A Guide to Google Analytics 4 Reports

Have you ever wondered how well your website, portal or intranet is truly performing?

Whether you're managing an external website, a customer portal, or an internal intranet, understanding your audience's behaviour is key to optimising your content and enhancing user experience.

Google Analytics is often associated with tracking external websites, but its power extends far beyond that. It’s a versatile tool that can provide deep insights into any digital platform, allowing you to make data-driven decisions that benefit both internal and external audiences alike.

If you would like information on settings up Google Analytics 4, please read this blog post first.

Overview

When you first log into Analytics, you will be shown this view. You can click on the left-hand panel to switch between reports.

The default reports shown are:

• Reports snapshot. Overview or summary of key reports and user data
• Realtime. This lets you monitor activity on your app or site as it happens
• Life cycle (aka life cycle collection). These are default reports that tell you how users enter the conversion funnel and how they behave once they’re in the funnel. It include these topics:
  
  • Acquisition: how you acquire traffic to your site or app
  • Engagement: user engagement by events, pages, and screens
  • Monetisation: revenue by items, promotions, and coupons
  • Retention: retention by new and returning users, cohorts, and lifetime value
• User (aka user collection). These are default reports that includes these topics:
  
  • Demographics: categorises your users by age, location, interests, and more
  • Tech: user adoption of app releases and the technologies used to engage your content

Note: An administrator can customise the reports and report navigation to fit your objectives.

Google Analytics Dimensions and Metrics

Every report in Analytics is made up of dimensions and metrics.

This report above ‘Acquisition’ > ‘User Acquisition’ helps you understand how users find your site i.e. what medium they came from such as organic search or email.

For each medium, there is data on:

• Dimensions. These are attributes of your data. In this scenario, the medium e.g. (none) and organic are the dimensions.
• Metrics. These are quantitative measurements. In this scenario, ‘New users’ and Engaged sessions’ are the metrics.
• Values. This is your actual data. Metrics are always expressed by numbers (number values, %, $, time), while dimensions are expressed by non-numerical values. In this scenario ‘organic’ is a dimension value, while ‘28,368’ is the metric value for ‘New users’.

In most Analytics reports, you can change the dimension and/or add a secondary dimension.

1. Click on the plus sign

2. Choose a secondary dimension

3. A secondary dimension will now appear next to the primary dimension. In this example, you can see that organic searches by users who use Windows operating systems were most likely to visit your website.

Google Analytics Terminology 

GA4 has a lot of its own terminology that you may not be familiar with. In many cases, you can simply hover over the term and a definition of the term will appear.

Source

The origin of your traffic, such as a search engine (for example, google) or a domain (example.com).

Medium

The general category of the source, for example, organic search (organic), cost-per-click paid search (CPC), web referral (referral).

Source/Medium

Source/Medium is a dimension that combines the dimensions Source and Medium. Examples of Source/Medium include google/organic, example.com/referral, and newsletter9-2014/email.

Session

A session initiates when a user either:

• Opens your app in the foreground
• Views a page on your website and no session is currently active (e.g. their previous session has timed out)

By default, a session ends (times out) after 30 minutes of user inactivity. There is no limit to how long a session can last. A person who uses the site throughout the day would normally have multiple sessions.

Engaged Sessions

An engaged session is a session that either:

• lasts 10 seconds or longer
• had 1 or more conversion events
• had 2 or more page views

Traffic

Traffic dimensions help you understand how users arrive on your website or mobile app, whether that's from an advertising campaign, referral link, search engine, or another method.

GA4 groups traffic dimensions into the following scopes.

• User-scoped dimensions
  User-scoped dimensions are dimensions about how you first acquire users on your site or app. Because user-scoped dimensions are about how you first acquire users, the dimensions don't change when users return to your site or app. Analytics uses the words "First user" for user-scoped dimensions, as in "First user source".
• Session-scoped dimensions
  Session-scoped dimensions are dimensions about what lead a user to start a new session on your site or app. Session-scoped dimensions include new sessions from new and returning users. Analytics includes the word "Session" for session-scoped dimensions, as in "Session source".
• Event-scoped dimensions
  Event-scoped dimensions are dimensions about what lead a user to start a new session in which they perform a conversion action, such as purchase. Analytics categorizes the source and medium for non-conversion events as "(not set)". Analytics includes only the dimension name for event-scoped dimensions, as in "Source".

User

A person who interacts with an app or site whose activities you measure with Google Analytics.

How to Use Google Analytics Reports

Realtime report

With Realtime reports, you can immediately and continuously monitor the effects that new campaigns and site changes have on your traffic:

• See whether a one-day promotion is driving traffic to your site or app
• Monitor the immediate effects on traffic from a blog/social network post or tweet
• Monitor whether new and changed content on your site is affecting traffic
• Verify that the tracking code is working on your site or app 

Acquisition Reports

The Acquisition report helps you understand how users find your site. Acquisition covers more than just direct traffic or referrals. For example, you can measure when users:

• arrive at your site via organic search
• click through from a social media post or advertisement
• visit your site directly by typing in the URL
• come through referral links from other websites

You can use channels, sources, and mediums to track each entry point to your digital platform.

Acquisition Overview

The Acquisition Overview report provides a summary of how users are arriving at your site. 

Some key data to review include:

• User Acquisition: Tracks where your new users are coming from, whether through organic search, direct traffic, referrals, or paid channels.
• Traffic Acquisition: Monitors the sources and mediums driving traffic to your site, helping you understand which channels are most effective.
• User Acquisition Cohorts: Groups users based on their acquisition date to analyse their behaviour over time, providing insights into long-term user engagement and retention.

User Acquisition

The User Acquisition report focuses on identifying where new users are coming from.

Key data points to consider include:

• New Users by Channel: Breaks down the number of new users by their entry point, such as organic search, direct traffic, referrals, or paid campaigns.
• Conversion Rate by Channel: Measures the percentage of new users who complete a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase, depending on their acquisition source.

Pay attention to the channels that are bringing in the most engaged new users, as these are likely to be the most valuable sources for future growth.

Traffic Acquisition

The Traffic Acquisition report delves into the sources driving all traffic to your site, not just new users.

Important metrics to review include:

• Traffic by Source/Medium: Provides a detailed view of the origins of all site visits, allowing you to see which sources are driving the most traffic.
• Bounce Rate by Source: Indicates the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page, helping you identify less effective traffic sources.

Use this report to optimise underperforming channels and invest more in sources that drive high-quality traffic.

User Acquisition Cohorts

The User Acquisition Cohorts report groups users based on when they first visited your site, allowing you to track their behaviour over time.

Key insights include:

• Retention Rate by Cohort: Shows how many users from a specific cohort return to your site after their initial visit, helping you gauge long-term engagement.
• Lifetime Value by Cohort: Estimates the long-term value of users acquired during a specific time frame, providing insights into the return on investment for different acquisition periods.

Analyse which cohorts show the highest retention rates and lifetime value to refine your acquisition strategies and improve long-term user engagement.

Engagement Reports

The Engagement topic helps you measure user interactions on your website or mobile app. Engagement includes more than page views and screen views. For example, you can measure when users:

• check an account balance
• scroll down a page slowly to indicate reading
• view product details or spend time on a product page
• watch an informational video
• You can use events to track each user interaction.

Engagement Overview

This report provides a summary of engagement across your site. Some key data to look at include:

• Average engagement time, which is the average duration of engaged sessions on your site
• Engaged sessions per user, which is the number of engaged sessions divided by the number of users
• Engagement rate overall, which is the number of engaged sessions divided by the number of sessions

User Stickiness

Scrolling down the page, you will see a ‘User stickiness’ panel.

The ratios above compare engagement over a narrower time frame with engagement over a broader time frame. Higher ratios suggest good engagement and user retention.

• Daily Active Users (DAU) / Monthly Active Users (MAU)
• Daily Active Users (DAU) / Weekly Active Users (WAU)
• Weekly Active Users (WAU) / Monthly Active Users (MAU)

The ratios consist of:

• Daily Active Users (DAU): the number of active users in the last 24 hours
• Weekly Active Users (WAU): the number of active users in the last 7 days
• Monthly Active Users (MAU): the number of active users in the last 30 days

For example, "DAU / MAU" shows the percentage of users who engaged in the last 24 hours out of the users who engaged in the last 30 days.

Events

Events are user interactions with content other than page loads (pageviews). Downloads, link clicks, form submissions, and video plays are all examples of actions you might want to analyse as Events.



An event is a user interaction with your site or app that you specify and collect data about by modifying your tag code as described in the body of this article.

You will need to add an additional tracking code to your site or app to collect Event data. You can find out how to create events here.

Conversions

Conversions are user activities that directly contribute to the success of your business. For example, submitting a form or registering for an event.

You measure these activities using conversion events.

Once you trigger conversion events, the Conversions report shows:

• the number of times users trigger each conversion event
• the number of users who trigger each conversion event
• the revenue from each conversion event

This external article can assist you in creating a conversion event.

Pages and Screens

The Pages and screens report shows the website pages and app screens that users visit and the number of users on each page or screen.

For websites, the page view is the contents of the <title> tag or the value you send with the screen_name property. For this reason, it is important that you give each page on your site a proper page title that is reflective of the pages content.

For mobile, the screen view is the class name of the UIViewController or Activity in focus.

You can select the downward arrow next to the dimension ‘Page title and screen class’ to choose another option.

In this report, you can track:

• Most popular or least popular pages by views
• The page that is generating the most type of conversion
• The page that is generating the most type of event
• Average engagement time on a page
• The page that is attracting the most or least number of users 

Retention

The Retention topic helps you understand how frequently and for how long users engage with your website or mobile app after their first visit. The topic also helps you understand how valuable users are based on the additional revenue you generate after their first visit.

New and Returning users

New users are users who visit your site or app for the first time. Analytics identifies a new user as anyone who doesn't have both a Google Analytics cookie and Client ID from your site or App Instance ID from your app. Users who already have these are returning users.

Cohorts

A cohort is a group of users who share a common characteristic identified by an Analytics dimension. For example, all users with the same Acquisition Date belong to the same cohort. In the Retention topic, new users are part of the same cohort.

User Retention by Cohort

The User retention by cohort chart shows the percentage of new users who return on their second and eighth day. For example, 100 users visit your site on September 9. Ten of the users return on September 10 and two return on September 16. The Day 1 line shows 10% on September 10, while Day 7 shows 2% on September 16.

User Engagement by Cohort

The User engagement by cohort chart shows the average engagement time of new users who return to your site or app on their second and eighth day. Analytics includes only returning users in the average engagement time.

User Retention

This chart shows the percentage of users who return each day in their first 42 days. The chart starts with 100% user retention when all users visit for the first time. It decreases from the first day as users drop off.

User Engagement

The User engagement chart shows the average engagement time of users who return in their first 42 days. Analytics includes only returning users in the average engagement time.

Lifetime Value

The Lifetime value chart illustrates the average revenue from new users over their first 120 days. You can use the chart to determine how valuable users are based on additional revenue you generate. For example, a user purchases a shirt and then purchases pants the following week. Lifetime value (LTV) includes both purchases, indicating the overall success of the acquisition.

Demographics Reports

The Demographics topic helps you classify your users by age, location, language, and gender, along with interests they express through their online browsing and purchase activities. The topic includes interactive charts, diagrams, and tables to help you visualise the data.

Google Signals

We recommend that you activate Google signals to get more holistic demographic and interest data. Google signals is data from users who sign in to Google. When Google signals data is available, Analytics associates event data it collects from users with the Google accounts of users who are signed in and consented (by enabling Ads Personalisation) to share this information.

Location Data

Analytics derives location data from users' IP addresses.

Mobile Apps

For mobile app activity only, Analytics derives demographic and interest data from the following sources:

• The Android Advertising ID. Analytics generates an identifier based on the ID that includes demographic and interest data derived from users’ app activity.
• The iOS Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Analytics generates an identifier based on the IDFA that includes demographic and interest data derived from users’ app activity.

When the Device Advertising ID is not present, Analytics cannot derive the demographic and interest data. Consequently, demographic and interest data may only be available for a subset of your users, and may not represent the overall composition of your traffic.

Data Thresholds

You must meet the Analytics data thresholds to see demographic and interest data. Google may withhold data to prevent anyone from inferring the identity of individuals based on their demographics and interests. For example, if there are fewer than N instances of Gender=male in a report, then data for the male value may be withheld.

Tech Reports

The Tech topic shows traffic by the technology your audience uses. This data is collected automatically when you connect your website or mobile app with Analytics.

How can this report be helpful for you?

Understanding the technologies your audience uses to reach and consume your content lets you fine tune current versions and plan upcoming implementations. For example, you want to be sure your site is fully functional in current browsers, but you also want to understand the extent to which users are migrating away from desktop to mobile browsers and apps.

Platforms and Device Categories

The device category is the type of device your users operate to access your content. Content accessed from:

• a mobile device, such as an Android or iPhone, is in the mobile device category
• a desktop device, such as a laptop or desktop computer, is in the desktop device category
• a tablet device, such as an iPad, is in the tablet device category

The platform is the method by which users access your content. Content accessed from:

• a web browser, for example Chrome or Safari, comes from the web platform
• an Android app, comes from the Android platform
• an iOS app, comes from the iOS platform

Users who visit your website from an Android or iOS device come from the web platform.

Platforms and Data Streams

A data stream is the source of data from an app or website. For each platform, you can collect one or more data streams. For example, a company measures traffic on two websites using one Google Analytics 4 property. Users can access the separate websites using one web platform, but each website generates its own data stream.

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Google Analytics Tips

Here are some advanced tips to help you make the most out of Google Analytics 4.

Consistency is Key

It is likely that you will need to report ‘how well your site is performing’ over time. The reports, dimensions and the metrics you choose to report on will depend on your organisation and goals.

For example, you might use the Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition report. Then use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of ‘Users’, ‘Sessions’ and ‘Average engagement time per session’ for each ‘Source/Medium’. This means you leave out ‘Engaged Sessions’, ‘Engagement Rate’ and other dimensions available in this report.

There is no issue with doing so if these are not important for you. With is important is that you continue to track the same report and the same dimensions in that report over time. This will allow also allow you to see trends.

Comparison by Dates

Another way to track site performance over time is to compare data from two different periods e.g. year-on-year changes or the 6-month period before a site redesign vs the 6-month period after a site redesign.

To do this, you simply need to:

1. Select the dates on the top right hand corner



2. Select the date range you’re interested in



3. Click on ‘Compare’ to turn the option on

4. Select the date range you want to compare your chosen date range to

5. Click ‘Apply.

Comparison by Users

By default, the reports will show you data for all users. In many scenarios, however, it can be helpful to compare segments of users. Across the different reports, Google gives you the option to do this.

Apply comparisons to evaluate subsets of your data side by side, e.g., how users 18-24 compare to your overall user base, or how two different campaigns compare to each other.

For example, you might want to compare data for your Australian users vs worldwide users, users who came from a specific source vs another source, and so on.

1. Click on ‘Add comparison’



A panel will appear on the right-hand side called ‘Build comparison’

2. Specify the dimension you want to compare



3. Specify the dimension value you’re interested in



You have the option to add up to 5 separate conditions. For example, if I wanted to track Australian users who came to my site from clicking on a marketing email I sent them, I would create 2 conditions Country = Australia AND Source = Email.

4, Click ‘Apply’

You can now see your comparison has been applied. From here you have the option to add another comparison, as well as remove ‘all users’ so you no longer see data for all users.

For example, if I wanted to compare Australian users who came to my site from clicking on a marketing email, I sent them with United States users who came to my site from clicking on a marketing email I sent them then I would create a new comparison and select Country = United States AND Source = Email.

When you view a different report, the comparison you specified is applied:

If you would like to remove a comparison, simply click on the x. If there are no comparisons left, the Google will show the default comparison ‘All users’.

Conclusion

Understanding how users find and engage with your digital platforms is crucial for optimising performance and ensuring long-term success.

Whether you're managing a website, portal, or intranet, Google Analytics offers powerful tools to track user acquisition, traffic sources, and engagement.

By regularly reviewing reports, you can gain valuable insights into your audience's behaviour, refine your strategies, and make data-driven decisions that enhance the user experience.

No matter your platform, leveraging these insights will help you attract, engage, and retain users more effectively, driving growth and achieving your organisational goals.