What is a Landing Page and Query String in Google Analytics 4?

If you've recently moved from Universal Analytics, you might be asking a common question: "Where did the simple landing page report go in Google Analytics 4?" You're not alone. GA4 represents a significant shift in how data is collected and organized, which means some of your old, familiar reports aren't where you'd expect them to be. This article will guide you through what a landing page is in the context of GA4, explain the critical role of query strings, and show you how to get the clean, clear data you need to measure your marketing performance.

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What Happened to the Old “Landing Page” Report in GA4?

In Universal Analytics (UA), "Landing Pages" was a standard, out-of-the-box report located under Behavior > Site Content. It was simple, intuitive, and likely a weekly go-to for many marketers and content creators. It directly showed you the first page a user "landed on" during their session.

Google Analytics 4 is built on a different model. Instead of focusing on sessions and pageviews as the primary building blocks, GA4 is event-based. Every interaction - be it a page view, a scroll, or a form submission - is an event. Because of this architectural change, Google rethought many of its standard reports.

The good news is that the concept of a landing page hasn't disappeared. The data is still there. You just need to know where to find it and how to adjust the standard reports to show you what you’re looking for.

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How to Find (and Create) a Landing Page Report in GA4

While GA4 doesn't give you a dedicated landing page report by default, you can easily create one by customizing an existing report. The most direct route is through the "Pages and screens" report.

Step-by-Step: Creating Your Landing Page Report

1. Navigate to Reports: In the left-hand navigation menu of GA4, click on Reports.
2. Go to Pages and screens: From there, go to Engagement > Pages and screens. By default, this report shows you data based on the "Page path and screen class" dimension, which lists all pages viewed, not just the first one in a session.
3. Customize the Report: In the upper-right corner of the report, look for the pencil icon labeled "Customize report" and click it.
4. Change the Primary Dimension: On the right-hand side panel, under "Report Data," click on Dimensions. You'll see "Page path and screen class" is set as the default. Click it to open the list of available dimensions.
5. Add the Landing Page Dimension: In the search box, type "landing page." You’ll find the option for "Landing page + query string." Select it and click "Apply."
6. Save Your Changes: Now your report is pivoted to show landing pages. Click the blue "Save" button. You'll have two options:

Once you save it as a new report, it will be accessible in your report library. You can even add it to your main navigation menu on the left for quick, one-click access just like in the good old days of Universal Analytics.

What's That “+ query string” Part and Why Does it Matter?

When you added the new marketing dimension, you probably noticed it wasn't just called "Landing page." It was "Landing page + query string." This distinction is incredibly important for accurate marketing analysis.

A query string is the portion of a URL that comes after a question mark (?). It's used to pass extra information to the web server that isn't part of the core page path.

Consider this common URL you might see in an ad campaign:

https://www.yourstore.com/summer-sale?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=july-promo

• The Base Page: https://www.yourstore.com/summer-sale is the actual webpage.
• The Query String: ?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=july-promo is the query string.

Query strings are made up of key-value pairs separated by ampersands (&). In our example, utm_source=facebook and utm_campaign=july-promo are variables — known as UTM parameters — that tell analytics tools where the traffic came from.

Common uses for query strings include:

• Marketing Attribution (UTM codes): Tracking the source, medium, and campaign of your traffic.
• Site Search: A URL on your blog might look like /search?q=ga4-tips.
• Filtering & Sorting: E-commerce category pages often use them to sort products, e.g., /shoes?sort=price_high_to_low.
• Tracking IDs: Click IDs from ad platforms (like gclid for Google Ads or fbclid for Facebook Ads) are added as query parameters.

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The Problem with Query Strings Messing Up Your Reports

While useful for tracking, query strings can create a major headache for reporting. Google Analytics 4 treats every unique URL, including its query string, as a separate row in your reports.

Imagine you're running a campaign for your company's summer sale page (/summer-sale) across three channels:

• From Facebook, the landing page is: /summer-sale?utm_source=facebook
• From Google Ads, it's: /summer-sale?utm_source=google&gclid=123xyz
• From your email newsletter, it's: /summer-sale?utm_source=newsletter

In your new Landing Page Report, you won’t see one consolidated entry for "/summer-sale". Instead, you'll see three (or more!) different rows. This fragments your data, making it almost impossible to answer a simple question: "How many people landed on the summer sale page and how did it perform overall?" You'd have to export the data and manually sum the numbers in a spreadsheet to get the full picture.

The Permanent Fix: How to Exclude URL Query Parameters

Instead of wrestling with fragmented data daily, you can tell GA4 which query parameters to ignore altogether. This is the cleanest, most effective way to consolidate your landing page data. By setting this up, you're instructing Google Analytics to effectively strip these parameters from the URL before it processes and stores the data.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Navigate to Admin: Click the gear icon in the bottom-left corner to go to the Admin panel.
2. Select Your Data Stream: In the "Property" column, click on Data Streams, then select your website's data stream.
3. Configure Tag Settings: Scroll down and click on Configure tag settings.
4. Adjust Settings: Under the "Settings" section, click on Show more to reveal more options.
5. Specify Unwanted Parameters: Click on Specify unwanted URL query parameters.
6. Enter the Parameters to Exclude: In the text box provided, enter all the query parameters you want GA4 to ignore. Separate each one with a comma, but do not use spaces.

A good starting list of parameters to exclude for most marketing and sales teams is:

utm_source,utm_medium,utm_campaign,utm_term,utm_content,utm_id,gclid,fbclid,msclkid,mc_cid,mc_eid

After you click "Save," GA4 will start ignoring these parameters for all future data collected. Now, traffic to /summer-sale?utm_source=facebook and /summer-sale will both be logged simply as /summer-sale in your reports, giving you a clean, aggregated view.

Important Note: This change is not retroactive. It only applies to data collected after you save the setting. Your historical data will remain split by the query strings.

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What This Clean Data Lets You Do

By creating a dedicated landing page report and cleaning up your query parameters, you can finally get back to what matters: analyzing performance. Now you can easily:

• Identify your top-performing content: See which blog posts, product pages, or feature pages are the most effective at drawing new users to your site.
• Evaluate campaign effectiveness: Determine which specific landing pages used in marketing campaigns are engaging users and leading to conversions.
• Optimize conversion funnels: Analyze the user journey starting from your main entry points to see where potential customers might be dropping off.

This clarity is essential for making informed decisions about where to invest your time, budget, and creative energy.

Final Thoughts

Understanding the difference between a raw "Landing page + query string" and a clean landing page is transformative for reporting in Google Analytics 4. Customizing your reports and, more importantly, excluding common query parameters at the administrative level will help you get a clear, consolidated picture of which entry pages are driving your website's growth.

If you're finding it time-consuming to configure GA4 reports or constantly hunt for specific insights, you're not alone. We built Graphed because we believe getting answers from your data shouldn’t require hours of setup and manual work. You can connect your marketing and sales tools (like Google Analytics) and simply ask, "Show me a comparison of last month's top 10 landing pages by sessions vs. conversions as a bar chart." We'll build the report for you instantly, using clean, live data - no navigating menus or worrying about query strings required.