What are Interactions in Google Analytics?

If you've upgraded to Google Analytics 4, you've probably noticed a new player in your reports: the "Interactions" metric. This simple-sounding word represents a big shift in how Google measures user engagement. We'll walk you through exactly what an interaction is in GA4, how it differs from sessions and engaged sessions, and how you can use it to get a clearer picture of your website's performance.

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First, a Quick Refresher: From Pageviews to Events

To really grasp what an "interaction" is, we need to understand the fundamental change between the old Universal Analytics (UA) and the current Google Analytics 4. It’s the difference between a scrapbook and a detailed diary.

Universal Analytics was primarily based on “hits.” A hit was an interaction sent to Google’s servers, and the most common type of hit was a pageview. Everything revolved around which pages a user visited. If you wanted to track more specific actions, like a button click or a video play, you had to set up custom "events" through complex configurations in Google Tag Manager.

GA4 flipped this model on its head. Now, everything is an event. A pageview is an event. A new user visit is an event. A form submission is an event. This "event-driven" model is far more flexible and provides a much more granular view of what users are actually doing on your site, not just which pages they're looking at.

So where do interactions fit in? Put simply, an interaction is any user event that Google Analytics tracks. Every single tracked action - from a page loading to a user scrolling to the bottom of the page - is considered an interaction.

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Which Events Count as Interactions?

So, if everything is an event, which specific events count as interactions? While you can create a wide array of custom events, GA4 tracks many common and important interactions automatically through a feature called "Enhanced Measurement." Straight out of the box, GA4 is already listening for these user actions:

• Page views (event name: page_view): The classic metric. Fired every time a page loads or the browser history state is changed by the active site.
• Session starts (event name: session_start): Logs when a user begins a new session on your website or app.
• First visits (event name: first_visit): Fired the very first time a user visits your website.
• Scrolls (event name: scroll): Tracks when a user scrolls 90% of the way down a page. This is great for understanding if people are actually reading your content.
• Outbound clicks (event name: click): Records a click that leads the user away from your current domain. Useful for tracking affiliate links or links to partner sites.
• Site search (event name: view_search_results): Captures what your users are searching for in your site's search bar. Gold for understanding user intent.
• Video engagement (event names: video_start, video_progress, video_complete): Automatically tracks interactions with embedded YouTube videos on your site, including when they start, progress past certain thresholds, and finish.
• File downloads (event name: file_download): Fired when a user clicks a link for a common file type like a PDF, document, or spreadsheet.

All of these - plus any custom events you've set up, like add_to_cart or form_submit - are "interactions." Each action is a single interactive data point.

Interactions vs. Engaged Sessions vs. Sessions: What's the Difference?

This is where most of the confusion comes from. Interactions, Sessions, and Engaged Sessions sound similar, but they measure distinct aspects of user behavior. Understanding the difference is key to interpreting your data correctly.

Let's use a grocery store analogy:

• Session: This is the equivalent of a customer walking into the store. It's the entire visit from the moment they enter to the moment they leave. In Google Analytics, a session is a group of user interactions that take place within a given timeframe (by default, 30 minutes of inactivity ends the session). It’s the container for everything else.
• Interaction: This is a specific action the customer takes inside the store. They pick up an apple, read the back of a cereal box, ask the butcher a question. Each individual action (event) is an interaction. A single session can contain one, ten, or a hundred interactions.
• Engaged Session: This is a customer who actually shops in a meaningful way, not someone who just walks in and leaves immediately. An engaged session is a label GA4 gives to a "good" session. To earn this label, the session must meet at least one of these criteria:

The Bottom Line

These metrics are related but serve distinct purposes. You look at sessions to understand traffic volume, interactions to understand specific user behaviors within those sessions, and engaged sessions to quickly identify the percentage of your traffic that is actively involved with your site.

This framework also powers another important GA4 metric: Engagement Rate. This metric is simply the percentage of total sessions that were engaged sessions (Engaged Sessions ÷ Total Sessions). It’s the direct replacement for Bounce Rate and provides a much more positive and nuanced way of evaluating whether your traffic is sticking around.

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Applying This Knowledge: Using Interactions for Real Insights

Knowing the definition is one thing, using it to make better decisions is another. "Interactions per Session" is a key derived metric that tells you the average number of actions users are taking during their visit. You can find this in many standard reports, or add it to customized reports.

Here are a few ways to put the "interactions" metric to work:

1. Evaluate an "Unsuccessful" Session More Deeply

Imagine a user lands on a blog post from Google, reads the entire article, and then leaves. In an old bounce rate model, this might look like a failure. But with interactions, you can see a different story. If that visit includes page_view, session_start, and scroll events, you know the user was highly engaged with your content. They found what they needed and left satisfied. This insight is completely lost if you only look at sessions or pageviews.

2. Assess Landing Page Effectiveness

Some pages are designed for in-depth exploration, while others are quick-stops. Navigate to the Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens or Landing Page report. Add "Interactions" as a metric if it's not already there.

A B2B landing page for a complex service should have a high number of interactions per session - people scrolling to read features, clicking to see pricing, and maybe watching an explainer video. A low interaction count might signal confusing messaging or poor layout. On the other hand, a "contact us" page might have very few interactions - ideally, just one conversion event like a form submission. A high number of interactions on a contact page might mean users are confused and can’t find what they need.

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3. Inform Your Content Strategy

Look at your blog content through the lens of interactions. Seeing high scroll depth, tons of outbound clicks on source links, and video plays on certain articles tells you which topics and formats grab and hold audience attention. For example:

• An article with many file_download interactions: Users love the checklists and templates you provide. Make more of those!
• An article with high video_progress and video_complete interactions: Embedded video tutorials are working. It might be worth investing more in video content for your site.
• An article with low scroll rates: The content isn't grabbing the reader, or the introduction is weak. It might be time to revise those posts.

The "interactions" metric moves you beyond just asking "How many people came?" to asking "What did people actually do once they got here?" It transforms your analytics from a simple traffic counter into a user behavior research tool.

Final Thoughts

In a nutshell, GA4's "interactions" represent the individual events that a user triggers during their visit. This event-based model offers a powerfully detailed view of user behavior, helping you understand engagement far beyond simple pageviews and sessions. When you start to evaluate performance based on the specific actions users are taking, you unlock a clearer, more actionable layer of insight.

We know that digging through GA4 to connect all these dots can feel like a chore. That’s why we built Graphed. Instead of hunting through reports, you can ask plain-English questions like, "Which blog articles had the most interactions last month?" or "Build a dashboard showing top landing pages by engagement rate and conversion events." We connect straight to your data and build the live dashboard for you in seconds, turning hours of analysis into a simple conversation.