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A Sankey diagram is a visualization used to depict a flow from one set of values to another. The things being connected are called nodes and the connections are called links.
As each flow has a varying height depending on its quantity, analysts can easily determine the most prominent contributions. This type of segmentation analysis makes it easy to draw conclusions from data.
Many traditional tools for path analysis can be misleading or downright confusing, and so analyzing your data can be a frustrating process. With a Sankey graph, researchers and data analysts can quickly find insights and will find it easier to present their findings to business leadership.
Once you know how to use these diagrams, you will be much better at visualizing the flow of your data. We have already told you the definition of Sankey Graph. In this guide, you will learn the following:
Definition: Sankey Diagrams are charts best suited for visualizing the flow of material, energy, cost breakdowns, or other measurable resources.
This diagram draws the reader’s attention to the largest flows, consumers, the main losses, etc. And it uses color strategically to highlight the key insights of interest to the data story.
Sankey Charts use links with width proportional to the flow of the variable. So if a flow is twice as wide, it represents double the variable, which can be energy, cost breakdown, or material flow.
Each node appears once and is connected to other nodes by flows. Sankey charts are widely used for the following:
While the Sankey graph is attributed to Irish Captain, Matthew Sankey, an earlier version has arguably achieved more acclaim. In 1869, Charles Minard created a flow map to analyze Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812. This was almost 30 years before Sankey’s first diagram came to light in 1898, which suggests the possibility that Minard’s map may have been an inspiration for Matthew Sankey.
Regardless of who did it first, modern researchers and analysts in 2023, have discovered that this form of visualization is a useful tool in all stages of data analysis.
There are two main components of a Sankey flow diagram.
The nodes in this type of flow diagram are essentially like a bar in a classic bar chart. The height of the bar represents the value.
The link is the connection between two nodes. This indicates the flow. In the figure below, you can see how the link color matches the node color.
This system is similar to an alluvial diagram, although the latter typically visualizes change over time, rather than depicting changes in several different variables.
If you really want to get an idea about the Sankey flow diagram in 2023, you should give a look at the following examples.
The following diagram (Sankey graph) shows the flow of energy up to 6 levels. The Sankey chart made it easy for everyone to understand the complex flow of energy just in a few clicks. Similar to energy flow you can use Sankey visualization as a cash flow diagram too.
In the following visualization, we are using Sankey Chart to show the Immigration Flow for the year 2019.
Using a Sankey flow diagram for PPC advertising is one of the better ways to visualize the customer journey, as the segmentation analysis allows you to quickly find insights on which keywords are driving traffic, and also where that traffic is coming from.
In this visualization we’re showing three dimensions and one metric as follows:
There are so many charts out there you can use to visualize your data. However, not all of them are suited in visualizing highly complex data, such as energy flow.
This is where Sankey Diagram comes in.
This chart visualizes complex processes, with a particular focus on single or multiple variables you intend to highlight. We recommend this chart if your team is about to make critical decisions about energy, time, or money.
Why?
Sankey chart supports multiple viewing levels. Yes, you read that right.
Essentially, your audience can get an all-around view of the critical insights you’re communicating. Furthermore, you can predetermine the depth of insights you intend to pass through.
An interesting fact about the Sankey flow Diagram is that they make dominant contributors or consumers stand out. Your audience will hardly struggle to read and understand the chart.
Data visualization positively affects an organization’s decision-making process with interactive Sankey representations of data. You can now recognize patterns of flow of data more quickly with this chart.
Going from left to right, the data is laid out in sequence in Sankey graph. First, a match happens between a search-query and a keyword, followed by an impression (or not), which happens on a specific device. The visualization is bidirectional, which means you can “read” the chart from left to right, or right to left.
The metric is impressions.
Google Ads reports Impressions as a percentage. The number in the brackets is a calculated value, which is the actual number of impressions.
In the middle is the impressions dimension. The impression share is 73.7%, which means this campaign missed out on 26.3% of the “opportunity”. The campaign manager can take steps to capture the remaining 26.3%.
In the current digital landscape, data analytics is an integral component in marketing success. But collecting the data isn’t enough on its own — you need to be able to analyze it to produce actionable takeaways.
Consider the data below:
There are a lot of better ways to visualize tabular data. By using a Sankey flow diagram, marketers, researchers and data analysts can perform a much easier analysis, forming a strong basis for smarter decisions.
Here are some great benefits of using Sankey Visualization:
The minimum requirements to create a Sankey flow diagram aren’t much at all. You just need:
This type of path analysis clearly shows how different values transition from one category set to another. In advertising, knowing where your traffic is coming from is extremely useful information.
The ability of a Sankey chart to visualize user flows from one dimension to the next is very powerful. CEOs and CMOs will be able to get a good overview of how their ads are performing without having to spend a long time trawling through data.
Many users of Google Analytics are already familiar with the concept of a Sankey diagram. However, before now, using this type of segmentation analysis in PPC advertising simply wasn’t possible.
PPCexpo is the first company to make it possible to create Sankey Plot easily for every kind of data, allowing users to visualize the large data and quickly find insights through their visualization library, ChartExpo.
Impressions percentages are not additive, and if you try adding them, you will end up with values greater than 100%.
Let’s look at the match types, where we have 85.4% exact match and 47.0% broad match. Adding them will exceed 100%, and that’s before you even include the other match types.
The reason for this is that each percentage is independent of the other values in that category.
What that means is that out of all the exact match keywords in your ad campaign, 85.4% matched the user’s search queries. Similarly, out of all the broad match keywords in your campaign, 47% of them matched the search queries.
On the right-hand side, the percentages for the devices are also independent of each other.
Having ‘63.7% on Desktop’ means that out of all the possible impressions you could have got on ‘Desktop’, your keywords matched a search query and earned an impression 63.7% of the time.
The Sankey chart is a great tool to show the flow in the system, such as visualizing the customer journey in marketing, or energy or material flow, but it is important to limit your analysis to single sessions. If you overload the chart with too much data, it can quickly become unreadable.
In 2023, by focusing on a single ad, you can perform analysis to discover where your traffic is coming from, and which keywords and match types are working best for your campaign.
Customer journey is the next big thing. If you can measure it well, you can optimize it much better. Omnichannel customer journey would help brands to seamlessly approach audiences on different channels with personalized brand messaging and to create a unified customer experience across channels.
History. Sankey diagrams are named after Irish Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey, who used this type of diagram in 1898 in a classic figure showing the energy efficiency of a steam engine.
A Sankey diagram is used for the visualization of material, cost, or energy flows. They show energy or mass flows with arrows proportional to the flow quantity. When you show the flow of Energy using Sankey Chart, it is called Energy Flow Diagram. Using Sankey diagrams you communicate your data effectively and get your message across: Whether it is to external stakeholders or within your project team.
In a Sankey diagram with a node, the nodes in this type of flow diagram are essentially like a bar in a classic bar chart. The height of the bar represents the value. The link is the connection between two nodes. This indicates the flow. In the figure below, you can see how the link color matches the node color.
Sankey Diagrams are named after Irish Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey, who used them in 1898 to visualize the energy efficiency of a steam engine.
The original charts displayed just one type of flow (e.g., steam). Besides, they used colors for different types of flows to express additional variables.
A Sankey diagram is a visual representation of flows in a system. Having data in tabular form is much harder to understand. Mapping the data into proper visualization gives you real ease to find the insights in a better way. This guide taught you about the Sankey graph. You can try the same visualization with this library on your own data and take your analysis to the next level.
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