Six GA4 Reports Worth Checking Every Month, and the Rest You Can Ignore

GA4 has dozens of reports, and most owners only need a handful. Here are the six worth opening every month, what each one tells you, and a plain-English glossary for the metrics Google renamed.

Open GA4 for the first time and it’s easy to feel lost. There are overview cards, detail reports, explorations, an advertising section, a library, and a lot of numbers that don’t mean what they used to.

You don’t need most of it. If you run a business and want to know whether your website is bringing in enquiries, six reports answer nearly every question worth asking each month. This guide shows where each one lives in Google Analytics 4, what to look at, what to ignore, and what the renamed metrics actually measure.

Every report path and definition here comes from Google’s own Analytics Help documentation.

Key Takeaways

GA4 replaced Universal Analytics. Google says Universal Analytics data became inaccessible from the week of 1 July 2024.
Three settings make the reports worth reading: mark your enquiry as a key event, link Search Console, and check your data retention.
The six monthly reports: Traffic acquisition, Landing page, Pages and screens, Events, Google Organic Search Queries and Demographic details.
An engaged session lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has at least 2 page or screen views. Bounce rate is now the share of sessions that weren’t engaged.
Event data takes up to 24 hours to appear in reports. Search Console data takes 48 hours.
Explorations, most of the Advertising section and day-to-day Realtime watching can wait.

#	Report	Where to find it	The question it answers
1	Traffic acquisition	Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition	Where did visitors come from, and which channels led to enquiries?
2	Landing page	Reports > Engagement > Landing page	Which pages do people arrive on, and do those pages lead anywhere?
3	Pages and screens	Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens	Which pages do people actually read?
4	Events	Reports > Engagement > Events	Are enquiries being recorded, and how many?
5	Google Organic Search Queries	Reports > Search Console collection (publish it from Library first)	Which Google searches lead to clicks?
6	Demographic details	Reports > User Attributes > Demographic details	Where are your visitors, roughly?

First, Why GA4 Is the Only Google Analytics Now

If you had Google Analytics set up years ago and haven’t logged in since, here’s the short history.

Google Analytics 4 replaced Universal Analytics, the older version many businesses used for years. Google’s help page says that from the week of 1 July 2024, “You will not have access to any current or historical Universal Analytics data” [1]. Universal Analytics properties are recognisable by tracking IDs starting with “UA-“. Google also says that from March 2023, if you hadn’t migrated and hadn’t opted out, it created a GA4 property for you automatically [1].

So if your business ran Universal Analytics, the old data is gone unless someone exported it. And if a GA4 property was created automatically, it’s worth checking it was set up properly, because the rest of this guide depends on it.

Three Settings That Make the Reports Worth Reading

Before you open a single report, check these three things. Without them, the numbers can be accurate and still useless.

1. Mark your enquiry as a key event

Google defines a key event as “an event that measures an action that’s particularly important to the success of your business” [2]. For most service businesses, that’s an enquiry: a form submission, a booking, a click to call. Any event GA4 collects can be marked as a key event, and once it is, many reports gain a Key events column showing how often it happened [2].

GA4 collects some events automatically through enhanced measurement, including form_start when someone first interacts with a form and form_submit when they submit it [3]. You mark an event as a key event in the Events report: find the event in the table, click the icon at the right of its row and select Mark as key event [12]. You need a Marketer role or above, and a standard property can have up to 30 key events [4]. GA4 marks purchase as a key event by default for websites [4].

If you used Universal Analytics, key events are what “goals” used to be. Google’s migration guide states it directly: “Key events replace ‘goals'” [5].

2. Link Search Console

Search Console shows which Google searches your site appears for. Linking it to GA4 adds two reports, Google Organic Search Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic [6]. One catch: Google says the Search Console collection of reports “is unpublished by default”. You find it under Library in the left navigation and publish it from there [6].

3. Check your data retention

GA4 lets you keep user-level and event-level data for 2 months or 14 months on a standard property [7]. Google notes this setting “does not affect standard aggregated reports”, only explorations and funnel reports. The six reports below are standard reports, so they’re unaffected. But if anyone will ever dig deeper with explorations, setting 14 months costs nothing and keeps more history.

Report 1: Traffic Acquisition Shows Where Visitors Come From

Path: Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition

Google describes this as the report that helps you “understand where your website and app visitors are coming from”, covering both new and returning users [8]. By default, it groups visits by Session default channel group: broad buckets such as Direct, Organic Search, Organic Social, Referral and Email.

Google defines the main channels this way [9]:

Direct: people who arrive “via a saved link or by entering your URL”.
Organic Search: people who arrive “via non-ad links in organic-search results”.
Organic Social: people who arrive “via non-ad links on social sites like Facebook or Twitter”.
Referral: people who arrive “via non-ad links on other sites/apps (e.g., blogs, news sites)”.

What to look at each month:

Sessions by channel. Which channels are growing, and which are shrinking?
The Key events column by channel. This is the line that matters. A channel with fewer visits but more enquiries is worth more than one with lots of visits and none.
Referral sources. Switch the table to Session source to see which other websites sent people. Any site that links to you and passes referral information shows up here by name, which is also where you’ll spot visits from directories, partners and AI tools that link out.

What to ignore: small month-to-month wobbles in a channel with only a handful of visits. Compare the same month last year when you can, because many businesses are seasonal.

If paid search shows up here and you’re running Google Ads, the numbers in GA4 and in Google Ads won’t always match. Google now uses “conversions” for Google Ads and “key events” in GA4, and lets you create Google Ads conversions from GA4 key events to keep the counts consistent [2]. Our Google Ads management page covers how we approach paid search.

Report 2: Landing Page Shows Where Visits Start

Path: Reports > Engagement > Landing page

Google says this report “shows you the first page a visitor lands on when they visit your website and how many visitors land on each page” [10]. The Landing page dimension is “the page path and query string associated with the first pageview in a session”, so a visit that starts on your homepage shows as “/”.

What to look at each month:

Your top ten landing pages. These are your real front doors, and they’re often not the homepage.
Average engagement time per session. Google defines it as “the average time that your website was in focus in a user’s browser” during each session [10]. A service page with very low engagement time may be answering the wrong question.
Key events by landing page. Which pages start the visits that end in an enquiry? Those pages deserve your attention first when you update copy or add calls to action.

A useful habit: pick the landing page with the most visits and the fewest key events, and look at it on your phone. Is it obvious what to do next? Our piece on landing page or homepage goes deeper on why the page someone lands on matters so much.

Report 3: Pages and Screens Shows What People Actually Read

Path: Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens

This report “shows data about the pages users visited on your website”, whether that’s the first page in a visit or one later on [11]. It’s different from the Landing page report, which only shows where visits begin. Google’s help page makes the distinction itself: to see the first page someone lands on, use the Landing page report instead.

What to look at each month:

Views by page. Which pages get read, including ones nobody arrives on directly, such as your pricing, about or contact pages.
Your contact or booking page. If it gets plenty of views but few key events, the problem may be the form, not the traffic.
Pages you expected to see and don’t. A service you’re trying to grow that barely appears is telling you something about your navigation or your content.

Tip: to focus on one page, use + Add filter, choose the dimension “Page path and screen class”, and pick the page [11]. If you want to see what people did before or after a page, Google points to a path exploration, which is one of the few explorations worth learning later.

Report 4: Events Shows Whether Enquiries Are Being Recorded

Path: Reports > Engagement > Events

Google describes it as the report that “shows how many times each event is triggered and how many users trigger each event” [12]. For a business owner, its monthly job is simple: check that your enquiry event is still firing and see how many there were.

What to look at each month:

Your key event count. Compare it with the enquiries you actually received by phone, email and form. If GA4 shows far fewer, tracking may be broken. If it shows far more, something other than real enquiries may be triggering it.
Sudden zeros. A key event that drops to zero after a website change usually means the change broke the tracking, not that customers stopped enquiring.

Two timing facts worth knowing. Event data can take “up to 24 hours” to appear in the Events report. To check an event in the last 30 minutes, Google points to the Event count by Event name card in the Realtime report [12]. That’s the one good use for Realtime: testing that a form submission is recorded right after you’ve changed something.

Report 5: Google Organic Search Queries Shows Which Searches Bring Clicks

Path: Reports > Search Console > Google Organic Search Queries (after you’ve linked Search Console and published the collection from Library)

This report “displays search queries and associated Search Console metrics for the linked Search Console property” [6]. In plain terms: which Google searches showed your site, how often, and how many clicks they produced.

What to look at each month:

The searches that bring clicks. Are they the services you want to be known for?
Searches with plenty of impressions but few clicks. Your page is showing up but not getting chosen. The title and description in the results may need work.
New searches appearing. Often the first sign that a new page or service is starting to be found.

Limits to remember. Search Console data appears in Analytics 48 hours after Search Console collects it, and the reports hold a maximum of 16 months of data [6]. Search Console metrics only work with Search Console dimensions plus Landing page, Device and Country, so you can’t slice these numbers by every GA4 dimension. Google may also withhold rows containing search query information when there aren’t enough users, to protect privacy [13].

For a bigger-picture view of why clicks from Google have changed, our what small businesses actually need from SEO piece covers the basics that still pay.

Report 6: Demographic Details Shows Roughly Where Visitors Are

Path: Reports > User Attributes > Demographic details

Google describes this report as providing “key characteristics about the people who use a website or app, including a user’s language, interests, location, age, and gender” [14]. For a local service business, location is the useful part: are visits coming from the areas you actually serve?

What to look at each month:

Visits by city or region. If you serve one metro area and a large share of visits come from elsewhere, some of your traffic may never become a customer.
Key events by city. Enquiries from the areas you serve are the ones that count.

Read it with care. Google says only aggregated data from users who consent to sharing demographic data is included, and data thresholds may apply when user counts are low [14]. Age, gender and interest data come from Google signals, and Google applies a two-month retention period to age, gender and interest data regardless of your settings [7]. For a small site, treat the age and gender cards as a rough guide at best. Location is the part worth your time.

The Rest You Can Ignore, for Now

GA4 has plenty more, and some of it is genuinely powerful. But for a monthly check by a business owner, these can wait:

Explorations. Custom analysis tools for specific questions. They’re affected by your data retention setting [7], and they’re worth learning once you have a question the standard reports can’t answer.
Realtime, as a habit. Useful for testing that tracking works. Watching it daily tells you very little.
The Advertising section. Pathing and attribution reports show how credit for key events is shared across touchpoints [2]. Worth it if you run paid campaigns across several channels; otherwise skip it.
Age, gender and interests on a small site, for the threshold and retention reasons above.
Every overview card. Overview reports are summaries. The detail reports above hold the numbers you’ll act on.

None of this is useless. It’s just not where a monthly ‘is the website working’ answer lives.

A GA4 Glossary in Plain English

GA4 renamed several familiar ideas and redefined others. Here’s what the terms in the six reports actually mean, in Google’s own definitions.

GA4 term	What Google says it is	In plain English
Session	A group of user interactions with your website or app within a given time frame. By default a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity [15]	One visit
Engaged session	A session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews [15]	A visit where the person did something
Engagement rate	The percentage of engaged sessions [16]	Share of visits that weren’t a quick exit
Bounce rate	The percentage of sessions that were not engaged; the opposite of engagement rate [16]	Share of quick exits
Average engagement time per session	The average time your website was in focus in a user’s browser during each session [10]	How long people actually had your page open and in front of them
Active users	The number of distinct users who visited your website or application [10]	Roughly, how many people
Event	A user interaction GA4 records, such as page_view, form_submit or scroll [3]	Something that happened on the page
Key event	An event that measures an action particularly important to your business [2]	The thing you want people to do
Landing page	The page path and query string of the first pageview in a session [10]	Where the visit started
Session default channel group	Rule-based groupings of traffic sources, such as Direct, Organic Search and Referral [8][9]	How people found you
Data threshold	Data withheld to prevent anyone inferring the identity of individual users [13]	Why some rows are hidden on small sites
Data retention	How long GA4 keeps user-level and event-level data: 2 or 14 months on a standard property [7]	How far back explorations can look

Two changes trip up people who used Universal Analytics. Key events replace goals [5]. And bounce rate means something different now: in GA4, it’s simply the share of sessions that weren’t engaged [16]. A visitor who reads one page for 30 seconds and leaves isn’t a bounce in GA4, because the visit lasted longer than 10 seconds.

A Monthly GA4 Routine You'll Actually Keep

Put the six reports together and the monthly check has a natural order. Set the date range to last month, and where you can, compare it with the same month last year.

Events. Did your key event fire, and roughly how many times? If it’s broken, fix the tracking before reading anything else.
Traffic acquisition. Which channels brought visits and key events? Write down the top three channels by key events.
Landing page. Which pages started the visits that led to enquiries, and which busy pages led nowhere?
Pages and screens. Are people reaching your contact or booking page?
Google Organic Search Queries. Which searches brought clicks, and which pages are showing without being chosen?
Demographic details. Are visits and enquiries coming from the areas you serve?

Then write three lines: what went up, what went down, and one thing you’ll change before next month. That last line is the point of the whole exercise. A report you read and don’t act on is just a number.

If your traffic includes visits from AI assistants, our piece on how AI traffic converts differently is worth reading alongside your referral data.

Important FAQs

What is GA4?

GA4, or Google Analytics 4, is the current version of Google Analytics. It replaced Universal Analytics, and Google says Universal Analytics data became inaccessible from the week of 1 July 2024. GA4 measures website and app activity as events, and lets you mark the most important ones as key events.

Which GA4 report shows where my enquiries come from?

The Traffic acquisition report, at Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Once your enquiry is marked as a key event, the Key events column shows how many enquiries each channel produced, such as Organic Search, Direct or Referral.

Why is my bounce rate different in GA4?

GA4 defines bounce rate as the percentage of sessions that weren’t engaged. An engaged session lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has at least 2 page views. So a visitor who reads one page for a while and then leaves doesn’t count as a bounce.

Why can't I see some data in my GA4 reports?

Usually it’s timing or privacy. Event data can take up to 24 hours to appear, and Search Console data 48 hours. GA4 also applies data thresholds that withhold some rows, such as demographic or search query data, when there aren’t enough users.

The Bottom Line

Six reports, one key event, one change a month.

GA4 looks complicated because it’s built to answer every question for every kind of business. A business owner needs a much shorter list: where visits come from, where they start, what people read, whether enquiries are recorded, which searches bring clicks, and where visitors are.

Set up your key event and Search Console link first. Then open the same six reports once a month, write down what changed, and act on one thing. That’s enough to turn Google Analytics from a dashboard you avoid into a tool that actually helps.

Do you know which channel actually sends your enquiries?

If your GA4 numbers don’t line up with your phone and inbox, we can help make sense of them. See our SEO services or contact us.

Sources

[1] Google Analytics Help, “Google Analytics 4 has replaced Universal Analytics”, last updated 16 July 2025. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528

[2] Google Analytics Help, “About key events”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9267568

[3] Google Analytics Help, “Automatically collected events”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9234069

[4] Google Analytics Help, “Mark events as key events”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13128484

[5] Google Analytics Help, “[UA to GA4] Conversions and key events in Google Analytics 4 [Legacy]”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11053133

[6] Google Analytics Help, “Connect Search Console to Google Analytics”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10737381

[7] Google Analytics Help, “Data retention”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7667196

[8] Google Analytics Help, “[GA4] Traffic acquisition report”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12923437

[9] Google Analytics Help, “Default channel group”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9756891

[10] Google Analytics Help, “[GA4] Landing page report”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12931766

[11] Google Analytics Help, “[GA4] Pages and screens report”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12926732

[12] Google Analytics Help, “Events report”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12926615

[13] Google Analytics Help, “[GA4] About data thresholds”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9383630

[14] Google Analytics Help, “[GA4] Demographic details report”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12948931

[15] Google Analytics Help, “[GA4] Session”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12798876

[16] Google Analytics Help, “[GA4] Engagement rate and bounce rate”, checked 4 October 2026. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12195621

[17] Google Analytics Help, “Demo account”, checked 4 October 2026 (screenshot source). https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6367342

Pav S.

Award-winning. Industry-accredited. 1200+ projects delivered 1:1 to Australian businesses. As Managing Director of 21 Webs, a Google Marketing certified and Business Information Systems qualified IT and marketing strategist – hands-on by nature with an exceptional eye for detail and deep expertise across digital marketing and SEO.