How Do I Work with Google Analytics Reports?

Purpose

Think of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) as a tool that helps you see how people use your website. It tracks the bookmarks or backlinks they used to reach your site. It also analyzes user behavior once they’re there. 

To be able to access the agencies google analytics account that Iowa manages you will need to have your email address connected to your work google account. 

If you want to create a google analytics account to have Iowa manage it then  you need to use your iowa.gov email address. 

This will allow the property to be under the Iowa organization account and this help to avoid the issue of the account being lost if any individual person who created the account leaves.  

When to use Google Analytics reports

By understanding how people use your website, you can:

  • Identify broken links: Identify and fix outdated URL links leading users to 404 pages.
  • Improve website navigation: Update your navigation to help users find information more easily.
  • Understand user behavior: Understand what users are searching for and engaging with.
  • Monitoring external link traffic: You can see which external links are driving traffic to your website. 

Key elements of Google Analytics

It's important to remember to have the Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on (by Google) chrome extension added to your browsers when you are visiting your agency site. 

This helps Google Analytics so it doesn't track your internal traffic. You can be sure the report that Google Analytics is showing you is only from external user traffic.

Why you should use Google Analytics Opt-out add on example
  1. Page Title/Landing Page + Query String:
    • Page Title: This combination shows the specific page title and the URL path of the page the user visited.
    • Landing Page + Query String: This shows the exact URL a user entered or clicked on to reach a specific page, useful for pinpointing outdated or incorrect URLs users attempt to access.
  2. Views and Active Users:
    • Views: The total page views, useful for identifying popular pages and content gaps.
    • Active Users: The number of unique users who visited the page. This can help identify user engagement and interest in specific topics.

Understanding GA4 views and active users report

  • High Views, Low Active Users: This might indicate that a page is being accessed through multiple links or is being shared frequently.
  • Low Views, High Active Users: This might indicate that the page is being accessed directly through bookmarks or specific URLs.
  • High Views and High Active Users: This indicates a popular page with high user engagement.

These reports and statistics help you to find areas for improvement, such as creating missing content, updating URL redirects, or improving your website's navigation.

1

How to find User Traffic Reports

You can find the report of where your users are coming from within the "Acquisition" tab under the both the "Traffic Acquisition" section and "User Acquisition" section.

Report snapshot

The Traffic Acquisition section will show you the pageview/sessions reports while the User Acquisition section will show you the Total Users, New Users, and Returning Users reports.

Each report will show which channel this user or session comes from, which will be Organic Search traffic, Direct Traffic, Email Traffic, Referral Traffic, and Unassigned.

User acquisition example
2

How to find URL's leading users to 404 pages

Making sure you have URL redirects created for high-traffic broken backlinks or old bookmark URLs leading to 404 pages can improve your site's search ranking.

Here's how to use Google Analytics to identify these URLs:

  1. Navigate to the Pages and Screens Report:
    • Go to your Google Analytics account.
    • In the left sidebar menu, click on "Reports."
    • Google Analytics Pages and Screens Report example
    • Select "Pages and Screens" from the Engagement section.
    • Location of pages and screens report example
  2. Identify 404 Pages:
    • In the "Page title and screen name" row, search for your 404 page title (e.g., "Please accept our apologies").
    • This will show you the monthly traffic to this page.
    • Page title and screen name example
  3. Find Broken Link URLs:
    • Click the plus icon next to the "Page title and screen name" field.
    • Pages and screens path example
    • Select "Page path and screen class" to see the specific URLs that led to the 404 page.
    • Page path and screen class example

Use this information to:

  • Create Redirects: Set up redirects from the broken URLs to the correct pages.
  • Create New Content: Use these URLs to identify content gaps and create new pages.
Learn how to Create URL redirects
3

How to filter page reports by languages

If your site has the translation option available and active, you can also filter your reports by languages by using the filter option that Google Analytics has available in their Engagement Pages and Screens section.

GA4 reports

When you go to your Report tab and select Engagement, within that dropdown select Pages and Screens. It will bring you to your Pages and Screens page that shows the page title and the URL string that users are viewing.

Pages and screens example

To filter this report to exclude all pages that contain English language, you can select the "add filter +" button that is under the Pages and Screens title at the top of the page. 

Once you select "Add Filter," a sidebar window will appear. Within the "Dimensions" filed you can select or type "Language."

After you've selected "Language" as your Dimension you will now have to select the "Match Type" option. This is where you can have the report show all English language pages by selecting "contains" in the "Match Type" field.

Within the Value field that will appear next, you can enter "English." Once that is added you will select the blue "Apply" button in the bottom right side of the screen for that filter to be applied to this report.

Build filter example