Content grouping in Google Analytics refers to clustering of similar content on your website or blog. This feature is available for established blogs or ecommerce sites with more than a few types of content. 

If your blog is just starting, and you have less than ten posts, content grouping will not help you much. However, if you have hundreds of blog posts, or you run an ecommerce site selling hundreds of products, content grouping might be right for you. 

GA Content Grouping: How can it help you? 

When you create a content group Google Analytics, you make it easy for the search engines to understand what content your site offers. Better yet, you can get reports on various sections of your online business. 

If, for instance, you sell men and women clothes, you can have a group for ‘Men’ and another group for ‘Women.’ All pages with men clothing will belong to the group ‘Men’ and all women clothes will go to the group ‘Women.’

There are two reasons why you need these groups:

• To change how Google Analytics analyze the traffic that comes to your website for different topics or different products. 
• To see the performance of different topics or different products in relation to other groups. 

For websites with thousands of articles or thousands of products, it is not easy to measure the performance of content at page level. To this end, clustering the content into groups makes it easy to assess the performance of groups. 

Getting Started with Content Grouping

Google Analytics allows you to create up to five content groups. Under each group you create, you can have an unlimited number of the sub-groups. For instance, if you sell clothes, you can have groups such as:

• Men
• Women 
• Children
• Costumes 

Under each of the above groups, you can have more groups to further categorize your content. For instance, under the group ‘Men,’ you can have groups such as Men’s Shirts, Men’s Pants, Men’s T-shirts, and any other that can categorize the items or content in that group. 

With such groups, you can easily view aggregated metrics for each of the set groups. From the Google Analytics metrics, you can determine the product groups that bring the most traffic. Further, you can tell which category in the best performing group is attracting more customers. For instance, if the group Women brings more traffic, you can see which category in women’s groups has the most views, is it women’s blouses or women’s pants. 

Grouping Strategies

Are you wondering how to group pages in Google Analytics?

The groups you create will depend on the content on your site and the goal of content grouping. You can create groups based on:

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1. Website Authors

Your website marketing might revolve around your content and the success of your writers. If you already know the topics that your readers love the most, you might want to understand what more the readers love. Content groups based on authors allow you to assess the performance of every writer in your team. This comes in handy when you need to create an ad strategy. For example:

(Image Credit: Direct Online Marketing)

2. Product Performance

If you run an ecommerce website with hundreds or thousands of products, your landing page reports will show you which products have the most visitors. However, with thousands of products, tracking every product or every page can be tedious. Instead, you can use the landing page group Google Analytics to get a higher-level view. When you group your products into buckets, you will have different product types, brands, and lines. This allows you to track the cumulative performance of different product subsets. For instance:

(Image Credit: Practical Ecommerce)

3. Content

If you have a variety of content types on your website, you can check the performance of each type using grouping. Common types of content include video, infographics, whitepapers, written content, and interactive pieces. By creating groups based on the type of content, you can get reports on which type of content your visitors spend the most time reading. For example:

(Image Credit: Analytics-Toolkit)

Creating groups allows you to sort your marketing materials into groups and then measure the aggregate performance. 

Once you choose the strategy to follow, you now need to start implementing it. 

Implementing Your Grouping Strategies

If you already settle on a grouping strategy, you can now choose an implementation method. There are three main methods to consider:

• Rules
• Extraction
• Tracking Code

Each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages, and whichever you choose should match the needs of your website. Regardless of the implementation method you choose, you need to activate grouping before you get started. To do that, navigate to your chosen View and scroll to the Admin Panel. Google Analytics page type groupings are under View Level and not Property Level. 

From the Admin Panel, click ‘New Content Grouping’ and enter the name of the grouping. From there, follow prompts on how you need to configure the groupings. Below are some of the implementation methods you need to choose. 

Rule Definitions

If you ever performed an advanced search on Google Analytics, you may already know how Rules work. It is the simplest implementation method for all types of content or products you have on your blog. The method works by defining groups based on dimensions such as page titles and URLs. 

The groupings you create are hit-level and not session- or user-level. This way, you can only source on existing dimensions and not dimensions such as medium or source. Check out Google Support to understand more about these levels. 

You can combine different rules using ‘and/or’ operators to further fine-tune the content that appears on each group. Besides combining the rules, you can reorder them by dragging elements. Reordering is important as Google Analytics applies the grouping logic in a sequence. The tool will work starting with the first rule all the way down to the last. GA might stop if it comes across a group of rules that matches any other among the rules and the groups. 

This means that you can only have a page on only one group or Google Analytics will keep stopping when it notes there is a similarity in some of the pages. Again, you should list your groups in descending order starting with the most specific groups and ending with the least specific or general groups. Here are a few examples of rules that can be used:

(Image Credit: Julien Coquet)

Extraction

Like the Rule-based method above, extraction allows you to create groups using the existing aspects of your website such as URL and titles. However, in this case, you will apply a regex capture group to analyze the dimensions and pick a group name. To use this method, you need clean and consistent URLs. For instance, imagine that you sell clothes and other items. The products you might need to group may be in a directory as follows:

/men-clothes/shirts/product18

/men-clothes/trousers/product57

/men-clothes/t-shirts/product34

You can extract another folder from the directory using the regex expression below:

/men-clothes/(.*?)/

The regex expression will show you shirts, trousers, t-shirts, and anything else that comes from the directory men clothes. This means that you only need a single expression, and you are good to create all the groups you need. If your URL structure is uniform in all your pages, you can use this rule with ease. For example, if you type in dogs (as down below) it will bring up all things in the category of dogs:

(Image Credit: InfoTrust)

The rule-based method and the extraction method are great, but they rely on URLs and title tags. With these two methods, you need to manually update the grouping logic every time you add new content, or you change the title of a page. If you do not have time for constant manual updates, you can consider any of the other methods below. 

Tracking Code

Unlike the first two methods, tracking code allows you to group your pages based on Google Analytics tracking code. The only challenge with this method is that you need to know how to work with codes. The method is, however, robust and sustainable in that you do not need to keep manually updating the groups. 

Here, you will need to use the set command on Google Analytics to award your groups a number between one and five. For instance, in the case of clothing groups above, you need to replace the parts below shown in curly brackets:

ga(‘set’, ‘contentGroup{Index Number}’, ‘{Group Name}’); 

After editing the above, you will have:

ga(‘set’, ‘contentGroup2’, ‘Men’);

Just changing the index number and the group name feels simple, and if you have the right coding skills, the process is the best to apply. However, if you do not want to deal with code, you can use Google Tag Manager, GTM. Simply, GTM uses a tracking code just like this method, but it presents a programmatic solution. The image below shows a visual representation of what this should look like:

(Image Credit: Megalytic)

Which Implementation Method to Go For?

There is no limit to the number of the methods you can use – you can use one that feels simple, or use all of them. The first two methods are applied in a sequence – Google Analytics moves in a descending order and stops when it finds a match.

However, the three methods above are also applied in a sequence when they are all active.GA considers matches in tracking code, then in extraction definition, and last in the matching rules definition. Although you can use all the methods at once, it is always advisable to keep your processes simple and straightforward. 

Using all three methods can confuse Analytics and not give you the results you need. Stick to a method you feel comfortable using for your content grouping Google Analytics. 

If you have a small website, or you are just trying out the groups, rule-based or extraction methods work the best. If you have a large site, especially an ecommerce site, or you intend to track your groups in the long term, you should use a tracking code. If you choose tracking code, learn how to use Google Tag Manager and combine it with Data Layer. This method is more robust and sustainable.

Whichever route you follow, it is important to test after implementation to ensure you get the best results.

Viewing Content Grouping Google Analytics

Once you create your groups, they are ready for viewing after a few hours. These groups are visible either as primary or secondary reports. For instance, if you set the groups ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ for your website, ‘Content Grouping’ appears as a primary dimension while the groups appear as ‘dimension values’, and you can see them in the GA ‘All Pages’ report. 

Even after following a strict group creation process, there is a likelihood that your groups will not be as you intended them to be. The groups might not extract every page you need them to and this is why testing is important after creating the groups. 

Test 

You need to check your groups a day after creating them to ensure that each group receives the data you intended it to receive. Unlike other aspects of the tool, when you create a content group Google Analytics, you have to wait for at least 24 hours to see the first report. From the report you see, you can compare your content grouping with the advanced segments to ensure that you get matching numbers. 

If you have a marketing team, you can work with them to apply content grouping in your reports to ensure you have a complete picture of the performance of different topics on your blog or different products in your ecommerce site. 

Content grouping is applicable in different reports, including your behavior reports and your event pages report. These reports include all pages, landing page group Google Analytics, and many more reports. 

Periodically, you need to ensure that your groups update new content or products accordingly. Even if you use a tracking code that is supposed to work automatically, you still need to check your content after a month to ensure everything is working as it should. 

Metrics 

Once you create a content group Google Analytics, you will have the reports you need to grow your business to the next level. Using the reports provided, you will know which parts of your blog or website needs an upgrade. Depending on the strategy you apply, the reports can show you:

• Which writers create the most buzz according to the number of readers each has
• Which topics are popular among readers and which are stalling
• What kind of content do visitors love between videos, written content, infographic, podcasts, or any other
• Which product categories are more popular with shoppers

Generally, you are able to see the parts of your business that are performing the best and the parts that need more work. With the reports, you can devise strategies to grow your business or make impactful changes. For example, from this report you can see that WordPress Pages is doing really well. However, SEO pages needs a little more help.

(Image Credit: LaptrinhX)

Once you learn how to group pages in Google Analytics, these are the reports you see:

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Unique Views

With content grouping, unique views refer to the number of unique sessions a page in a set group receives. This category shows you the views that each category under a group receives. If you set a group ‘Men,’ you can see the number of page views for each of the categories under man, say men shirts or men trousers. 

You might also see a ‘not set’ category. This category refers to web pages that are not part of any group. For instance, if you add towels to the group ‘Men’ and forget to categorize them, they will appear as ‘not set.’ There are no reports for the ‘not set’ category. For instance:

(Image Credit: Simo Ahava)

Besides the number, Google Analytics also shows you the percentage of views that every category in your groups get. 

Navigation Metrics

After setting the Google Analytics page type groups, you can use the groupings in your Navigation summary report. The report is seen under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. Using the report, you can see how visitors move from one page or one category to the next. 

For instance, you might realize that visitors navigate between shirts and trousers landing pages. Such a report can indicate that people who buy trousers are also interested in shirts. Your team can then try to match the trousers and the shirts you offer. The insight helps you offer more of what the customers need. 

Closing Thoughts

Content grouping in Google Analytics is one of the tools not many online businesspeople apply. However, when used right, the tool can offer insights on how to improve your business and reach new customers. 

It is a great tool when you introduce new products on your ecommerce site, or when you need to offer a new topic on your blog. The groupings help you see how the new content or product performs against the others. You can use it on any reports, including your navigation, landing pages, or all pages reports. 

When creating your groups, observe the following practices:

• Define your objectives before setting the groups
• Define the method that best meets your objectives
• Set goal values for the goals you set
• Update your content groups to minimize ‘not set’ groups
• Ensure the groups are logical and represent all the content on your website
• Create major groups that divide your web content into five or fewer groups
• Create other groups under the five main groups
• Set your groups in the right order from the most specific to the most generic

Diib®: Optimize Your GA Content Grouping

Content grouping will help you to organize your content and/or product for easier viewing. This will help you keep track of the analytical side of things and will help you more easily view the effectiveness of your campaigns. Here are some of the features of the Diib Dashboard that can help you with your Content Grouping analysis:

• Bounce rate monitoring and repair
• Social media integration and performance
• Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
• Keyword, backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
• User experience and mobile speed optimization
• Technical SEO monitoring, including your Google Analytics Content Grouping

Click here for your free scan or simply call 800-303-3510 to speak to one of our growth experts.