How to Use Google Analytics Content Drilldown

The Google Analytics Content Drilldown report helps you understand how different sections of your website are performing based on your site's structure. Instead of looking at individual pages one-by-one, it groups your content into directories, allowing you to quickly compare how your blog, services pages, or resource centers stack up. This article explains what the Content Drilldown report is, how to replicate its functionality in Google Analytics 4, and how to use the insights to improve your content strategy.

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What is the Content Drilldown Report?

The Content Drilldown report organizes your page performance data according to your website’s URL structure. Think of your website like a set of nested folders on your computer. You might have a main folder called "Blog," and inside that, you have subfolders for "SEO," "Social Media," and "Email Marketing."

This report allows you to see the aggregate performance of all pages within the "/blog/" directory. From there, you can "drill down" to see the performance of the "/blog/seo/" sub-directory, and then even further to look at individual articles within that sub-directory.

This big-picture view is great for answering questions like:

• Does our blog drive more engagement than our product pages?
• Which category of our knowledge base is the most popular?
• Are users who land on our case studies more likely to convert than those who land on our blog?

By analyzing how users interact with entire content sections, you can make more strategic decisions about where to invest your time and resources.

A Quick Note: Universal Analytics vs. Google Analytics 4

If you've been using Google Analytics for a while, you might remember the Content Drilldown report as a standard feature in Universal Analytics (UA). It was readily available under the "Site Content" menu.

However, in Google Analytics 4, this specific pre-built report no longer exists. Don't worry, though. The functionality isn't gone, you just need to know how to access it in a slightly different way. You can easily replicate - and even improve upon - this analysis using GA4's built-in reporting and exploration tools. Let's walk through exactly how to do that.

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How to Create a "Content Drilldown" Analysis in GA4

You can get the insights you need in two main ways: by using filters in the standard "Pages and screens" report or by building a custom Exploration report.

Method 1: Using Filters in the "Pages and screens" Report (The Quick Way)

This is the fastest method for a quick look at a specific subdirectory of your site. It’s perfect for answering a one-off question on the fly without building a whole new report.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Log into your Google Analytics 4 property.
2. From the left-hand navigation menu, click on Reports.
3. Navigate to the Lifecycle section and click on Engagement → Pages and screens.
4. You'll now see a table listing all your website pages, typically sorted by Views. Above this table, there is a search bar that says "Search report...".
5. Click into the search bar. In the dropdown, make sure the dimension is set to Page path and screen class. (Page path refers to the part of the URL that comes after your domain name).
6. Let's say you want to analyze all the content in your /blog/ subdirectory. Simply type /blog/ into the search box and press Enter.
7. The table will now update to show only the pages that exist within your /blog/ folder.

The summary cards and charts at the top will also update to reflect this filtered data, giving you an aggregate view of key metrics like Users, Views, and Average engagement time for just that section of your site.

You can use this simple filtering method to isolate any subdirectory on your website, whether it's /services/, /portfolio/, or /resources/case-studies/.

Method 2: Building a Custom Report in the Explore Hub (The Powerful Way)

If drilling down into your content by directory is something you do often, building a custom Exploration report is an even better solution. It takes a few more minutes to set up, but you can save it and come back to it anytime. It also offers more flexibility for customization.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. From the left-hand navigation menu, click on Explore.
2. Under "Start a new exploration," select the Blank template.
3. Give your exploration a name, such as "Content Drilldown Analysis."
4. In the Variables column on the left, we need to import the Dimensions and Metrics we want to use.
5. Now, drag your imported dimensions and metrics from the Variables column into the Tab Settings column.
6. At this point, you'll see a report that looks very similar to the "Pages and screens" report. The final step is to add our filter to only show specific directories.
7. Scroll down to the FILTERS section in the Tab Settings column.
8. Drag Page path and screen class into the filter box.
9. Set up the filter logic. Select contains from the dropdown menu, and then enter the directory you want to analyze (e.g., /blog/). Click Apply.

Your report table will now look and function just like a Content Drilldown report, isolating the directory you specified. You can easily change the filter to look at a different directory or even save multiple versions of the report for different site sections.

Using the Content Drilldown Data to Improve Your Strategy

Recreating the report is just the first step. The real value comes from the insights you can pull from this data.

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Identify Your High-Performing Content Pillars

Is your blog driving all the traffic? Or are your case studies the real heroes when it comes to conversions? By comparing top-level directories like /blog/, /services/, and /case-studies/, you immediately get a high-level view of what types of content are achieving different goals. If /case-studies/ gets less traffic but has a sky-high conversion rate, you know that visitors to that section are highly qualified and it might be worth finding ways to drive more traffic there.

Find Underperforming Sections

The report can quickly highlight content categories that aren't pulling their weight. Imagine you see that pages within your /features/ directory get plenty of views but have an extremely low average engagement time and almost zero conversions. This is a red flag. It might mean the content isn't compelling, the page layout is confusing, or there are no clear calls-to-action to guide users to the next step.

Uncover Specific Content Opportunities

Drilling down helps you get more granular. You might start by looking at /blog/ as a whole. From there, you could apply a more specific filter like contains /blog/seo/. This shows you how all of your SEO-related content performs as a unit.

Let's say you discover your /blog/seo/ articles have a much higher engagement rate than your /blog/social-media/ articles. This is a clear signal from your audience that they're hungry for more SEO content. This insight allows you to confidently double down on that topic, knowing it's what resonates with your users.

Improve Site Navigation and Internal Linking

If a productively important - but low-traffic - directory is buried deep in your site structure, this analysis will make it pop out. Seeing a key category perform poorly can be a prompt to feature it more prominently on your homepage, improve your main navigation, or build more internal links from high-traffic pages (like blog posts) to these underperforming sections.

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Best Practices for Content Drilldown Analysis

To get the most out of this analysis, keep a couple of things in mind.

A Logical URL Structure is Essential

This report is only as good as your website's URL structure. If your URLs are all at the root level (e.g., yourdomain.com/social-media-tips, yourdomain.com/our-services), there are no directories to drill down into, and this report won't be useful. A clean, hierarchical structure is crucial for SEO and user experience, and it's what makes this reporting possible.

• Good structure: yourdomain.com/resources/ebooks/seo-guide
• Bad structure: yourdomain.com/seo-guide-ebook

Combine Filters for Deeper Insights

Don't be afraid to stack filters. In an Exploration report, you could filter by the /blog/ page path and then add a second filter for a specific segment, like Traffic source = Organic Search. This would show you which subdirectories within your blog perform best with search traffic, helping you refine your SEO strategy.

Final Thoughts

While the classic Content Drilldown report from Universal Analytics is gone, its spirit lives on in GA4. By using simple filters or building a custom Exploration report, you can easily group your content by its directory structure to uncover which sections of your site are performing well and which ones need attention.

At the end of the day, an effective data strategy is about answering questions quickly so you can focus on growing your business. For this, we built Graphed to simplify the entire reporting process. Instead of manually filtering and building custom reports in Google Analytics, you can connect your data and simply ask questions in plain English like, "show me our best performing blog categories" or "compare conversions from the blog vs. the services pages last quarter" and get an interactive dashboard in seconds.