How to Check Google Analytics Report

Checking your Google Analytics isn't just about looking at a traffic graph go up or down, it's about understanding the story behind your numbers. This guide will walk you through the essential reports inside Google Analytics 4 so you can get clear, actionable insights about your website’s performance without getting lost in the data.

First, A Quick Tour of the GA4 Dashboard

When you log into Google Analytics 4, the layout can feel a little intimidating compared to the old Universal Analytics. Don't worry. Most of the information you need is organized under a few key areas on the left-hand navigation menu.

The main section you'll be spending time in is Reports. This area gives you a comprehensive overview of your website traffic and user behavior. Think of it as your command center for understanding performance at a glance.

The "Reports Snapshot" Dashboard

The first screen you’ll see in the Reports section is your "Reports snapshot." This is your go-to page for a quick, high-level health check of your site. It’s made up of several "cards," each showing a key piece of information:

• Users and New users: Shows you how many people have visited your site in the selected time frame.
• Traffic channels: Answers the question, "Where did these people come from?"
• Conversions: Tells you how many visitors completed a goal, like filling out a form or making a purchase.
• Most viewed pages: Shows your most popular content.

Before you go any further, make sure to check the date range in the top-right corner. All the data you see in your reports reflects this timeframe. You can change it to view data for today, yesterday, the last 7 days, the last 30 days, or a custom range.

Where Is My Traffic Coming From? The Acquisition Report

One of the most fundamental questions you can ask is, "How are people finding my website?" The Acquisition reports answer this question directly. In the left menu, navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

This report breaks down your traffic into different "Session default channel groups." Let’s break down what these mean:

• Organic Search: Visitors who found your site through a search engine like Google or Bing, but not through a paid ad. This is often a measure of your SEO effectiveness.
• Direct: People who typed your website URL directly into their browser or used a bookmark. This group often includes returning visitors who already know you.
• Paid Search: Visitors who clicked on one of your paid ads on a search engine results page (e.g., Google Ads).
• Referral: Visitors who clicked a link to your site from another website (not a social media platform or search engine).
• Organic Social: People who came from a social media platform like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, but not from a paid ad.
• Display: Visitors who clicked on a display or banner ad on another website.

Key Metrics in the Acquisition Report

Inside this report, you’ll see several columns of data. Here are the most important ones to pay attention to:

• Users: The total number of unique individuals who initiated a session.
• Sessions: The total number of visits to your site. One user can have multiple sessions.
• Engaged sessions: A session that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 pageviews. This metric helps you filter out people who landed on your site and left immediately. It's a much better indicator of quality traffic than the old "Bounce Rate."
• Engagement rate: The percentage of sessions that were engaged. A higher engagement rate is generally better.
• Conversions: The number of times users completed an action you’ve defined as a goal (e.g., form_submission or purchase). This is one of the most important metrics for measuring success.

By looking at this table, you can quickly see which channels are driving the most traffic, find out which ones bring the most engaged visitors, and, most importantly, identify which channels are responsible for the most conversions.

What Are People Doing on My Site? The Engagement Report

Once you know where your visitors are coming from, the next logical question is, "What are they doing once they get here?" This is where the Engagement reports come in handy. Navigate to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.

This report is incredibly valuable because it lists all the pages on your website and shows you key metrics for each one, such as:

• Views: The total number of times a page has been viewed.
• Users: The number of unique people who viewed a particular page.
• Average engagement time: The average time your webpage was in the foreground of a user's browser. It's a great proxy for how engaging your content is.

Use this report to identify your pillar content - the pages that are getting the most traffic and keeping users engaged. You can also spot underperforming pages that might need an update or a better promotion strategy.

Understanding Events

Another useful report under the Engagement section is Events. In GA4, almost every interaction is tracked as an "event" - a page view, a scroll, a click, a form submission, a purchase. This report gives you a list of all these events and how many times they've occurred on your site. For most businesses, the important events are the ones you set up as Conversions, as they tie directly to your business goals.

Did My Marketing Efforts Lead to Sales? Monetization & Conversion Reports

For any business that sells products or generates leads online, tracking performance is essential. GA4 gives you two primary ways to do this, depending on your business model.

For E-commerce Businesses

If you run an online store and have e-commerce tracking set up, the Monetization > Ecommerce purchases report is your best friend. It gives you a breakdown of which products are selling the most, showing metrics like:

• Item views: How many times a product detail page was viewed.
• Adds to cart: How many times a product was added to a shopping cart.
• Item purchases: The total number of times the item was purchased.
• Item revenue: The total revenue generated from a specific item.

This report helps you understand your product performance at a glance, allowing you to see which items are popular and which ones might be getting overlooked.

For Lead Generation & Other Goals

If your website's goal isn't direct sales but rather lead generation (like demo requests or newsletter signups), you'll rely on the Conversions report. To see it, go to Reports > Engagement > Conversions.

This report lists all the events you've marked as a conversion and shows how many times each one has occurred. When you combine this with the Traffic acquisition report, you can directly tie your marketing channels to valuable outcomes for your business.

A Practical Example: Analyzing Blog Post Performance

Let's tie this all together with a common scenario. Say you want to figure out which of your blog posts are bringing in the most traffic from Google search.

1. Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
2. In the table, you'll see "Session default channel group" as the primary dimension. Click the small plus (+) icon next to the column heading to add a secondary dimension.
3. In the search box that appears, type "landing page" and select Landing page + query string.
4. Now, your report shows your traffic sources and the first page each person landed on during their session.
5. To narrow it down to just Google search visitors, use the search bar above the table to filter by Organic Search.

Just like that, you have a report showing you exactly which blog posts (landing pages) are your top performers for attracting new visitors from organic search. From here, you can analyze your best content and create more of what works.

Final Thoughts

Getting comfortable with Google Analytics is a process of asking questions and learning which reports hold the answers. By starting with the Acquisition and Engagement reports, you can build a solid foundation for understanding your website traffic and start making data-informed decisions to grow your audience and business.

As you can see, Google Analytics provides a ton of valuable data, but getting to the right answer often involves clicking through multiple reports, adding filters, and connecting the dots yourself. We built Graphed because we wanted to eliminate that friction. Instead of hunting through menus, you can simply connect your Google Analytics account and ask questions in plain English, like "Show me my top 10 best-performing blog posts from Google this month" or "Compare traffic from Facebook versus Google Ads." We instantly generate a report or dashboard for you, updated in real-time, giving you back hours of your week so you can focus on strategy, not manual data pulling.