July 18, 2023

Understand How to Read GA-4 Reports

Google Analytics 4 gives you the tools to understand your traffic better so you can figure out your strengths and weaknesses. You’ll need to use reports to take a detailed look at your traffic breakdown.

However, there are several types of reports and it can be confusing to figure out the uses of each one. Hence, we’re here to help you understand the information that’s provided by Google Analytics 4 Reports.

What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics has recently received an upgrade to the 4th generation, which allows it to collect event-based data from apps and websites. Here’s some of the advantages and features of Google Analytics 4:

  • Media platform integrations help drive actions on your app and website.
  • Algorithms are used to provide suggestions for how to improve traffic.
  • Enhanced privacy controls regarding behavioral and conversion modeling, and cookies measurement.
  • Data is now event-based and not session-based.
  • Data is collected for websites and apps to improve the customer journey understanding.

What Report Shows the Percentage of Traffic That Previously Visited a Website?

To view your incoming website traffic within the Google Analytics 4 console, you’ll need to use the Channels report. There you can view the following types of incoming traffic sources:

  • Organic search: this traffic comes from search engines like Google, Edge, and Yahoo.
  • Direct: this traffic source comes when users enter your URL directly into the browser.
  • Referral: this traffic source is when users click hyperlinks on other websites to arrive at your one.
  • Social: incoming traffic from popular social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.
  • Paid Search: this refers to traffic from pay-per-click ads on search engines like Google.
  • Affiliates: this refers to affiliate traffic that can be tracked by using affiliate URLs.
  • Display: this type of traffic results from users clicking on display ads.
  • (Other): any other traffic source that’s not mentioned on this list or Google Analytics cannot determine the origin.

Therefore, you can use the Channels reports feature to view the different types of automated traffic that’s sent by our service here at Spark Traffic. For each traffic source, you can view the number of users, sessions, revenue, and more. Also, you can filter the report by date range to match your objectives.

Finally, you can sort the traffic from ascending to descending to figure out the top sources at a glance. Want to learn more about Google Analytics 4 reports? Then check out my guide on which report in Google Analytics reveals traffic sources.

Which Default Traffic Source Dimensions Does Google Analytics 4 Report For Each Website Visitor?

The Acquisition report within Google Analytics allows users to understand where website visitors are coming from. Also, they report differences between new and returning visitors. This might be the first two dimensions you want to separate your report by. Also, there’s other dimensions, which include:

  • Average time on page: this is the average amount of time users spend on one of your webpages before moving to another or clicking back.
  • Bounce rate: this is expressed as a percentage and refers to the number of users that click back after viewing only one page. Note that with the automated traffic solutions at Spark Traffic you can specify the desired bounce rate.
  • Exit rate: the percentage of users that end the season of the page in question.
  • Pageviews per session: this is the number of web pages the average visitor views.

Difference between UA and GA: in UA you only had basic information available via the Channels report, whereas with GA4 the dimensions of a channel is measured against Users and Sessions. This provides more detail about the source and quality of your traffic.

What Report Shows Which Web Pages Get the Most Traffic and Highest Engagement?

The All Pages Report is what you’ll need to use for viewing what web pages get the most traffic and highest engagement. Here a summary of the information that’s provided by the All Pages Report:

  • Bounce rate
  • Pages most people are landing on
  • Pages most people are leaving from
  • Pages that receive the most views

Therefore, you can find the highest performing pages and make them more central to your website. Additionally, you can find the web pages that are underperforming and optimize them to increase user engagement statistics.

What Is Not Considered a “Source” in Google Analytics by Default?

Email traffic is not considered a “source” in Google Analytics by default. That’s because Google Analytics classes email as a medium. In comparison, a source is the origin of web traffic and it can include direct traffic, search, referral, and more.

Therefore, when examining your Google Analytics data, it’s important to differentiate between the source and medium traffic sources.

Which Kinds of Hits Does Google Analytics 4 Track?

Hits on Google Analytics are the pieces of information the platform uses to generate data. Information about each hit is sent to Google Analytics servers, and they are processed and organized.

There are different kinds of hits you should know about to better understand how Google Analytics works and read the reports.

  • Pageview hit: this type of hit occurs when users view a page on your website regardless if they’ve visited the page previously.
  • Screen view hit: this type of hit is generated when users view a screen or content within an app. Using this data, you can determine the most popular aspects of your app.
  • Event Hit: these types of hits record interactions on your web pages, which can include downloads, form submissions, playing a video, clicking a link, and more. It’s also measured separately from pageviews.
  • Social Interaction Hit: web pages can monitor user interactions with social media elements. This includes sharing social media buttons or liking a page.
  • E-commerce Hit: these hits are recorded on e-commerce websites. This could be when a buyer places an order, places products in a shopping cart or completes a purchase.
  • Exception Hit: crashes and errors are recorded with the exception hit.
  • User Timing Hits: these hits record the amount of time actions taken, which include button click durations and image or page load times.

Difference between UA and GA: in UA page views were used which was the total number of views and repeated views of the same page counted. However, with GA4, views are counted based on the number of app screens or web pages users saw.

Conclusion

To conclude, Google Analytics 4 Reports are important to learn for any website owner. That’s because it allows you to determine the performance of different web pages to find what’s working and what needs improvement.

Also, as you’ve seen in this article, there’s various reports that contribute something different. Learn how to use each one to find useful information at a glance and get free traffic from your insight.  

Not happy with the amount of traffic flowing to your website? Then check out Spark Traffic, the number 1 traffic bot website traffic generator that can supercharge the number in your Google Analytics 4 reports.  

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