Question from user:
Hi everyone. Excited to join. I have been Google Analytics, Adwords, etc. certified time and time again, but not for the past few years.
The company I work for, we have been running a cool Analytics custom ‘dashboard’ report for our clients for a few years, and of course, now they no longer work.
I’ve recreated in GA4 Reports something close, but I’m missing a few key metrics. So I wanted to ask if anyone could help me figure out how to add the following to a GA4 Report.
- Total Visits
- Total Pageviews
- Avg. Time on Page
- Visits by Traffic Type (organic, direct)
- Visits by Visitor Type (New visitor / Returning visitor)
- Organic Searches by Keyword
- Top 10 Viewed Pages
For some of these, I have a ‘similar’ metric, but it’s not exact.
I’m hoping to get very involved in this community. Thanks in advance for the help.
Answer from Nabil:
It’s understandable that you’re running into challenges migrating your custom reports to GA4 many of the metrics have changed or been replaced, which can be frustrating when you’re used to a specific view.
For the metrics you’re missing, I can help point you toward the GA4 equivalent, or explain why you might not find a direct replacement.
What was called “Total Visits” in Universal Analytics (UA) is most closely related to the “Sessions” metric in GA4.
“Total Pageviews” is simply “Views” in GA4.
The “Avg. Time on Page” metric doesn’t have a direct equivalent in the standard GA4 interface, but “Average session duration” is similar at the session level, and you can create a calculated metric in Looker Studio using the “Engagement time” metric to approximate it.
“Visits by Traffic Type” is now typically viewed using the “Session default channel group” dimension.
For “Visits by Visitor Type,” you should look at the “New users” metric and the “Returning user” dimension.
GA4 is fundamentally different in how it tracks users and engagement, moving away from the session-centric model of UA.
The big one you’re missing is “Organic Searches by Keyword” Google stopped providing most keyword data in 2011, and GA4 does not make it available.
You’ll need to rely on the Google Search Console integration for this, or use the limited keyword data that might appear in your Search Console reports.
For “Top 10 Viewed Pages,” you’ll want to use the “Page title and screen class” or “Page path and screen class” dimension with the “Views” metric in an exploration or a custom report.
Now, regarding the underlying issue of reliable, flexible reporting a powerful, professional solution for rebuilding a complex custom dashboard for clients often involves a technology stack that moves beyond the limitations of the GA4 standard reports and its native user interface.
A robust solution combines the Google Analytics Data API with Looker Studio and potentially BigQuery, all orchestrated using Google Tag Manager and possibly a server-side tagging solution like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
The GA4 Data API allows you to programmatically fetch the specific metrics and dimensions you need, offering more flexibility and control than the built-in GA4 reporting interface.
You can request precise data, including custom events or user properties, and then pipe that data directly into Looker Studio using the Looker Studio API.
This gives you the ultimate control over presentation, branding, and calculated metrics that aren’t available out of the box.
For maximum power and for historical data warehousing, integrating BigQuery is key.
GA4 provides a free export of raw event data to BigQuery, which is the most granular data you can get.
In BigQuery, you can write SQL queries to create your own custom metrics and complex segments such as a true “Avg.
Time on Page” or a very specific definition of a “returning visitor” that are simply impossible to generate in the standard GA4 interface.
Then, you connect Looker Studio to BigQuery for reporting.
Finally, Google Tag Manager is essential for ensuring your GA4 implementation is rock solid, using standard events like page_view and customizing the data layer, while a server-side solution like Stape or Google Cloud Platform with server-side GTM can drastically improve data quality and accuracy by removing client-side dependencies, like ad-blockers, and offering more control over data before it hits GA4, which is crucial for client reporting.
This approach provides the stability, data completeness, and customization necessary for a reliable, agency-level client reporting dashboard that won’t break with every GA4 update.
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