Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can help libraries and archives understand which newspaper titles users engage with most frequently. This guide explains how Veridian clients can view title-level metrics already captured within GA4 and how other digital collection platforms can configure similar tracking.
Title-level metrics can help you identify which newspapers attract the most views, how many people engage with each title and how engagement differs across the collection.
These insights can support reporting, content promotion and digitisation planning. However, traffic should be interpreted alongside factors such as the date range covered, how long a title has been online and whether it has recently been promoted or expanded.
How do Veridian clients view title-level engagement in GA4?
If you’re using Veridian, accessing stats related to specific newspaper titles is straightforward, simply follow the steps below.
- Once you’ve logged into your Analytics account, in the left-hand menu select “Reports”
- From there, select "Engagement”, followed by “Pages and screens”
- Scroll down past the graph to locate the drop-down box set to “Page path and screen class”. Click the downward pointing arrow and change this to “Content group”
- You should now see a list of titles and corresponding metrics, including number of views, active users, views per user and average engagement time.
Helpful tips:
- Can’t see a title? Try expanding your date range. Titles with limited or no activity during the selected period may not appear in the table.
- What is “General page view”? These are pages such as your collection homepage, browse pages, or search pages, rather than specific newspaper titles.
How do you configure title-level tracking for another platform?
If your collection does not use Veridian, its website and analytics configuration will need to send each newspaper title to GA4 through the content_group parameter.
Follow the steps below to start tracking title level metrics in GA4:
- Ensure each issue page exposes the newspaper title in the <head> of the HTML.
For example:
<meta name="newspaper-title" content="The Daily Press"> - Modify your GA4 setup (either in gtag.js or via Google Tag Manager) so that the value of the newspaper title is sent with every page_view event. For example:
gtag('event', 'page_view', {
content_group: 'The Daily Press'
});
GA4 automatically uses the content_group parameter to populate the Content group dimension in the “Pages and screens” report. No custom dimension setup is required if you stick with this parameter.
Once implemented, you’ll be able to navigate to “Reports” > “Engagement” > “Pages & screens” in GA4. From there select 'Content group" from the drop down selection to see the engagement metrics for each newspaper title in your collection.
Veridian collections can be configured to provide useful engagement data across individual newspaper titles and other collection content. If you need help accessing or interpreting your collection’s title-level metrics, please contact us.