you need to apply and all conditions must be met, you align those horizontally.

This construct will filter out all non-branded keywords. Remember: those asterisks mean that there may or may not be characters in those locations. The ones between hip and munk (and also monk because people can’t spell) are there to catch all the spellings with spaces that the site ranks for. I could have actually just used *hip* for this site, but marketers will rarely get that lucky in filtering out branded keywords; so, I wanted to demonstrate more the norm. And, if the site ever ranked for something like ship, it would be filtered out.

Both: You can go all fancy pants and have both And and Or conditions.

Okay, things are heating up a bit. But this filter simply means I want keywords that include flight, hotel, and travel but don’t contain any branded keywords and have a search volume of at least 500 searches/month.

Note: All I did to get the =*flight,* =*hotel,* and =*travel* to show up as text instead of a formula was put an apostrophe in front of the = sign. Don’t follow the instructions on the Microsoft site. They make it unnecessarily complicated, and I could never get it straight. They say to enter =”=*flight*.” Crazy.

Just this week, as I was preparing this post, I tested using just the apostrophe, and it worked perfectly. If there’s a more convoluted way to do something, Microsoft will find it.

Range: If you want to only see a dataset that falls between a particular range, you would indicate that this way:

This filter captures just keywords that garner between 2,000 and 10,000 searches/month.

Formula: This is what won me about advanced filters. You can actually filter using a formula!

This formula grabs just the keywords that didn’t move in ranking.

A couple other important notes about using a formula:

• The formula has to resolve to True or False. It can’t return a value
• Don’t include a heading with a formula; just select an empty cell above your formula
• Reference the first cell in your dataset (just below your heading)
• Only use relative cell references, e.g., c4 as opposed to $C$4, which locks your reference

Putting It All Together

Here are the steps you’ll take to filter your data:

Step 1: As mentioned earlier, click any cell inside your dataset, then go to Data > Sort & Filter > Advanced (Mac: Data > Filter > Advanced Filter). This will open the Advanced Filter menu. I’ll use a screenshot from my Mac copy, but all of the options are identical in the PC version. Shockerz.

Step 2: Decide if you want to filter the data in place or copy to another location. I usually copy to a new location to keep my original dataset unsullied, but to each his own.

Step 3: For the List Range, by default, Excel selects the entire dataset. You can change that and just select the columns you want. Alternatively, you can type just the headings you want below your criteria and select those cells in the Copy To field, and Excel will only return those columns. I include an example in the Excel workbook you can download, with a green text box with a full explanation.

Step 4: For the Criteria Range, simply click inside the field and select the cells with your criteria. If you want to collapse the menu, just click on range selector to the right of the field and select the cells you want. But you don’t have to collapse the menu to select the cells you need.

Step 5: If you’ve selected Copy to another location at the top of the menu, you can use this field to determine where you want to paste your filtered dataset. You can either choose a single cell, which will become the top-left cell in your dataset, or select pre-typed headings to restrict which columns are copied over.

Step 6: Decide if you just want unique records. Sadly, this is all most people use this amazing filter for — myself included — up until a couple months ago!

Step 7: Click OK, and go retrieve your data.

Step 8: If you filtered your data in place, you can clear your filter, but only if you’re on a PC. It’s due north of the Advanced option. Mac offers this option, but it’s broken … which is another good reason to copy to a new location. If you want to clear the filter, you need to press Command-Z to undo or click a heading cell and choose Filter.

Tons Of Examples

Below are snapshots of the examples I include in the download.

Final Tips

There are a few gotchas with advanced filters. As long as you’re aware of them, you should avoid unpleasant surprises.

• If you accidentally include blank cells at the bottom of your criteria range, you will cancel out your criteria because Excel treats blank cells as wildcards that include everything.
• If you want to copy your range to a new worksheet, you need to start the process on the new sheet and just reference the original dataset. Excel won’t let you start on the sheet where your dataset is and select a new worksheet for the Copy To range.
• If you filter your data in place, you can’t have more than one table on a worksheet with advanced filters applied. When you apply filters to the second one, you’ll lose the filters on your original table.
• As mentioned in the post, Clear is broken in Excel 2011 for Mac — at least for me. Let me know in the comments if it works for you! You’ll have to use Command-Z to clear the filter or select the heading and choose Filter. Ironically, this causes Excel to short circuit, and it drops your advanced filter.
• If you have a list of values you need to filter out of your dataset (like I did just last week), I recommend first concatenating your list with <> (learn how), then using Copy > Paste Special > Transpose to get your list running horizontally across your sheet.

Idea For Advanced Excel Users

If you wanted a dynamic filter, you could create drop-down menus with data validation (learn how for 2010 and 2011), and use those values to generate your filters. You’ll still have to run the filter; it won’t run automatically when you select a new option.

However, you could create a simple macro to run the filter (2010/2011) and assign it to a keyboard shortcut or image (2010/2011). Personally, I’d go with the image. I’m not a graphic designer, but here’s one you can use, if you’d like.

If you take the time to play with advanced filters, I think you’ll fall in love with them the way I did because of their simplicity yet unparalleled power.

(Disclaimer: I’m not in any way associated with any of the GA plugins for Excel or their manufacturers.)

Before jumping in, let’s talk about some basics that you will need to understand to navigate the API.

Learning The Language Of The API

The trickiest part about using the GA API is wrapping your brain around all the geek speak. Instead of using the same labels the interface uses (which are intuitive to non-bots), the API switches everything up. But here are some spy-grade deciphering tips that will help you avoid some of the traps that threw me when I was an API fledgling:

• Path: You’ll see path this and path that all through the page dimensions. Just think of path = URI (which is the URL minus the domain, or hostname in analyticsesse). So, the referral source + referral path together make up the page that sent you traffic, e.g., yourfanboy.com/landing-page-that-links-to-you/.
• Visit Bounce Rate vs. Entrance Bounce Rate: This has to be the dumbest thing I’ve seen in the API. I think two developers must have flipped for which metric they’d go with, and the quarter landed on its edge. The two metrics are nearly identical, but after some testing I discovered the Web interface uses Visit Bounce Rate.
• Duplication Between Traffic Sources And Campaigns: Under Dimensions (more on that in a minute), you’ll see a number of different categories, two of which are Traffic Sources and Campaigns. They contain the same options: referral path, campaign, source, medium, keyword, and ad content. I totally over-thought this one the first couple times I used it, but then realized that when you choose from one group, the identical metric in the other will also be selected. Just smile and wave.
• Revenue: In the API,  revenue is referred to as Transaction Revenue. 

Excellent Analytics

You can access the API using a pretty impressive free tool called Excellent Analytics. It’s an easy install. Just click the obnoxious purple Download button in the upper-right corner of the page and follow the prompts.

Once it’s installed, you’ll see an Excellent Analytics tab. With that you’re ready to dive in and start playing with the API. By the time you finish this post, there’s a good chance you won’t want to use the interface very much, especially if you’re responsible for more than one site.

Step 1: Click the Account button and log in to GA.

Step 2: Click the New Query button to get things going. You’ll see this window open:

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Step 3: Set time span. The Time Span tab in the upper-left corner gives you plenty of preset time spans. For monthly reports I just leave it set to Last Month.

Step 4: Choose your dimension(s). The ones I use most are Landing Page (under Page Tracking) and the Time dimensions, like Month, Year, and Date. Dimensions populate the rows in reports, and metrics are the values. A tip I learned from John Marshall of MarketMotive is if it can be measured with a number, it’s a metric. Here’s where they both appear in the UI:

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Warning: With v. 5 of Google Analytics released last year, the date format was seriously jacked up. But you can use this formula in Excel to convert them to a standard date format.

Step 5: Choose your metrics. My personal faves are Visits, Visit Bounce Rate, Goal Completions (individual goals and Completions All), and Transaction Revenue (for e-commerce sites).

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Step 6 (Optional): Apply filter(s). The most common filter I apply as an SEO is medium [Exact match] organic. Just as in the interface, you can use regular expressions (regex) for the operator. If regex scares the bejeezies out of you, I wrote a post that breaks regex down in the simplest, non-technical terms. Every marketer should at least know how to use the pipe character, dot, plus, asterisk, caret, and backslash.

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Other filters I’ve used recently are:

• Country [contains a match for the regular expression]** China because of China’s antic with blocking Google Analytics,
• Operating System [contains a match for the regular expression] ios and Operating System Version [contains a match for the regular expression] ^6\.+ and Browser [contains a match for the regular expression] safari because of Safari shifting to secure search in iOS 6.
• Visits [greater than] 5,000 to only show the top mediums in a client’s monthly report.

** I’ve run into a bug in Excellent Analytics several times now, where exact match won’t catch something it should definitely match. But if I change it to regex match, it works. Hey, it’s free.

Very important: After you set up your filter, remember to hit the Add button. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to hit this and have had to redo my filters. The filter will show up in the box below the Add and Remove buttons.

Step 7 (Optional): Apply an advanced segment. You can use any of the built-in segments GA offers or any you’ve created.

Pro Tip: Advanced segments cause data sampling, which is the bane of every marketer and analyst’s existence, only to be eclipsed by not provided. I use filters over segments in the API to keep sampling to a minimum.

Step 8 (Optional): Set the sort. You can use any of the metrics and dimensions you’ve set up to sort your data by. Then just click the Ascending button to toggle back and forth between ascending and descending. Just like you did with the filters, remember to click the Add button to add your sort.

Pro Tip: This is preference on my part, but I always include Visits, even if I’m not emphasizing visits in my charts, because it helps me prioritize the most important mediums, landing pages, PPC keywords, etc.

Step 9: Choose the profile(s) you want to run this report for. This is especially nice for agencies and in-house marketers who are responsible for multiple sites. If you choose more than one profile, Excellent Analytics will drop them into your spreadsheet side-by-side with an empty column in between them.

Pro Tip: If I create reports for multiple clients all at once, I will copy and paste the data sets into different worksheets to keep client data separate.

Step 10: Click the Execute button to run the query (worst name for a button).

Step 11: If you want to go back and update a query later on, just select the the header the plugin creates and click the Update Query button.

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Bugs

There are a number of bugs with the plugin and the API I’ve run into consistently. Hopefully, this head’s up will save you some of the head banging I’ve experienced.

• The Dimension box (for lack of a better term) is super buggy. In a perfect world, you should be able to update any query in a spreadsheet at any time. In reality, I’ve had no problem updating metrics, filters, or sort; but, dimension is the quintessential drama queen. I don’t think it’s ever updated properly, but that could just be the bitterness talking. The telltale sign Excellent Analytics is having a rip-roaring temper tantrum is: if, after updating your dimensions, you go to click the down-facing arrow to the left of the Dimension button and it changes to an up-facing arrow but the box doesn’t collapse. It should, instead, look like the screen capture in Step 2, only with dimensions in the text box. If this happens, your only option is to click Cancel and create a new query.

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• If you add a new profile after setting up Excellent Analytics, it won’t show up in your list of profiles. I don’t know if there’s a fix for this. I’ve cheated and used another Google Analytics login to access it.
• Both Dimension and Metrics have up- and down-facing arrows that allow you to reorder your dimensions and metrics. (You can see a screenshot under Step 2.) Sometimes the up arrows don’t work for me. They’ll look like they do, but then they export in their original order in the spreadsheet. Oddly enough, when that happens, I use the down arrow instead, and Excellent Analytics has always given me a pass. Go figure.
• If you have multiple profiles in your account, whichever one is first alphabetically will always be added under Profiles. You will have to remove it, using the Remove button every time, if you’re not running a report for it. And there’s no way to set a more appropriate default account.
• As mentioned in Step 6, sometimes the exact match operator under Filter doesn’t work properly. One time, it didn’t match China for country, and another time it didn’t match safari. I checked the Web interface both times to make sure I wasn’t fat-fingering them, and they were correct. However, when I changed the operator from exact match to regex match, it worked. So there ya go. YMMV.
• The GA API screws up the formatting for percentages like bounce rate, exit rate, and conversion rate. They come in as whole numbers instead of fractions, so when you apply percentage formatting (under the Home tab), 48.12 will show up as 4812%. This isn’t an Excellent Analytics; but, it’s a bug in the GA API. The blame falls squarely on a Google engineer’s shoulders. Excel lets you fix that in its Paste Special dialog. Just enter the number 100 in a cell, copy it, select the affected cells, right-click, choose Paste Special, choose Divide, then click OK. You can see math on the fly in action here.

Tips

Having used this plugin for a while, I thought I’d also share some tips that will [hopefully] make your ramp-up time more efficient than mine was.

• The data is exported into Excel in a range with headers that’s perfect for pivot tables and charts. (Excel 2011 for Mac still doesn’t support pivot charts. Too much lame, too little time.) You can also create regular, static charts from the data, too, if you’re on a Mac, but it’s better to create even static charts from a pivot table because you can easily change the headings in pivot tables.
• If you’re using Excellent Analytics for monthly reports, once you hit the first of the new month, you can update each data set by just clicking on the header, choosing Update Query, and clicking Execute. If you’ve built pivot tables and/or charts, you can choose Refresh All (under Data > Connections), and all of your tables and charts should update to match the new month’s data. It’s pretty slick.
• With the exception of dividing all rate values by 100, I don’t touch any of the raw data that’s exported from the API because when you pull in a new month’s data, all of your formatting will get wiped out. I wait to format the data in the pivot tables and/or charts. #voiceofexperience
• When I’m finished with all my charts and tables, before sending a report upstream, I hide the ugly Raw Data tab. You can do this by right-clicking the tab at the bottom of the worksheet and choosing Hide from the contextual menu. I only want the sexy data to show.
• If you are torn between learning to use the API with a plugin or Google Docs, I would highly recommend using a plugin. I learned to use the API in Google Docs, and it was much harder. The reason is that you can’t easily browse dimensions and segments. And, learning to use the nomenclature for applying filters and segments was not intuitive. Because you can’t merely choose options from a drop-down, you have to constantly refer to the developer help files, which were definitely not written for non-developers. Plus, you then have to copy and paste or export into Excel each time, barring a script that will automate the process for you.

If you have any questions about how Excellent Analytics works, you can connect with Ampliofy (the company that generously donates its time to maintain the plugin), hollah at me on Twitter, or leave a comment below.

So I’m going to show you how to take a macro you find online or get from a trusted source and add it to your workbook and run it — on both a PC and Mac.

If you want to follow along, you can download the Excel file I’ll be using in the demo.

Step 1: Enable Developer Tab

To work with macros, you’ll need to enable the Developer tab, which is hidden from the Ribbon by default.

To enable it on a PC, go to File > Options, then choose Customize Ribbon > Select Developer under Customize the Ribbon, and press OK.

For Mac, go to Excel > Preferences, then choose Ribbon > Customize, Select Developer, and press OK.

Note: To avoid redundancy, unless I state otherwise, we will be using the Developer tab, so I won’t include Developer in every set of instructions.

Step 2: Open The Visual Basic Editor (VBE)

Simply press Alt-F11 (Mac: Option-F11). Alternatively, choose Code > Visual Basic for PC and Visual Basic > Editor for Mac.

Step 3: Find A Macro

Find a macro from a trusted source that you want to run on a sheet of data. I’m going to use this macro that converts URLs to hyperlinks:

Public Sub Convert_To_Hyperlinks()

    Dim Cell As Range

    For Each Cell In Intersect(Selection, ActiveSheet.UsedRange)

        If Cell <> "" Then

            ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Cell, Cell.Value

        End If

    Next

End Sub

One important thing to note is that the title of the macro is in the first line, after Sub, and is what you’ll look for when you go to run it. In this case the title is Convert_To_Hyperlinks.

Step 4: Decide The Scope For Your Macro

We’re just going to apply this macro to our workbook, but you could also make your macro global, if you wanted to always have it at your disposal, regardless of what workbook you’re working in. (This will make it global to whatever computer you’re working on, e.g., your laptop or your desktop.)

Step 5: Insert The Macro

To apply the macro to the sample workbook, right-click on VBAProject (links.xlsx), then choose Insert > Module. Shockingly, this process is the same for both PC and Mac. Then paste the macro into the module and press Alt-F11 (Mac: Opt-F11) again to close out of the editor and get back to your workbook.

Click for a larger image

Step 6: Run The Macro

To run the macro, in this example, select the URLs you want to convert into hyperlinks, and select Macros under the Developer tab. You should see the name of the macro. Select it, then click the Run button. Bada bing, bada bang, bada bada, boom!

Side Notes

Making the Macro Global: If you want to have the macro available to any future workbooks you open from the machine you’re working on, right-click VBAProject (Personal Macro Workbook) instead of the links.xlsx file. Your macro will then be available for any workbook you want to create active hyperlinks in (without having to use the HYPERLINK formula). You can read more about this from the Microsoft site.

Caveat: For some strange reason, in Excel 2010 the PERSONAL.XLSB file doesn’t show up automatically like it used to in 2007. If you don’t see it when you open the VBE, the easiest way to create it is to create a macro with the Macro Recorder and choose to store it in Personal Macro Workbook . (I literally just selected a few cells for my lame sandwich macro.)

Then press Alt-F11 to reopen the VBE. You should see it appear under whatever workbooks you have open. Then you can right-click and choose Insert > Module, as shown below.

Deleting Macros: If you want to delete a macro, click on Macros under the Developer tab, select the macro, and choose Delete. Alternatively, you can delete them by opening the VBE and deleting it from the Modules folder wherever you created the macro. (Excel creates this Modules folder automatically when the macro is created).

To delete it, right-click on it and choose Remove Module. Microsoft will give you the option to export it. If I’m deleting a macro, I don’t ever export it, but a case could be made for doing that, I suppose.

Assigning Macros: If you want to use the macro again and again, one alternative to clicking on Macros every time is to assign a macro to a shape or image. This turns the image into a clickable object that will run whatever macro you assign to it. And it couldn’t be easier to assign a macro. Just right-click on the image and choose Assign Macros. I did this once with a project management spreadsheet I created. When I’d click the refresh graphic I copied into the worksheet, the macro I created would run and move completed tasks to the bottom of the sheet.

Making a Macro Persistent: In the example I’ve been working from in this post, once you run the macro, you really don’t need it anymore. It’s your classic one-and-you’re -done kind of macro. You can save the file with the active links as a .xlsx file as normal.

However, if you want to use the macro whenever the workbook is open (let’s say you attach it to a graphic), you won’t be able to save it as a .xlsx file. Instead, choose File > Save As and select Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (.xlsm) from the Format drop-down. When you open the file later though you’ll have to explicitly enable the macro or save your workbook to a safe folder.

Hopefully these tips will empower you to start using macros you find. They can reduce laborious tasks to seconds. Just make sure you trust the source you find the macro from because people with nefarious intentions also create macros that do horrible things to your computer.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below or reach out to me on Twitter.

I’m not going to cover the basics of creating charts in this post. If you want a primer, you can find this resource from Microsoft for the PC and this one for the Mac.

1.  Remove Noise From Your Chart’s Background

When you’re presenting data, it’s very important to reduce the noise and hone in on actionable signals. If you have read just about anything I’ve written about Excel, you’ll know I loathe gridlines in tables. And yet, until I viewed this presentation by Ian Lurie, I was blissfully oblivious to gridlines in charts. But then, they cause my eye to stumble, too. And that’s the problem with noise: it distracts you from the essential stuff.

Gridlines are super easy to get rid of. First, remember the formatting trick I mention in all of my posts: if you want to format anything in Excel (in a chart or table) just select it and press Ctrl-1 (Mac: Command-1) to open the formatting dialog specific to that item.

In this case, you’ll just want to select one of the gridlines in your chart (anyone but the top one, which selects the entire plot area) and then open the formatting options. Finally, select Line Color > No line (Mac: Line > Solid > Color: No Line).

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2.  Move The Legend

I don’t know why Excel positions the legend to the right of a chart by default. In most cases, it’s terribly awkward. I prefer to move the legend to the top or bottom of a chart. I tend to put the legend above more than below, but I’ll put it below if there’s too much going on at the top, or sometimes, with a pie chart.

To move it, just pull up the formatting option (you should know how by now!) and choose the position from Legend Options category, which is called Placement on a Mac.

With the legend still selected, I usually bump the font up to 12 as well. You don’t have to select the text, just the box. You be the judge which looks better…

3.  Delete Legends With One Data Series

If you’re only showing one metric on a chart, there’s no reason to keep the legend that Excel throws in there. Just make sure you include the metric you’re showing in the chart title.

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4.  Add A Descriptive Title

A common mistake I see with marketers’ charts is they’re oftentimes missing a title. When you’re the one pulling together the data, everything you’re trying to communicate is perfectly clear. But for others who have to try to figure out what you’re trying to communicate, it’s not always so apparent.

So, in the case of the chart below, it would be insufficient to just use “Impressions” as the chart title:

To add a chart title, with your chart selected, choose Chart Tools > Layout > Labels > Chart Title. On the Mac, you’ll choose Charts > Chart Layout > Labels > Chart Title. I always choose Above Chart (Mac: Chart at Top).

5.  Sort Your Data Before Charting

This one is actually a big deal to me. Charts that are spawned from unsorted data are, in my opinion, much more difficult to read and interpret.

If you’re showing something sequential, like visits per day over a period of a month or revenue per month over a period of a year, then ordering your data chronologically makes the most sense. In the absence of a dominant sort pattern like that, I’m of the opinion that data should be ordered and presented in descending order to put the most significant data first.

If you look at the data in the chart immediately below, I think you’ll agree that your eyes have to dart back and forth to sort the channels by revenue.

However, in the chart below, which is sorted in descending order, it’s easy to sort and interpret because it’s basically done for you.

This is another benefit to formatting your data as a table before charting it out — the ability to sort is built into the filters baked into every table heading. And if you already created the chart from the table, all is not lost. Once you sort your data in the table, your chart will update automatically.

6.  Don’t Make People Head Tilt

Have you ever seen a chart that does this?

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Or worse… this?

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This can make data interpretation laborious and vulnerable to misinterpretation. If you have longer labels, it’s better to expand your chart enough to make room for the axis labels to be displayed horizontally or (even better) use a bar chart instead of a column chart, like so:

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Tip: With bar charts, if you want the larger values to be at the top of the chart, like you see in the chart above, you need to arrange the table data for that column (in this case, the Impressions column from my Google Webmaster Tools export) in ascending order instead of descending order.

It’s counter-intuitive, in my opinion, but if you don’t, you’re going to have the most insignificant data at the top of your chart. And people naturally read charts from top to bottom, so I want to put the most important data at the top.

7.  Clean Up Your Axes

This chart below is a royal train wreck and has everything I hate most in chart axes.

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Before doing anything to the axes, I’m going to remove the gridlines and the legend. I’ll focus on five common problematic formatting issues I see in chart axes.

Missing Thousands Separators

If you have data points that are greater than 999, you should include thousands separators. The best way to do this is to format the data in the table. If you do that, the chart will update automatically. Otherwise, you need to unlink it from the source in the Format Axis dialog.

To add thousands separators, select the entire column and click the button with what looks like a comma in the Home tab in the Number category. Excel always adds two decimal places, which you have to get rid of by clicking the Decrease Decimal icon, which is two spots to the right of the thousands separator.

Alternatively, you could get into the formatting dialog and modify the number formatting there.

Cluttered Axes

The vertical axis in the chart above is also cluttered and overkill. To rectify this, select the axis and open the formatting dialog. Under Axis Options (Mac: Scale) you can change the Major Unit setting. In the screenshot below, I changed the major unit from 20000 to 40000.

By all means, if you need more granular detail, adjust your settings appropriately.

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Unnecessary Decimals

Never include decimals in an axis, unless your maximum value is 1 (in other words, you’re only dealing with fractions). I see this most commonly done with currency, where you’ll see labels like $10,000.oo, $20,000.00, $30,000.00, etc. It’s extraneous and noisy.

Decimals Instead Of Percentages

If you’re trying to show percentages in the vertical axis, format them as a percent; don’t format the data as decimals. The less time people have to spend interpreting your data, the more compelling it will be. But, again, even with percentages, drop the decimals. In other words, don’t have labels like 10.00%, 20.00%, etc. Just use 10%, 20%, etc.

Weird Zero Formatting

One final nuisance is the presentation of the 0 at the bottom of the vertical axis as a hyphen. This is very common. You can read my post on custom number formatting to learn about how custom number formatting works. You might find some very surprising options, like the ability to add text to the formatting while still keeping the value of a number.

In this case, we just need to change the way 0 is formatted. To do this, select the column in the table where the data comes from, open the formatting dialog as usual, and select Number > Category: Custom, find the hyphen, and replace it with a 0.

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As a finishing touch, I gave the chart a better title, and here’s the final result:

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8.  Explore Other Themes

Excel’s chart formatting options are pretty impressive, but most people never leave Excel’s default “Office” theme.

There are 53 themes offered in the 2010 version for PC and 57 themes in the 2011 version for the Mac. And each theme comes with its own unique set of chart formats — 48 in all. That’s 2,544 built-in chart formatting options for 2010 and 2,736 for 2011. (Whooooahhhh. Double rainbowww…)

You can switch themes by going to Page Layout > Themes > Themes (Mac: Home > Themes) and choose from the drop-down menu.

Some of them get a little cra-cra, like the Habitat theme (Mac only) that gives your charts a texture.

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But you should explore the different themes and try branching out.

9.  Create Branded Charts

You’re not limited to the 2,500+ themes Excel provides. If you want your data to be aligned with your brand, you could create a chart with your branded colors, then save that off as a template.

So, let’s say you doing marketing for Toys R Us (which I’m not affiliated with in any way), and you want to use a pie chart in a presentation with your branded colors. Excel 2010 (PC) will allow you to use RGB or HSL values, whereas Excel 2011 (Mac) will let you use RGB, CMYK, or HSB values.

(Since I wasn’t privy to those values, I used the Color Picker tool in the Web Developer Toolbar to identify the colors from the Toys R Us logo and then used a hex-to-RGB conversion tool to get the RGB values.)

Once you have the values you need, create a chart with whatever data you want to visualize.

Next, select a piece of the pie chart by clicking on the pie chart once and then on the individual piece. Then reformat it by using the paint bucket under Home > Font — or pull up the formatting dialog.

Assuming you have RGB values, click the drop-down menu on the paint bucket, choose More Colors > Custom > Color Model: RGB (Mac: More Colors > Color Sliders > RGB Sliders). And do that for each piece of the pie.

Your chart may look something like this:

PC: 

To save it as a template on a PC, select the chart and navigate to Chart Tools > Design > Type > Save as Template.

To create a new pie chart based on this template on a PC, simply click inside the data you want to chart (or select the data if it’s a partial data set), then choose Insert > Charts > Other Charts > All Chart Types > Templates (Mac: Charts > Insert Chart > Other > Templates) and select the template you want to use.

Mac:

On a Mac, right-click anywhere on the chart and choose Save as Template. This will save your chart as a .crtx file in a chart templates folder.

10.  Make Your Chart Title Dynamic

Did you know you can make your chart title update by linking it to a cell in your workbook? It’s a bit of a hack, but it’s a cool option that will make you look like a genius to your boss/client/mom.

Dynamic titles are best suited for data that update on a regular basis, like daily numbers entered manually or pulled into Excel from a database.

What I’m going to demonstrate is a PPC revenue report that updates daily. The title will show the running total for the month up to that day. Here are the steps you’ll need to take:

Step 1:

Make sure your data uses proper number formatting and that it’s formatted as a table, which is Excel’s version of a simple database. The reason you want to format as a table is if you build a chart from a table, your chart will update automatically as you add new rows to the table.

The table also automatically expands to absorb any new data you add to the table when you just enter something in a cell immediately below or to the right of a formatted table.

Step 2:

In a cell just south of row 31 (to accommodate a full month) enter a SUM formula that captures all 31 rows — even though some will be blank if you’re only partway through the month.

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Step 3:

If we were using both columns of our table as a data series, we could just click any cell inside the table and choose Insert > Charts > Column (Mac: Charts > Column).

But in the table below, we would just select the header and cells that contain revenue data. This is because we don’t want the days of the week to become a data series. You have lots of formatting options under Chart Tools > Design > Chart Styles (Mac: Charts > Chart Styles).

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Step 4:

Add a title to your chart that indicates you have a running total. I used: “PPC Revenue for Oct:” for my title. See tip #4 above for directions.

Step 5:

Since the default fill for the chart area is white and the chart is generally displayed on a white sheet (which I recommend preserving), we’re going to change the Fill to No Fill without anyone being the wiser.

To do this, select the chart and press Ctrl/Command-1, then choose Fill: No Fill (Mac: Fill > Solid > Color > No Fill). You will definitely need to turn off gridlines to pull this off, but you should do that anyway. You can find this toggle under View > Show (Mac: Layout > View).

Step 6:

Select a cell above the chart just to the right of the title and reference the cell with the total. You reference a cell by simply putting an = sign in the cell and then typing in the cell reference or selecting it with your mouse. Excel will highlight the cell you’re referencing with a light blue as a visual aid. Then, format the cell with whatever formatting you used for your title.

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Step 7:

Now, all you have to do is move the chart up and align it with the title. It took some finagling to get everything lined up just right. But then, I just removed the legend since I just have one data series, and voilà! A dynamic title.

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Step 8:

Now, when you add a new row to the table, the chart and title update dynamically. Slick, right?

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Clearly, charts provide dimension that’s much harder to get with a table. The good news is you can use any combination of these techniques to make your data sexier and more actionable in just a few minutes, once you get the hang of it.

If you have any questions about Excel or topic requests, feel free to reach out to me using the comments or contact form below or on Twitter: @AnnieCushing.

However, when you’re dealing with large data sets that’s not always feasible. For example, when I’m dealing with data from webmaster tools or Screaming Frog, there’s just too much data to analyze with charts.

That’s where conditional formatting comes in handy. Unlike custom cell formatting, which is static, conditional formatting is based on — you guessed it — conditions that you set.

You can find the Conditional Formatting options on the Home Tab under the Styles group (Mac: Home > Format). I can’t possibly cover all the great uses of conditional formatting, but I hope to at least whet your appetite and make you aware of what they can do. Then you can take these tips and run with them.

That said, let’s jump in.

Data Bars

The easiest way to get started with conditional formatting is with data bars. You can find them under Conditional Formatting > Data Bars.

To activate them, just click the column you want to apply them to, then choose the data bar color you want from the flyout menu.

Excel allows you to customize your data bars by clicking More Rules… at the bottom of the flyout menu.

For example, if you have outliers in your data that are throwing the data bars off, you can throw them out by adjusting the Minimum and Maximum values.

You can also opt to only show data bars, toggle between solid bars and gradient fills, change the color, format how you want negative numbers to look, set the border style, and change the bar direction from the New Formatting Rule dialog, as seen below.

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Icon Sets

Another popular conditional formatting option is icon sets (Conditional Formatting > Icon Sets). Their default options are pretty lame, but I like to customize them to show things like keywords that are ranking on page 1, page 2, and page 3 and beyond.

In the example below, I used the 3 Traffic Lights (Rimmed). But since I know Excel is going to break my data up by top 1/3, middle 1/3, and lower 1/3 — instead of by 1-10, 11-20, and 21+ — we’ll choose More Rules at the bottom of the flyout menu instead of clicking on the traffic lights.

Here are the steps to setting up the formatting options:

Step 1: Change the Icon Style to the traffic lights.

Step 2: Click the Reverse Icon Order option (since in the case of rankings lower numbers are preferable and should be visualized with green).

Step 3: Change Type to Number for both green and yellow. (It’s easy to forget to the do this, which is why I do it before touching the values. If you forget you’ll just have to take a couple extra steps later.)

Step 4: Set the red icon’s Value to >= 21 (or > 20) since this marks the top of page 3.

Step 5: Set the yellow icon’s Value to >=11 (or > 10).

Here’s how it looks in your data:

If you’ve used table formatting you can sort your data by the conditional formatting using the filter drop-down. Just click the down-facing arrow in the column heading you want to sort your table by and then choose Sort by Color > Custom Sort (Mac: Sort > By Color > Cell Icon > Custom Sort).

Here’s how you would set up a sort that puts all of Google’s page 1 keywords on top, followed by page 2, then page 3 and beyond.

Pro Tip: You’re not limited to the icon set combinations that come baked into Excel. For example, let’s say you want a green arrow for values greater than 1% and a red arrow for values less than -1%, but you don’t want the yellow arrow for values between -1% and 1%.

You can choose the icon set you want — in this case, the Three Arrows (Colored) option — but then choose No Cell Icon from the drop-down menu in lieu of the yellow arrow.

The Icon Style menu will update to say Custom instead of showing the three arrows. Theoretically, you could mix and match icons, but I wouldn’t recommend getting too off the chain with mixing icon types. It’s the data equivalent of littering your front lawn with garden gnomes.

Highlight Cell Rules

Excel gives you a number of options to format your data based on the contents of the cells in a data set — either a single column or row or an entire table. You have seven built-in options under Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cell Rules:

• Greater Than
• Less Than
• Between
• Equal To
• Text That Contains
• A Date Occurring
• Duplicate Values

I use the greater than and less than options a lot in reports that show values over time, like rank reports, month-over-month revenue, year-over-year visits, etc. I format values that move in a negative direction with red font and those that move in a positive direction with green font. I find that to be less distracting for larger data sets than having a bunch of red, yellow, and green arrows (which are an option under icon sets if you’re so inclined).

The text option is particularly useful for tasks like highlighting keywords that contain a certain word, landing pages from a particular directory, 404 status codes from Screaming Frog, etc.

I also use the duplicate values a lot when I download a Screaming Frog report to highlight duplicate content. Just apply this conditional formatting option to the Hash column. Then you can sort by that cell formatting, followed by an alphabetical sort (using the same custom sort options available to you from the table filter for that column). This puts all the duplicates at the top of the column and groups the pages with the same hash value together.

Top/Bottom Rules

Excel gives you six built-in rules:

• Top 10 Items
• Top 10%
• Bottom 10 Items
• Bottom 10%
• Above Average
• Below Average

Of course, you’re not limited to these rules. If you select More Rules, you can set your own thresholds.

Color Scales

The color scales work exactly like the data bars. Personally, I don’t prefer them because I find that the distinctions get a little difficult to read and interpret, especially with larger data sets. But if you like them, knock yourself out.

Using Formulas

As you get more comfortable with conditional formatting, using the formula option will save you some time. You’ll also need to use the formula option if you want to format the cells in one column based on the values in another.

For example, if you want to apply yellow highlighting to all landing page cells if they generated at least $5,000 in revenue, according to your analytics data, you’d use a formula because you’re not formatting the same cell you’ve selected.

Another example would be if you’re using a spreadsheet to keep track of your link building and want to highlight an entire row green if the link has been published and red if it hasn’t (using a Published column that has either Yes or No as the cell value), you would use a formula to get the job done.

Don’t let working with formulas intimidate you. If you’ve used formulas elsewhere in Excel, they’re very easy to apply in conditional formatting. The trick to using them is if the formula evaluated to a true condition, the cell(s) will be formatted; if it evaluates to false, they won’t.

For example, let’s say you have revenue data in column E (starting in row 4), and you want to highlight landing pages that have generated at least $5,000 in revenue. Your formula would read =E4>=5000. (Don’t let that initial = throw you. It doesn’t mean equal in this context; it just means you’re entering a formula.)

Also, you’re not limited to just one condition. Let’s say you have an organic landing page report with analytics data, and you had your data broken up like this:

• Column B: Visits
• Column C: Revenue
• Column D: Bounce Rate

Now, if you wanted to highlight your strongest landing pages, you could decide the thresholds for each metric and apply those against your data.

For example, let’s say you want to highlight landing pages that meet these criteria:

• Received at least 100 visits
• Generated at least $5,000
• Had a bounce rate under 30%

Here are the steps you would take:

Step 1:  Select the cell with the first landing page.

Step 2: Go to Conditional Formatting >New Rule.

Step 3: Under Select a Rule Type, choose Use a formula to determine which cells to format (Mac: Choose Classic from the Style drop-down menu, then use a formula to determine which cells to format from the [unlabeled] drop-down menu below it).

Step 4: Assuming your data begins in the Row 4, you would enter this formula in the formula field: =AND(B4>=100, C4>=5000, D4<30%) Tip: You could also use .3 for bounce rate. The AND function just allows you to concatenate (or join together) more than one condition. You could even use OR to format a cell based on one condition or another.

Step 5: Choose the formatting option(s) you want by clicking on the Format button.

Step 6: Take the fill handle in the bottom-right corner of the cell and drag it down (or double-click on it if you’re using a formatted table) to apply it to the entire column. Then choose Fill Formatting Only from the Auto Fill Options menu that pops up.

Alternatively, you could select the first cell, click the Format Painter under Home > Clipboard and click-and-drag over the rest of the cells in the column to apply the format. If all of the landing pages have identical formatting, make sure you’re not using absolute references in your formula, e.g., =AND($B$4>=100, $C$4>=5000, $D$4<30%) because your formula will only reference the first record (or row) in your data set.

However, you could lock just the letters, if you wanted to be precise (e.g., $B4), but it’s not necessary in this case. To learn more about absolute and relative referencing, check out this article from the Microsoft website.

Modifying Your Conditional Formatting

If you ever need to modify your conditional formatting, all  you have to do is go to Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules, then just double-click on the rule you want to edit or click the Edit Rule button.

Since your conditional formatting is applied in the order of the rules listed in Rules Manager dialog, you can also move the rules up or down using the arrow buttons. Furthermore, you can tell Excel to stop if a particular rule evaluates to true. To learn more about rule precedence, check out this article from the Microsoft website.

Learn More

If you want to develop advanced conditional formatting skills, you’re not going to do that from one blog post. However, I read an ebook a couple years ago that made the more advanced conditional formatting options click for me. I don’t usually promote resources that aren’t free and I don’t benefit in any way from sales, but my $20 investment has paid off in spades by giving me the skills to wield the full power of Excel’s conditional formatting. You can check out the ebook here.

If you have any questions or get stuck on anything, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. I help a lot of people in the industry with their spreadsheet woes. :)

Photo from keaggy.com. Used under Creative Commons license.

Enough chatter. Let’s jump in. If you want to follow along, you can download the Excel file. (Just click the Download button in the upper-right corner of your browser window. Don’t ask me why Dropbox sticks it up there. Developers …)

Standard Number Formatting

You would think everyone would use number formatting; it’s so rudimentary. But I can’t tell you how many times I see decimals in charts that should be formatted as percentages or no thousandths separators (a pet peeve of mine) or two decimal places filled with 0′s because the number didn’t need decimals.

These newbie mistakes are uncalled for because Excel placed several number formatting options front and center in the Number section of the Home tab:

Click for larger image.

For the neophytes, here are what those icons mean, from left to right:

Currency

Convert to currency. This option will left-align the dollar symbol and right-align the number. Technically, this is referred to as Accounting formatting. (If you want the currency symbol to be flushed up against the number, don’t use this icon; use the Currency option in the drop-down menu above this row of icons.)

You can also choose different currencies from the drop-down menu to the right of the currency icon.

%

Convert decimals to a percentage.

, 

This is not a comma; it’s a thousandths separator. And if you have a number greater than 9999 you should use it. (I usually use it for numbers greater than 999.) One weird quirk with this button is it adds two decimal places whenever you apply it. Most of the time they’re unwarranted.

If you don’t have decimals, you should ditch the decimals because they just add noise. But that’s what the next icons are for.

Increase Decimal

Add decimals. Since I’m not [overly] neurotic or a scientist, I very rarely use this option.

Decrease Decimal

Lob off unwanted decimals. I use this all the time. PSA: Please — for the love of all that is holy and measurable — get rid of decimals in chart axes.

Select the axis, press Ctrl-1 (Mac: Command-1) to bring up the formatting options, and adjust it in the Number section. Please.

Click for larger image.

Click for larger image.

More Ribbon Options

Both PC and Mac offer more number formatting options from the ribbon. All you have to do is click the drop-down menu above the icons we just looked at.

(Yeah, guess who Microsoft loves more.)

These options are pretty lame. The only one I use on occasion is Fraction. When you see the flexibility you have with the custom number formatting, you’ll snub your nose at these bourgeois offerings.

Custom Number Formatting Options

Okay, this is where it starts to get fun. At the risk of sounding cliche, your options are nearly endless once you learn how to rock the Custom option.

Pro Tip: To open formatting options, just select the cell(s) you want to format and press Ctrl-1 (Mac: Command-1). This actually works for anything in Excel: charts elements, images, etc.

Date Formatting

Excel gives you quite a few options to choose from under Number > Date in the Format Cells dialog (which, again, you get to by pressing Ctrl-1 or Command-1 on the Mac). But I’m fond of the format that looks like Aug 13 (no year), which Excel doesn’t offer. No worries. Following a few simple principles, you can construct your own formatting options.

We’ll use August 3, 2012 in our examples below:

m: 8

mm: 08

mmm: Aug

mmmm: August

d: 3

dd: 03

ddd: Fri (because it fell on a Friday)

dddd: Friday

yy: 12

yyyy: 2012

So here are some examples of how you can show Aug 3, 2012:

Aug 3, 2012: mmm d, eye

Friday, August 3, 2012: dddd, mmmm d, yyyy

Fri. 08.03.12: ddd. mm.dd.yy

Formatting Positive & Negative Numbers

I’m always looking for new ways to make data pop when I have to use tables (like if there’s too much data to shoehorn into a chart). A great example of this is webmaster tools data.

If you run a report like the Search Queries report from Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) — by navigating to Traffic > Search Queries — and click the “With Change” option, as shown below, you’ll have a sea of positive and negative numbers in your export.

Click for larger image.

Sure, in the GWT interface they’re all colorful, but once you get them into Excel, they transform into the ugly duckling of data, and nothing stands out. But Excel gives you the option to dictate formatting for positive, negative numbers, and even 0.

To format these numbers, you just need to remember to follow this format: formatting for positive number; formatting for negative number; formatting for 0.

To use colors, Excel has a handful built in:

[BLACK]

[GREEN]

[RED]

[BLUE]

[CYAN]

[MAGENTA]

[WHITE]

[YELLOW]

Note: These aren’t case sensitive.

If you’re a diva and those options are too constricting, Excel offers 56 colors in the form of [color X]. I actually find the [green] option too light, so I use [color 10] instead. You can find the full spectrum of colors in the helpful chart on this site.

We’ll experiment with a GWT Search Queries report from the SEER Interactive site (the agency I work for). Here’s a sample of a column that has positive and negative numbers:

To format these, the steps are simple:

Step 1: Select the column you want to format.

Step 2: Pull up the Format Cells dialog and navigate to Number > Custom.

Step 3: In the Type field enter the following formula (of sorts):

This just tells Excel, in addition to the colors, make the numbers percentages with no decimals. If you want one decimal place, just add it to the number, e.g., 0.0%. Two decimals, make it two, e.g., 0.00%. If you didn’t want percent, drop the % sign, e.g., 0.0 would translate to something like 4.7. You can also add things like currency symbols.

Here’s a screenshot of what your spreadsheet will look like after applying custom formatting to a Search Queries report:

Click for larger image.

One more thing I’ll say about formatting numbers with color is you can use conditional formatting to format positive and negative numbers, but you shouldn’t. Conditional formatting is ultra cool, and I’ll be covering it in my next post. But it’s a processor hog.

So the litmus test I follow — to keep my spreadsheets as light and agile as possible — is if it’s a static number, I use number formatting. However, if it’s formatting is conditional on another factor, I use conditional formatting.

Okay, let’s try that again in plain English …

Let’s say you run a rank report from your fave tool, and you want the current rank to be red if the keyword has fallen in rankings and green if it’s moved up.

Since the color of the current rank is conditional on the rank of the previous day, week, or month (most importantly, a value from another column), you would need to use conditional formatting. In the case of the webmaster data, all of the values are static, so we were able to use custom number formatting.

Adding Text To Number Formatting (Yes, It’s Still actually A Number)

Let’s say you don’t want negative signs, parentheses, or colors. Instead, you want positive numbers to append “Profit” to a currency value, “Loss” to a negative currency value, and “Break Even” (with no number) if it’s 0.

Your formula would look like this:

$0″ Profit”;$0″ Loss”;”Break Even”

Note: You have to include a space inside the quotes, or it’ll look like $4583Loss. No grinding on the dance floor please.

If you look at the formula bar, you can see Excel sees it as a number value, not text. Another clue that it’s a number is it’s right-aligned. Text is always left-aligned in Excel.

Condition-Based Formatting

Square brackets aren’t just useful for formatting positive and negative numbers; they can also be used to format conditions. We’re also going to use another handy function Excel offers. You can use leaders, just like you can do in Microsoft Word, by setting a character to repeat. It’s easier to see it in action and then explain it.

So let’s say we want to write a formula that specifies that for numbers less than 1000, we want the word “Low” to be left-aligned, with the number right-aligned; for numbers greater than 2000, we want the word “High” to be left-aligned, with the number right-aligned; and numbers in between to say “Medium” with the number right-aligned.

Here’s what the formula would look like:

Click for larger image.

The last condition basically says, “And for everything else, left-align the word ‘Middle’, por favor.”

And here’s what it would look like when you’re finished:

And how did we get those extra spaces? Easy. Just throw an asterisk into your formula; then whatever character you put after it (in this case a space) will be repeated to fill up the cell. If we had put a period after it, it would have filled the space with periods.

~~~

Even though I’m not a big fan of tabular data, there are quite a few things you can do to give your data a makeover and make it actionable, even within the confines of a table. Keep in mind (as you learned in the table formatting post) you can sort and filter by color once you apply any kind of color formatting to your data.

So if you wanted to see all query terms that moved up in rankings in your GWT Search Queries report before those that fell, you can sort by putting the green numbers at the top, then the red, then the black.

To learn even more advanced uses of custom number formatting, check out this custom number formatting guide on the Microsoft site.