Path exploration

Path exploration draws a tree: a starting node and, to its right, the most common next steps, each of which expands into its own next steps. Nodes can be one of three node types, chosen per column: Event name, Page title and screen name or Page path and screen class; you can mix them, say events for step 1 and page titles after.

Set a starting point (an event like session_start or a page) to ask "what happens next?". Or set an ending point instead to ask "how did people get here?"; GA4 then builds the tree backwards, which is the better question for a key event: what did purchasers do right before purchasing?

Each node shows the number of events (or users, switchable in Tab settings via Node type metrics) that flowed through it, with the top five branches shown and the rest in + more. Click a node to expand it; the tree can grow very wide, so keep a breakdown dimension (Device category, First user source) in mind to colour nodes rather than adding columns.

Useful toggles:

• View only unique nodes: collapses repeated consecutive events such as scroll, scroll, scroll.
• Right-click a node to Create segment from selection or Exclude it; excluding noisy events like user_engagement and scroll from the node list makes paths readable. Do this early.
• A segment applied to the tab restricts whose paths are drawn.

Paths cross sessions unless you start from session_start. The technique is good at spotting loops (A to B back to A), unexpected exits to the help centre, and the pages that precede a conversion. It is bad at quantifying a long flow; build a funnel for that once a path has shown you which flow to measure.