Google Analytics for CMS Sites
Find out how to access the Google Analytics dashboard to view your website traffic and usage.
Google Analytics is available for campus CMS sites. These basic instructions will help with your initial review of Google Analytics. We encourage you to learn more about analytics possibilities by exploring GA4 Documentation.
Transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Universal Analytics (UA, 2012-2023) stopped collecting new data July 1, 2023 and will delete UA data on July 1, 2024. If you want to keep your legacy data, follow Google's instructions for exporting your Universal Analytics data.
Note: You may see pop-up messages from Google when you log in to your account. These may ask you to upgrade a UA account, or connect a GA4 account to a UA account. Do not do this. Doing so will disrupt the transition that we have in place. Simply close the popup, or click 'No,' 'Skip for now,' or 'No thanks' as available.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has replaced UA as Google's default program for digital analytics measurement. All CMS sites are currently collecting data with GA4.
We've removed the legacy UA code from CMS sites since UA has been retired.
Access
Request Access
- You'll need an email linked to a Google account. Many @ucsd.edu accounts have this by default. School of Medicine users need to set up their own Google account.
- Email wts@ucsd.edu and tell us which CMS site(s) you need analytics access to. Unless otherwise specified, we will provide access to the GA4 account.
Log in to Google Analytics
- Go to Google Analytics.
- Click Sign in and enter your account info.
- Click on All accounts at top left, just to the right of the Google Analytics logo
- In the pop-up window, click on an Analytics Account (in the first column) to see the available Properties (in the second column, the sites you have access to)
- Select property: from the list of properties (websites) you have access to, choose the analytics set you would like to review.
Note: Universal Analytics properties are marked by 'UA' before the property number. If you don't have access to the GA4 property for your site, contact us at wts@ucsd.edu.
In the screen-shot example below, the user has access to both UA (second line: UA-#) and GA4 (third line: #) for the Blink website:
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
GA4 has replaced Universal Analytics (UA) as Google's default program for digital analytics measurement.
Below is a brief description of both Page Views and Events, which provide insight on how many people are visiting your page and what links and downloads they are viewing. We encourage you to explore the many powerful GA4 features.
Page views
Page Views can be an indicator of how good or useful your content is to visitors. (Bullet numbers reflect the number in the image.)
- Choose Reports in the main menu at left. GA4 identifies page views through the Engagement section, subsection Pages and Screens.
- This section automatically sorts data by the "Page Title and Screen Class" option.
- Until you get familiar with the various program options, changing the sort to Page path and screen class will allow you to see the folder structure and therefore more easily search the paths to find your page.
- Additionally, you can type a path into the search bar at the top of this section and see a list of only results that contain that path. For example, typing "/technology/email/" would provide you with all pages and subfolder pages within the technology/email/ folder.
- You can also increase the number of returns per page from the automatically default setting of 10 up to 250.
- Click the date range and you will be able to change the start and end dates of data records.
Download data for further review
To sort views by folder (what was called Content Drilldown in the earlier UA version) you currently have to download the list as a PDF or .csv (Excel spreadsheet compatible) extension and sort manually.
To download the list:
- Select the top right icon that looks like a sideways V. A column will display on the right side of the page.
- Choose Download File.
- Choose which type of file best suits your purposes. The CSV will provide a full list of your search results at the end of the file, after a general list of page views.
Events
GA4 automatically records the most popular Events for the site. Information on these terms can be found on the Google Support Portal (support.google.com/analytics/answer/9234069).
You can see the most popular events within Reports > Engagement > Events. Click on the blue event link to open a dashboard with information about these events.
- page_view: each time the page loads
- session_start: when a user engages the app or website
- user_engagement: periodically, while the app is in the foreground
- first_visit: the first time a user visits a website or launches an Android instant app with Analytics enabled
- scroll: the first time a user reaches the bottom of each page (i.e., when a 90% vertical depth becomes visible)
- click: each time a user clicks a link that leads away from the current domain
- file_download: when a user clicks a link leading to a file (pdf, xlsx, doc, txt, rtf, csv, exe, key, pps, zip, mov, mp4, mpeg, wav)
Custom Events can be modified, or custom events created to delve more deeply into site results: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10085872?hl=en.
Note: If you find that you cannot create custom events, contact wts@ucsd.edu and request an analytics permissions review. Include which site you are working on.
Additional links
Google Universal Analytics (UA)
UA is the legacy version of analytics. UA stopped collecting new data July 1, 2023. Google promised data would remain available to view for 6 months after data collection stopped and had decided that UA data will be deleted July 1, 2024. If you want to keep your legacy data, follow Google's instructions for exporting your Universal Analytics data.
Most Google Analytics data is sent in the form of pageview hits and event hits.
Find the page(s) you want to analyze
After selecting the profile, you'll see overall data for the entire site. To get information on specific content:
- From the left column select Behavior.
- Select Site Content.
- Select All Pages to see content listed in order of popularity.
- Select Content Drilldown to drill down into site content by folder.
- Enter the name or partial name of a page in the search box to go directly to that page:
Analyze the data
- Date range: Defaults to 1 month. You can reset this range for the time period you're interested in.
- Pageviews: The number of times users visited this page, including repeat visits by the same users.
- Unique Pageviews: The number of times users visited this page, not including repeat visits by the same users.
Download data for further review
In the Export drop down at the top of the page, choose the report format you prefer:
Additional links
See these links for more information on Google Analytics data: