Question from Reddit user:
We are a content publisher and our team is currently migrating to GA4 and I’m keen to tap into the collective here.
One of our challenges is configuring Explorations to get insights into our content performance, similar to those we were used to getting in UA.
We’re having some trouble translating our previous reports and dashboards to the new format.
Here are some metrics we used to regularly track in UA:
Pageviews and unique pageviews by article
Time spent on page per user
User flow through the site based on landing page.Demographics and interests of users engaging with specific content.
Referral traffic including specific social media channels
Location of users that consume our content.SEO sessions
Content verticals that our content was viewed in
As with many others, I’m struggling to get to grips with the new interface.What I’m looking/hoping for are examples of how or best practices on setting up Explorations in GA4 that can help us visualise and analyse these metrics.
Even better would be instructions on how to set these Explorations up (all in one exploration if possible).
I’d love to see real-world examples of Explorations others have created for content performance monitoring, which can guide us in building our own.
Finally, any advice on transitioning from UA to GA4 and potential pitfalls to avoid when setting up content analytics in the new environment would be highly appreciated.
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
You can create a single Free Form Exploration in GA4 that covers most of your content performance needs by smartly combining dimensions and metrics, though you’ll need to use multiple tabs or duplicate the Exploration for certain flow analyses.
The core setup involves using the Page path and screen class or Page title as the primary row dimension, selecting metrics like Views (for pageviews), Users, Average engagement time (for time on page), and then adding secondary dimensions such as First user default channel grouping, Country, and Content group via nested rows or segmentation.
For user flow, you’ll need the dedicated Path Exploration technique.
The best practice for content publishers is to immediately implement a Content Grouping system to categorize your articles and to use a comprehensive custom solution like the Google Analytics Data API with Looker Studio for a true, integrated dashboard that mimics your old UA views without the limitations of the GA4 interface.
The long answer is:
The process of transitioning content reporting from UA to GA4 requires rethinking how metrics are structured, as GA4 is event-based.
Your core content analysis can be centralized in a Free Form Exploration that you can duplicate and modify.
To create this, select Page path and screen class as the primary Row dimension, which acts as your article identifier.
For metrics, use Views (which replaces pageviews), Users (a better proxy for unique pageviews by article), and Average engagement time (which replaces time spent on page per user).
To add in your other metrics like demographics, you cannot include them all in the same row as the page path due to cardinality issues; instead, you would add them as Segments.
For example, create a segment for “Users in the UK” or “Users interested in X” and apply it to the Exploration.
Alternatively, you can drag and drop dimensions like Country, Session default channel grouping, and Content group as a secondary or nested dimension below the page path in the Rows section.
You must ensure your Content Grouping is properly implemented, as this is the direct translation of the UA feature to track content verticals.
To get the user flow through the site based on the landing page, you must use the dedicated Path Exploration tool, setting your target landing page as the starting or ending point to trace the previous and next pages.
For SEO sessions, you will need to add a filter for the Session default channel grouping dimension where the value contains “Organic Search” and use this as a segment.
A major pitfall in the transition is relying on the GA4 standard reports, which often aggregate data too high for content publishers; instead, commit to using Explorations for deep dives.
The ultimate solution for a content publisher looking for the familiar dashboard feel, combining all these metrics on a single screen without sampling or interface limitations, is to leverage the Google Analytics Data API to extract all your data.
This API allows you to pull all your dimensions and metrics simultaneously and feed them directly into Looker Studio using the Looker Studio API for a fully customized, professional dashboard that auto-updates and perfectly mirrors your old UA reports.
Furthermore, integrating Google Tag Manager with a server-side environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform is an excellent solution for a content publisher because it allows you to clean up your traffic data before it even hits GA4 by filtering out known internal IP addresses for cleaner internal traffic reporting and to standardize event tracking across all your content sections, making your reporting more reliable and accurate long-term.
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