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Google Analytics 4 - content drilldown not available by default?

  • June 23, 2023
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timcavey
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For anyone that uses Google Analytics (GA), you may remember that the pre-GA4 ‘Behaviour’ menu had a ‘Site content’ sub menu and a ‘Content drilldown’ sub sub menu. e.g

 

 

This was a helpful way to see page view volumes and more at a forum category level.

 

It seems that GA4 doesn’t have this by default. Chat GPT is suggesting I need to set up a custom dimension for this and then implement tracking of this event via my GTM script. Is this really necessary to get something I see as pretty basic. 

 

Any recommendations, other then move to Mixpanel? 

Best answer by Alistair FIeld

Morning @timcavey 

Nice spot. 

TBH, I do not use much of the GA analytics reporting. I instead have had the GA linked to Google Looker Studio.

I have done the same with GA4, and connected the two. I also know our PM team are working on a Looker connector for the Data Lake.

To get over not having Page Level 1, I can create a new field with a regex expression to capture that part of the url.

REGEXP_EXTRACT( Full page URL , '\/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\/')

 

 

I do not have a better solution. I think it beats putting in custom events etc.

 

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Alistair FIeld
revathimenon
DannyPancratz

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Alistair FIeld
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  • Alistair FIeld
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  • June 26, 2023

Morning @timcavey 

Nice spot. 

TBH, I do not use much of the GA analytics reporting. I instead have had the GA linked to Google Looker Studio.

I have done the same with GA4, and connected the two. I also know our PM team are working on a Looker connector for the Data Lake.

To get over not having Page Level 1, I can create a new field with a regex expression to capture that part of the url.

REGEXP_EXTRACT( Full page URL , '\/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\/')

 

 

I do not have a better solution. I think it beats putting in custom events etc.

 

The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few. 🖖
timcavey
timcavey
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  • June 26, 2023

This is great, thanks @Alistair FIeld.

 

A quick follow up, this regex config would be done on Google Looker Studio would it? 
 

Also am I correct in saying I would edit the regex so that it searches for the specific file path that I want? x8

 

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Alistair FIeld
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@timcavey 

This Regex expression finds the first part of the string that matches the expression. In this case it returns the first part of the url between the first two forward slashes. Here are a couple of examples.

 

https://community.insided.com/got-a-question-38/as-an-admin-may-i-merge-two-registered-user-accounts-into-one-3449

https://community.insided.com/analytics-and-reporting-156/google-analytics-4-content-drilldown-not-available-by-default-5942

 

This how this regular expression breaks down:

  • \/ matches the forward slash ("/") character.
  • ([a-zA-Z0-9-]+) captures one or more alphanumeric characters or hyphens.
  • \/ matches the closing forward slash ("/") character.

 

Looker requires the double backslash to escape regular expression metacharacters. 

The field is created within the the data resource in Looker, yes.

 

The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few. 🖖
timcavey
Suvi Lehtovaara
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Thanks @Alistair FIeld for the instructions, was able to build this in our Looker studio 😊

And thanks @timcavey for asking this, had actually never thought of using the content drilldown. I guess it’s better late than never 🤣

https://yhteiso.elisa.fi/
Alistair FIeld
timcavey
timcavey
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  • July 13, 2023

Such great support, thanks @Alistair FIeld 

 

I’ve been able to set that up very easily. I’m in the process of setting up the ‘report’ using this page level 1 data field. Where would I find and add user metrics such as page views, sessions etc?

 

Is it a ‘dimension’ or a ‘metric’ - I can’t find either in either currently...

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timcavey
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  • July 13, 2023

Update: it is indeed in the ‘Metrics’ drop down. :)

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