How can I display a cumulative page view chart in GA4?

[Ashton]

Sure, I got you. Instead of going to Reports in GA4, use the Explorer view. You see, Reports in GA4 aren’t as flexible as they used to be in Universal Analytics where you could add filters and secondary dimensions. Here’s a way around it:

1. Go to the Explorer view. Be aware, though, that it’s subject to your data retention settings. You might need to change this setting if it’s currently set at 2 months default to something longer like 14 months.

2. In Explorer, you only need the pageviews metric so no need to add any dimensions. This is how it looks like for a property I just recently switched from Universal Analytics:

3. Adding a dimension will break down the graph by that dimension. But you can still filter without adding dimensions to your graph.

Now, let me walk you through the steps to reconstruct your graph from Universal Analytics in Explorer:

1. Go to the Explorer option.

2. Click ‘New exploration’.

3. Click ‘Add metric’.

4. Go to the ‘Page’ section under Metrics and import Views.

5. Change your data visualization to line graph.

6. Drag and drop your views metric in the Rows section.

GA4 might take a little getting used to but it offers a lot of similar functionalities as UA. They set out to make it like Adobe Analytics, but it’s not quite there. Still, it has its own merits. Let’s just focus on optimizing that!

[Caleb]

Sure, let me try to help you out with this. In GA Universal, All Pages under Behavior was straightforward and user-friendly while in GA4, it can indeed seem cluttered in the Engagement > Pages and Screens section.

To create something similar to the old Page Views chart in GA4, follow these steps:
1. In your GA4 interface, go to Engagement > Pages and Screens.
2. Click on Add metric in the top right corner and add “Pageviews”. This will edit your chart to display a total pageviews count.
3. Now, to break down this data by each page, as it was in GA Universal, click Add dimension and select both “Page path and screen class” and “Page title”. This will add a sorted table beneath your chart, showing you pageviews for each page.

Please note that while this may not give you exactly the same view as GA Universal, it should help you get similar insights. GA4 is structured differently from GA Universal, hence some things are viewed differently. GA4 provides a more user-centered approach rather than session-based, like in Universal.