Question from Reddit user:
Is it possible to create the following report in Google Analytics 4:
For a given landing page, to display a chart similar to the “Pages and screens” report that shows how the traffic from each internal page to the landing page changes over time?
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
While you can’t perfectly replicate the exact visual of the “Pages and screens” report with the “previous page” dimension over time in the standard GA4 interface, you can get very close using a GA4 Exploration Report and segmenting for internal traffic.
You’ll use the Page path and screen class dimension alongside the Page referrer dimension, then apply a filter for your specific landing page path.
However, for a fully customized, scalable, and historical time-series report that displays a smooth, multi-line chart for each internal source page, the best solution is to use the Google Analytics Data API to export the raw data and visualize it in Looker Studio.
The long answer is:
Your goal is a classic reporting need for understanding user flow, and while GA4 is flexible, it still has limitations in its standard reports.
The key to solving this in the GA4 interface lies in a Path Exploration or a Free Form Exploration.
In the Free Form Exploration, you would set the Rows to the Page referrer dimension, and the Columns to the Date dimension, and the Values to a metric like Active users or Sessions.
Crucially, you would then need to add a Filter where Page path and screen class exactly matches your specific landing page path, and an additional filter to exclude external referrers to isolate only your internal traffic.
This Exploration will give you a table showing which internal pages directed traffic to your target page over time, but the native line chart visualization for this multi-dimensional data is often clunky.
For a truly professional and automated solution that gives you the visual control of a multi-line time series chart you’re looking for, you need to use the Google Analytics Data API to bypass the GA4 UI limitations.
You would configure a system to automatically pull the GA4 data, specifying the Date, Page path and screen class (filtered to your landing page), and the Page referrer as dimensions, along with your traffic metric.
This extracted data is then pushed into a visualization tool like Looker Studio via its own connector or the Looker Studio API.
This approach allows you to build a highly customized time series chart where you can set the Page referrer as the Series dimension, the Date as the X-axis, and your metric as the Y-axis.
Furthermore, setting up your entire data collection using Google Tag Manager and a server-side environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform is an excellent solution for the future because it allows you to create your own custom, non-sampling-affected dimensions like previous_page_group or internal_navigation_type which can be passed alongside every event to GA4, providing even cleaner data for your reporting needs.
By using the API to pull and Looker Studio to visualize, you get the flexibility, visual clarity, and automation that the native GA4 reports simply can’t offer for complex custom reporting needs.
About The Author
