“As an analyst, marketer or SEO specialist, you probably have a few data reports that you’re used to seeing in Google Analytics. Maybe you’ve bookmarked them or memorized the three or four clicks it takes to get the right report from Universal Analytics . Now that it’s about to become Google’s default analytics tool, let’s take a look at how to create three common and SEO-friendly reports in Google Analytics 4,” advises digital marketing agency FCR Digital expert Mārtiņš Tirzītis.
1. Traffic acquisition overview
This is a quick and easy operation – with just one click in the GA4 interface, you will get a flow mining report or a session mining report (both user and session mining is available in GA4).
It allows you to quickly analyze the different channels that bring traffic to your website.
In the reporting UI, you’ll find this report under Lifecycle > Acquisition > Stream Acquisition.
Google Analytics 4 Stream Acquisition Overview.
Note that this report initially defaults to session default channel grouping as the main dimension. However, you can change it to a different traffic acquisition view if you want.
For example, you can select Session Source/Media, which was the default view in UA Navigation.
Changing the Primary Dimension in the Google Analytics 4 Flow Acquisition Report.
This report can also be broken down by additional dimensions, including custom dimensions.
Let’s say you’re collecting custom dimensions for your blog, such as article title, article tag, article date, etc. This enables the analysis of article performance by channel.
Adding an extra dimension to the Google Analytics 4 traffic acquisition report.
Finally, you can use the filter box above the table if you want to filter this report only for organic search as a channel.
Note that the filter box currently references both the primary and secondary dimensions. Unlike UA, there is no option (yet) to filter by a single dimension in a table.
Table Filters in Google Analytics 4 Traffic Acquisition Report.