How to Find 404 Errors in Google Analytics

A 404 "Page Not Found" error can feel like hitting a brick wall for your website visitors, stopping their journey cold. Finding and fixing these digital dead ends is critical for keeping users engaged and protecting your SEO rankings. This guide will walk you through exactly how to locate these broken links using both Universal Analytics and the newer Google Analytics 4, and what to do once you've found them.

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What is a 404 Error, and Why Is It a Big Deal?

A 404 error is the standard HTTP response code your web server sends when it can't find the page a user is trying to access. In plain English, it means someone clicked a link or typed an address for a page that doesn't exist on your site. This could be due to a deleted page, a typo in a URL, or a broken link from another website.

While an occasional 404 isn't a catastrophe, a pattern of them can cause serious issues:

• Poor User Experience: Nothing frustrates a user more than landing on an error page. It breaks their trust and often causes them to leave your site entirely (this is known as a "bounce").
• Lost Conversions and Revenue: If a broken link points to a key product page or a lead generation form, you're directly losing sales or leads every time someone hits that error.
• Wasted Crawl Budget: Search engine bots, like Googlebot, have a limited amount of time they'll spend crawling your site. If they continuously run into 404 errors, they are wasting precious time that could be spent indexing your important, live pages.

How to Find 404 Errors in Universal Analytics (GA3)

Even though Universal Analytics (UA) has been phased out, your historical data is still valuable. If you need to analyze 404 errors that occurred before the switch to GA4, you can find them using a simple report based on your 404 page's title.

Step 1: Identify Your 404 Page's Title

First, you need to know what your website calls its error page. To do this, simply go to your website and type in a fake URL that you know doesn't exist (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com/gibberish).

When the error page loads, look at the text in the browser tab. This is the page title. It's often "Page not found," "404 Error," or something similar. Make a note of this exact title.

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Step 2: Create a Report in Universal Analytics

Now, log into your Universal Analytics account and follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages on the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Set your desired date range in the top right corner. A wider range like the last 90 days is usually best for catching recurring issues.
3. Just above the data table, click on Page Title as the Primary Dimension. The report will reload, showing all your pages listed by their title.
4. In the search box just below the graph, type in the exact page title you found in Step 1 and hit enter.

You will now see a filtered list showing only your 404 error page, revealing how many times it has been viewed. This tells you the scale of the problem, but not the cause.

Step 3: Uncover the Broken URLs

To find out which specific links are broken, you need to add a secondary dimension to your report:

1. Click the Secondary Dimension dropdown button.
2. Type "Page Path" into the search box and select it from the list.

The report will now show you a two-column view. The "Page Title" column will show your 404 page, and the "Page Path" column will list all the specific broken URLs that triggered that error. Sort by the "Pageviews" column to prioritize fixing the links that are getting the most traffic.

How to Find 404 Errors in Google Analytics 4

In Google Analytics 4, the process is slightly different because its data model is built around events rather than pageviews. The most reliable method involves setting up a custom event to track 404 errors, which gives you much cleaner data to work with.

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The Best Method: Create a Custom 404 Event with Google Tag Manager

This approach uses Google Tag Manager (GTM) to tell GA4 every time a user lands on your 404 page. It takes a few minutes to set up, but it's the gold standard for accurate 404 tracking.

Part 1: Setting up in Google Tag Manager (GTM)

First, log into your GTM account connected to your website.

1. Create a Custom Trigger:

• Go to the "Triggers" section and click "New."
• Give your trigger a name, like "404 Page View Trigger."
• Under "Trigger Configuration," choose "Page View."
• Select "Some Page Views."
• Set the trigger to fire when Page Title contains (your 404 page title, e.g., "Page not found"). If you have a more specific element, like an H1 tag with "Error 404", you can build a more precise trigger using CSS Selectors, but Page Title works for most sites.
• Click "Save."

2. Create the GA4 Event Tag:

• Go to the "Tags" section and click "New."
• Name your tag, something like "GA4 Event - 404 Error."
• Under "Tag Configuration," select "Google Analytics" and then "GA4 Event."
• Select your main GA4 Configuration Tag from the dropdown.
• For the "Event Name," enter a clear name like error_404. This is the name you'll see in GA4 reports.
• Under "Event Parameters," click "Add Row." We need to capture the broken URL itself:
• Under "Triggering," select the "404 Page View Trigger" you just created.
• Click "Save." Then, click "Submit" and "Publish" in the top right to make your changes live.

Part 2: Finding Your 404 Report in GA4

Once you've published your GTM container, new 404 errors will be recorded as error_404 events in GA4. After waiting about 24-48 hours for data to collect, you can build a report.

1. Register Your Custom Dimension:

For GA4 to understand the broken_page_path parameter we created, you need to register it.

• In GA4, go to Admin (the gear icon in the bottom left).
• Under the "Property" column, click Custom definitions.
• Click the "Create custom dimensions" button.
• Fill in the fields:
• Click "Save."

2. Build Your Report in "Explore":

The "Explore" section is the most powerful place to analyze custom data in GA4.

• In the left-hand navigation, click Explore and select "Blank report."
• Under the "Variables" column, click the "+" next to "Dimensions." Search for and import "Event name" and your new custom dimension "Broken Page Path."
• Next, under "Variables," click the "+" next to "Metrics." Search for and import "Event count."
• In the "Tab Settings" column, drag "Broken Page Path" over to the "Rows" area.
• Drag "Event count" over to the "Values" area.
• Finally, drag "Event name" to the "Filters" area at the bottom. Set the filter to exactly matches error_404.

You now have a clean, dedicated report showing a list of every broken URL and a count of how many times each one has been accessed. You can name and save this report for easy access later.

You Found the 404s. What's Next?

Identifying the broken links is just the first step. The real value comes from fixing them. Here's a simple framework for taking action:

1. Prioritize Your List

Sort your report by "Event count" or "Pageviews" in descending order. The URLs at the top of the list are causing the most frequent problems and should be fixed first. A 404 hit once a month is low priority, a 404 hit 100 times a day is an emergency.

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2. Investigate and Diagnose

For each high-priority URL, figure out the cause:

• Internal Broken Link: Did an old blog post link to a page you later deleted? You can add "Page referrer" as a secondary dimension in your report to see where the traffic is coming from. If the referrer is your own site, go to that page and update the outbound link.
• External Broken Link: Is another website sending you traffic to a nonexistent page? This is a great opportunity to reclaim that "link juice."
• Typo or Old URL: Sometimes users mistype URLs or bookmark an old page that no longer exists.

3. Implement the Fix

Your primary tool for fixing 404s is the 301 redirect. A 301 redirect permanently sends any user (and search engine bot) who requests the old, broken URL to a new, relevant, live page. For example, if you see lots of hits for /contactus, you should create a 301 redirect to your actual contact page at /contact-us.

How you set up redirects depends on your platform. If you use WordPress, plugins like RankMath or Redirection make it incredibly simple. If not, you may need to edit your site's .htaccess file or use a feature within your hosting provider's control panel.

Final Thoughts

Staying on top of 404 errors is a fundamental part of good website maintenance. By regularly using Google Analytics to find and fix broken links, you directly improve your user experience, retain valuable traffic, and signal to search engines that your site is well-maintained and authoritative.

Instead of manually building these reports every month, we built Graphed to streamline this entire process. After a one-click connection to your Google Analytics account, you can simply ask, "show me my top 10 most common 404 errors this month," and instantly get the list without having to set up custom events, register dimensions, or navigate complex reports. We turn hours of tedious analysis into a quick, conversational task so you can spend less time hunting for problems and more time fixing them.