What is Page Path in Google Analytics 4?

Navigating Google Analytics 4 can feel like learning a new language, and 'Page path' is one of its most important concepts. Understanding what it is and how to use it is fundamental to figuring out how people actually interact with your website. This guide will show you exactly what Page path is, where to find it in GA4, and how to use it to analyze your content and user behavior.

What is a Page Path in GA4?

A "Page path" is the part of a URL that comes right after your domain name. It’s a shorthand way for Google Analytics to identify a specific page on your site without having to show the full web address every time.

For example, if the full URL of a page is:

https://www.yourcoolwebsite.com/blog/best-marketing-tips

The Page path is:

/blog/best-marketing-tips

That's it. It’s simply the portion of the link that specifies the location of the page on your server. It drops the "https" protocol and your domain name, making your reports easier to read and analyze.

Page Path vs. Page Location: What's the Difference?

This is an important distinction and a common point of confusion. While 'Page path' is a core dimension, you'll also see another one called 'Page location' in GA4 reports. Here’s the difference:

Page Path: This dimension excludes the domain and any query parameters (the stuff after a "?"). It's clean and great for grouping content, like all your blog posts. Example: /about-us.
Page Location: This is the full URL a visitor is on, including the protocol (https://), the domain, the path, and any query parameters. Example: https://www.yourcoolwebsite.com/about-us?source=email.

Think of it this way: Page path tells you which page, while Page location tells you the exact address, right down to the specific campaign tags they came in from. Both are useful, but you'll likely spend most of your time with Page path for general content analysis.

Why Does Page Path Matter?

Page path is a vital dimension because it serves as the foundation for answering critical questions about your website's performance. When you analyze your data by Page path, you can start to connect browsing behavior to business outcomes.

Here are a few ways it helps:

Identify Top-Performing Content: By viewing metrics like Views, Engaged sessions, and Conversions per page path, you can instantly see which blog posts, landing pages, or product pages are performing best. You see what resonates with your audience and what doesn't.
Analyze User Flow: Want to know where visitors go after landing on your homepage? Path exploration reports use page paths to map out the common journeys users take through your site, showing you popular navigation routes and drop-off points.
Improve Site Structure: Messy or inconsistent page paths can signal a confusing website structure. Analyzing your page paths can help you identify opportunities to create a more logical, user-friendly hierarchy. For instance, you might notice similar content scattered under different paths (e.g., /blog/topic-a and /articles/topic-a) and decide to consolidate.
Pinpoint Conversion Pages: You can see which page paths are most frequently viewed just before a user converts. This helps you identify your most valuable pages so you can optimize them further or drive more traffic to them.

Finding Page Path Data in Standard GA4 Reports

Let's walk through how to access and use Page Path data in the built-in GA4 reports. Out-of-the-box, GA4 reports often default to showing 'Page title,' which isn't always helpful for analysis due to long titles or pages that might share similar ones.

Follow these steps to find the far more useful Page Path dimension:

Navigate to the Reports section (the chart icon) on the left-hand navigation bar.
Under the Life cycle section, click on Engagement and then select the Pages and screens report.
You'll now see a table of data. By default, the first column is probably Page title and screen class. This is what we need to change. Click the little dropdown arrow next to the dimension name at the top of the table.
From the dropdown menu that appears, select Page path and screen class. Boom! Your report now displays data organized by the clean, simple page paths.

Once you've done this, the table will show you key metrics for each page path, including:

Views: The total number of times a page has been viewed.
Users: The number of unique users who viewed that page.
Engaged sessions: The number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 pageviews. This helps tell you if people are actually interacting with the page.
Event count: A count of all events that took place on that page path.
Conversions: A count of a specific type of conversion event, like purchase or form_submission, that you configured.

Mastering Page Path with GA4 Explorations

While the standard reports are great for a quick overview, the real analytical power of GA4 lies within the Explore section. Explorations let you build custom reports to slice and dice your data in far more flexible ways. Here's how you can use Page Path in two of the most popular exploration types.

1. Path Exploration

A Path exploration report visualizes the user journey as a flow chart, showing you the sequence of pages visitors view. This is perfect for understanding navigation behavior.

How to Build It:

Click Explore in the left navigation.
Select Path exploration from the gallery of templates.
GA4 automatically generates a starting report, but you'll want to customize it. In the Step +1 column, click on the dropdown and select Page path and screen class.
Now, on the chart itself, click Start over in the top-right corner. You'll be asked to choose a starting point.
Click Choose node and select Page path and screen class as your starting dimension.
From the list, select a specific page path you want to analyze, like your homepage (/) or your pricing page (/pricing).

The report will now visualize the most common page paths people took after visiting the page you selected. This is fantastic for seeing if your call-to-actions are working or identifying where users go when they get "stuck."

2. Free-form Exploration

A Free-form exploration is essentially a powerful pivot table builder. You can compare any combination of dimensions and metrics to build the exact report you need.

How to Build a Custom Page Path Report:

Let's say you want to see your most popular pages on mobile devices. Here's how to build that:

Go to Explore and select Free-form.
Let's set up our dimensions. In the Variables panel on the left, click the "+" icon next to DIMENSIONS. Search for and import "Page path and screen class" and "Device category."
Now set up your metrics. Click the "+" next to METRICS, and import "Views" and "Engaged sessions."
Time to build the table. Drag Page path and screen class from the Variables panel over to the Rows section in the main Tab Settings panel.
Drag Device category over to the Columns section.
Drag Views and Engaged sessions over to the Values section.

You now have a custom table showing your page paths broken down by device (desktop, mobile, tablet), with statistics for views and engagement. This immediately helps you see which pages are over or underperforming on different devices.

Actionable Tips for Using Your Page Path Data

Filter Your Reports for Clarity: Your site might have thousands of pages. Use filters to focus your analysis. For example, add a filter where "Page path" contains "/blog/" to analyze just your blog content.
Combine with Secondary Dimensions: In any report, you can add a secondary dimension for more context. Add 'Session source / medium' to your Page report to see which traffic sources bring users to which pages.
Clean Up Your Data: UTM parameters can sometimes get mixed into your page paths, causing one page to appear as multiple separate line items (e.g., /contact and /contact?foo=bar). In your GA4 property settings (Admin -> Data Streams -> select your stream -> Configure Tag Settings -> Show More -> List unwanted URL query parameters), you can add common parameters like fbclid or utm_source to exclude them, which cleans up your reports.
Think in Hierarchies: When creating URLs for new pages, use a logical structure. A clear hierarchy like /services/email-marketing/case-studies/ is far more descriptive and easier to analyze than /page-123/.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, Page path isn't just a technical term in Google Analytics, it's the primary way you identify and judge the performance of individual pages on your website. After all, your site is just a collection of pages, and understanding which ones drive traffic, engagement, and conversions is the basis of effective digital marketing and content strategy.

Although GA4 gives you all the tools to segment your audience and analyze your user behavior, digging through menus and building custom reports still takes considerable effort. We built Graphed to remove that friction. Instead of manually creating these explorations, you can simply connect your Google Analytics account once and then ask questions in plain English like "Show me traffic for my top 10 most visited pages and compare user interaction performance over the past month." Graphed instantly builds the dashboards and finds your important metrics without having to do it yourself.