Google Analytics: Difference between Core Reporting API, Unsampled Report API and GA reporting API

Question

I am new to Google Analytics and trying to learn about it.

Ultimate goal - I have some user activity data that is being sent to GA. I would like to extract this data onto a Hadoop cluster.

While looking at the GA website, I came across the Core Reporting API, Unsampled report API and GA reporting API. I could not understand the difference between each of these APIs in terms of how they work, what kind of data they return.

Any explanation on this would really help me to identify the most relevant API to use for my case.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You sounds like you should start with the latest Core Reporting API v3

You may need the Management API v3 for examining the accounts and meta data.

The others you probably don't need: the Unsampled report API is for requests to a Google Analytics Premium account, the Provisioning API is if you need to create accounts and the RealTime and MultiChannel Funnel APIs are for those reports as found in the reporting interface, whilst the Cost Upload allows you to upload data that you don't get from reporting, such as cost data from paid search campaigns

In general, I would start with the Management API and go through the authentication process (often the hardest part) then use the profile ID you have from there to get Reporting done. Or consider short cuts such as using the javascript Embed API or GA Super Proxy , that have done a lot of the hard work for you.