Question from Reddit user:
I need to see what’s happening before conversion. But i don’t understand how.
I asked chat gpt ofc but it gives instructions about GA4 that don’t work. So after a whole day of trying I give up. I need real advice from real people. 🙂
So I run Google Ads and I track 2 conversions: demo requests and contact us requests. Now I want to understand what’s happening between an ad click and converting. Do they visits other pages after landing page, what pages.
Things like that. Is it possible? And HOW? haha Can I find it in GA4, do I need to set up additional events or extra google tags? Help me pleeeeease
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
Absolutely, you can track the user path before a conversion in GA4, and the primary way to do this is by using the Explorations section, specifically the Path exploration report, which doesn’t require extra tags.
This report visualizes the page_title or page_location events that occur between a user’s initial interaction and their final conversion events, like demo_request or contact_us.
For a more powerful, permanent solution, you can combine the Google Analytics Data API with the Google Ads API and a visualization tool like Looker Studio to permanently link the exact ad click details with the subsequent, full session path data.
The long answer is:
It’s completely understandable to feel lost, as the process for finding this data changed significantly from the old Universal Analytics.
However, the good news is that GA4 automatically collects the raw event data, which is exactly what you need.
You don’t need to set up additional events for simple page views, because GA4’s Enhanced measurement feature already tracks the page_view and session_start events, and the page_location parameter within those events records the URL.
The Path exploration report in GA4 is the built-in tool designed to solve your exact problem.
You start the exploration with a step that filters for traffic that came from your Google Ads, which is automatically linked to GA4.
You can then select your session_start event, or even the first page_view event, as the starting point.
The subsequent steps will then show you the sequence of pages, using the page_title or page_location dimension, that users visited before they eventually triggered your demo_request or contact_us conversion event.
While the GA4 interface provides this basic pathing, for a truly robust, integrated, and permanent solution, you should establish a server-side data pipeline.
This involves using the Google Ads API to pull in rich data about the original ad click, like ad group, keyword, or creative ID, which is often not fully exposed in the GA4 interface.
Simultaneously, you use the Google Analytics Data API to pull in the complete, raw, event-level path data for every session.
You then join these two datasets together on a common key, such as the Google Click ID (gclid) or your own internal User ID, within a data warehouse or a server environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
Finally, you use the Looker Studio API to visualize this joined data set in a completely custom, permanent dashboard.
This approach allows you to build your own precise path exploration report where you can start the journey with the exact Ad Group Name and drill down directly to the sequence of pages visited by only the converting users, giving you the clearest possible view of the customer journey from a paid ad click to a conversion.
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