GA4 Guide | Finding 404 Pages

Using GA4 to Find 404 Pages

Lachlan's GA4 Guide

This guide teaches a user two methods to locate 404 pages in Google Analytics 4. It also teaches you to check how many users have been to a 404 page and which page they came from.

This is especially useful for SEO if a backlink to a clients website has an incorrect address, as we can set up a redirect to still receive that link’s authority.

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Finding 404 pages in Reports

1	Go to Reports in the GA4 Property sidebar
2	Go to Engagement in the lefthand menu and then Pages and screens in the sub-menu
3	Scroll down to the table and select Page title and screen name from the drop-down menu under the search bar
4	Click the “+” next to it and then go to Page / screen and add page path and screen class
5	Find the name of the 404 page on your website
6	Put the name of your 404 page into the search bar above the table in Google Analytics
7	OPTIONAL: Increase rows per page in top right of table to see all pages

Finding 404 Pages in Explore

1	Go to Explore in the sidebar
2	Click Blank
3	Click the “+” next to dimensions and add the dimensions: Event name, Page path and screen class, Page referrer, and Page title then click Import in the top right
4	Click the + next to Metrics and add Event count then click Import in the top right
5	TIP: The things you’ve added to the leftmost “Variables” column serve as a kind of “palette” that you can add to make the next column over to make graphs. Try dragging and dropping them in different places.
6	Drag or double click to add Both Page path and screen name and Page referrer to the Rows section of the second column
7	Drag or double click to add Event count to the Values section of the second column
8	Apply filter to the Filters section of second column to that says Event name exactly matches page_view (to make sure you’re only seeing page view events)
9	Apply filter to the Filters section of second column to that says Page title contains *Insert the name of the 404 page on your website* (So you only see page view events on 404 pages) You can only add filters that were added to your “palette” during step 3
10	OPTIONAL: Increase rows per page in rows section to see all pages
11	Click Export Data in the top right corner of the table to export the table