Google Analytics 4 Part 1: Users and Pageviews

Logging into Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great tool to help you identify how people in your community engage with your website. It also tracks how well you’re doing, how you’re impacting your community, and can help you understand where to improve your outreach.

To start, go to analytics.google.com.

If you’re not already signed in, sign into your Google account. If you are signed in and need to change users, click the circular icon at the top right of the page and select Add an Account or Sign Out, so you can sign into the right account.

If you only have one site on your Google Analytics account, you should see your website above All Website Data. For example, in the image below, it shows as All Accounts > Illinois Valley Web GA4.

If you need to switch websites, click the name next to “Analytics.” It will show an in-site popup that will look like the image below:

Starting from the left, we’re going to click Community Website Partnership (may show as “Community Webs…” on certain screen resolutions), then scroll around and find your community website in the list.

• If there are multiple analytics links for a website, find the one that has “- GA4” at the end of its title. For this example, we’ll be clicking Illinois Valley Web – GA4.

Now that you’ve arrived at the right destination, move your mouse toward the left side of the screen until the four icons expand into a menu.

Click Reports.

Setting your Start and End Dates

You will arrive at the Reports Snapshot.

Before you continue, you must first set the start and end dates for the data you want to view.

At the top right of the window, you’ll see some dates. Click it to open the date selector window. First click the start date, then click the end date. Then click Apply.

Tracking Users

Still on the Reports Snapshot page, you can find the total amount of users via the graph on the top-left, right under the words “Reports snapshot.”

A User is an individual who viewed the website during the time period you set earlier. The example screenshot below shows there are 311 Users.

Tracking Pageviews

On the left-side menu, navigate to Engagement > Pages and Screens. Under the graph you’ll find the total pageviews, followed by the top ten most popular pages of the website for the time period you entered.

Don’t forget to take note of any events or directory listings that were popular, like in the below example.

Totaling Registered Users

Sign into your community website’s dashboard, then navigate to Users in the left-side menu.

Right under the “Add New” button, find the number coresponding to Rejected. Then, subtract that number from the one coresponding to All. That will give you the total number of non-spam users on your community website.