What Data Does Google Analytics Provide?

You know website traffic is a big deal, but an undifferentiated number of "visitors" doesn't actually tell you much. Google Analytics gives you the tools to understand not just how many people are visiting your site, but who they are, where they're coming from, and what they do once they arrive. This article will break down the essential data you can find in Google Analytics and what it all means in practical terms.

First Things First: Understanding GA4

Google has moved everyone from its classic platform (Universal Analytics or UA) to Google Analytics 4. It's a bit of a shift, but the main thing to know is that GA4 uses an "event-based" model.

Instead of tracking concepts like "sessions" and "pageviews" as separate things, GA4 treats almost every user interaction as an "event." A page view is an event, a button click is an event, and filling out a form is an event. This model gives you a more flexible and user-centric view of how people are actually interacting with your site or app.

The Main Categories of Data in Google Analytics

Most of the data you'll need lives in four primary buckets. Understanding these categories is the foundation for getting real answers from your analytics.

1. Acquisition Data: How Do People Find You?

The acquisition reports answer one of the most fundamental marketing questions: Where is my traffic coming from? Here's the key information you'll find in these reports (located under Acquisition in your GA4 dashboard).

Users & New Users: This shows you the total number of unique individuals who have visited your site and how many of them were visiting for the very first time within the selected date range. It helps you see if you're attracting a new audience or retaining an existing one.
Traffic Source / Medium: This is arguably the most important data in the Acquisition reports. It tells you exactly how people got to your site. "Source" is the specific origin (like google, facebook, or your direct newsletter), while "Medium" is the category of that source (like organic, cpc, or email).
- Organic Search: Visitors who found you by searching on Google, Bing, etc., and clicked a non-paid link. (Ex: google / organic)
- Paid Search: Visitors who clicked on one of your paid ads on a search engine. (Ex: google / cpc)
- Direct: Visitors who typed your website URL directly into their browser or used a bookmark. (Ex: direct / (none))
- Referral: Visitors who clicked a link from another website to get to yours. (Ex: anotherexample.com / referral)
- Social: Visitors from social media platforms, both organic posts and paid ads. (Ex: instagram / social)

Practical Use: If you see lots of traffic from google / organic, it's a sign your SEO efforts are paying off. If your new spring-sale / email campaign is driving a ton of visitors, you know your email marketing is working. This is critical for knowing where to double down on your marketing budget and effort.

2. Engagement Data: What Do They Do On Your Site?

Once users arrive, you need to know if they're sticking around, reading your content, and taking action. Engagement data (under the Engagement tab) tells you exactly that. It measures how people interact with your site, not just that they landed on it.

Views: This is the new "Pageview." It's a simple count of how many times any page on your website was viewed by users.
Engaged Sessions & Engagement Rate: This is the modern, more useful version of "bounce rate." A session is counted as "engaged" if the visitor does one of the following: stays on your site for longer than 10 seconds, triggers a conversion event, or views at least two pages. The Engagement Rate is simply the percentage of total sessions that were engaged. A low engagement rate is a huge red flag that your landing page isn't matching user expectations.
Average Engagement Time: This metric shows the average time your website was the main focus in a user's browser. It's a much better indicator of real engagement than the old "Average Session Duration," because it doesn't count time when your site is just open in a background tab that someone has forgotten about.
Events & Conversions: This is the engine of GA4. As mentioned, an "event" is any action a user takes. Out of the box, GA4 tracks events like page_view, session_start, first_visit, and scroll (when a user scrolls 90% of the way down a page). You can also create custom events. A "Conversion" is simply an event that you've told Google Analytics is important to your business - like a generate_lead event for a form fill or a purchase event for a sale completed. This is how you measure what matters.

Practical Use: A blog post might have a high number of Views but a low Average Engagement Time, telling you that while your headline is intriguing, the content itself isn't holding people's attention. Tracking a form_submission event as a conversion allows you to see exactly which Traffic Sources are driving the most leads for your business.

3. Monetization Data: How Much Revenue Are You Generating?

For any site selling products or services, the Monetization reports are where you connect your traffic and engagement data directly to business results. Note that this requires setting up e-commerce tracking on your site - the data doesn't appear by magic.

Total Revenue: The total amount of money generated from product sales, in-app purchases, or subscriptions on your site.
Total Purchasers: The number of unique users who made a purchase.
Views-to-purchase rate: A specific metric that shows you the percentage of users who viewed a product and then subsequently purchased it. It's useful for finding which of your product pages are most compelling.
Item Revenue: This data shows you the revenue generated broken down by individual product.

Practical Use: You can identify your most popular and profitable products. More importantly, when paired with Acquisition data, you can see which marketing channels (like Facebook Ads vs. Google Search) are bringing in the highest-value customers.

4. User Data: Who Are Your Visitors?

Knowing your audience is everything. The User Attribute reports in Google Analytics help you build a clear picture of who your visitors actually are. This data is aggregated and anonymized to respect user privacy.

Demographics Details: This includes data on your visitors such as Country, City, Gender, Age, and Language. You can also get information on user interests (e.g., "Shoppers,” “Technology/Technophiles") if you enable Google Signals. This can be great for persona building and ad targeting. (Note: You may see "(not set)" or limited data here due to privacy thresholds if you have low traffic.)
Tech Details: This data provides information about the technology your visitors use to access your site. The key metrics found here are:
- Device Category: See the breakdown between desktop, mobile, and tablet users.
- Browser & Operating System: Which browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox) and platforms (Windows, iOS, Android) are most used?
- Screen Resolution: Useful for designers and developers to ensure the site looks its best for the most common screen sizes.

Practical Use: If you see that 85% of your traffic comes from mobile devices, you immediately know that optimizing your site for phones is your top priority. Learning that a surprising number of conversions come from a certain cohort or demographic may inspire a whole new tailored marketing campaign direction.

Putting It All Together to Answer Real Questions

Looking at individual metrics is good, but the real power comes from combining them to answer specific questions. Instead of just pulling data, you start getting insights.

Question: "Which marketing channels are driving the most lead form submissions?"

How to find the answer:In GA4, go to Acquisition Report -> Traffic acquisition. Then add your form_submission conversion event to view results for each of the Session default channel group dimension to see exactly where your conversions originated from.

Question: "Is my new landing page effective?"

How to find the answer:Go to Engagement -> Pages and Screens. Find your landing page in the list and check its Engagement Rate and Average Engagement Time. If the engagement rate is high, you're doing a pretty good job. If your bounce rate is low, people are leaving almost immediately.

Final Thoughts

Understanding what data Google Analytics provides is the first step toward making smarter, data-informed decisions for your website. By looking regularly at your acquisition, engagement, monetization, and user data, you are able to move from a state of guesswork to an act of understanding what truly works with your audience.

Pulling and merging this data - especially when combined with information from other platforms like Facebook, Shopify, or your CMS - can quickly turn hours of manual work into just a few clicks. We at Graphed have built our own seamless timeline that connects your data sources into Google Analytics. You simply use pinned lists to ask questions and build the dashboards you need in seconds, without needing complicated tooling. Give Graphed a try to see what it can do for you.