How to Measure Blog Performance in Google Analytics 4

Oh hello. You’re here, reading this.

That makes me happy.

After you’ve poured your whole self into a blog post, you want people to read it. Maybe even like it. Maybe comment on it. That little hit of affirmation is nice.

But beyond the vanity metrics, we need to know something more important:

Is this blog post actually doing anything for my business?

That’s where measuring blog performance in Google Analytics 4 comes in.

Let’s look at how to check if your blog posts are delivering.

What Does “Delivering” Actually Mean for a Blog Post?

It depends on your goal.

You might want:

• Brand awareness
• Traffic from Google
• The right people reading your content
• Visitors exploring your services
• Your marketing channels to perform well

All of those are valid.

But you need to define what success looks like before you measure it.

Prefer a video tutorial? Here you go…

How to Measure Blog Traffic in GA4

If you want to measure blog traffic in GA4, start with the Pages & Screens report.

If you have Lifecycle in your sidebar:
Go to Engagement → Pages & Screens

If you have Business Objectives:
Go to Understand web and/or app traffic

You can filter this report to look at one blog post or all your blog content.

Filter for a specific blog post (or all blog posts)

Click Add filter at the top of the page

In the sidebar, click Add dimension

Start typing Page path and select it

Page path is the part of your URL after the domain name that starts with a /.

Example:

Full URL:
https://spiderworking.com/analytics-ace-google-analytics-4-group-training-programme/

Page path:
/analytics-ace-google-analytics-4-group-training-programme/

Under Match type:

Choose Exactly matches if you want one specific post

Choose Contains and add /blog/ if all your blog posts use that structure

Apply your filter.

Now you’re looking at just your blog content.

How to See Which Marketing Channels Drive Blog Traffic

Next, add a second dimension to analyse marketing channels in GA4.

Click the blue + beside Page path and screen class.

To track marketing channels:

Start typing Source

Choose Session source

Now you’ll see which websites, social networks, or apps sent traffic to your blog post.

If you use UTM tracking consistently, you can choose Session campaign instead. That gives you more detail about exactly which post or promotion sent traffic.

This helps you understand which marketing efforts are actually working.

Who Is Reading Your Blog Posts?

Traffic numbers are fine.

But are they the right people?

To learn more about your blog audience, add one of these as your secondary dimension:

• Country
• Region
• City

You can choose other demographics too, but data is often limited.

In this report you’ll see:

• Total users
• Views
• Average engagement time

Important: engagement time is the total time spent on your site during the session. Not just time on that page.

Now you can decide what a “quality visitor” means for you.

Is it someone who scrolls the whole post?
Someone in a specific location?
Someone who stays long enough to read?

Define it first. Then measure it.

Did People Read and Leave – Or Explore More?

This is where the Path exploration report comes in.

From your Google Analytics dashboard:

Click Explore

Choose Path exploration

Choose your date range

Click Start again

You’ll see two options: Starting point or Ending point.

Choose Starting point.

Select Page path and screen class,

Choose the blog post you want to monitor.

In the sidebar, under Values, remove Event count and replace it with Total users.

Now you can see what people did next.

Did they:

• Visit your services page?
• Read another blog post?
• Leave immediately?

If you see nothing after the blog post, it means people read and left.

Don’t panic.

Now you know what to improve.

Maybe you need a clearer CTA.
Maybe internal links need to be stronger.

Or maybe your job was simply to educate — and you did that well.

Can You Measure Content Consumption?

All of this tells us about traffic and movement.

But did they actually consume the content?

This is where content consumption measurement becomes interesting.

Dana DiTomaso has developed a way to categorise readers based on how they engage with content — not just whether they landed on the page.

You can read about her approach here.

This is exactly the kind of advanced measurement we cover inside my Analytics Ace live group training programme.

What to Do With This Data

Once you start measuring blog performance in Google Analytics 4, you can:

• Improve underperforming posts
• Strengthen calls to action
• Focus on the marketing channels that work
• Create more content that attracts the right audience
• And most importantly, you stop guessing.

Because likes are lovely.

But data pays the bills.

If you’d like to go deeper into GA4 reporting and learn how to properly measure blog performance, join the waiting list for Analytics Ace.