Reading your dashboard
Six sections, in the order in which the questions arise. Here is what each one answers.
In short
The dashboard reads from top to bottom: volume first, then where visitors come from, what they read, and what they do. Every row in a list is clickable and filters the whole page.
The six sections
- Overview: volume and its trend. The only section to look at if you have one minute.
- Acquisition: where visitors come from, by channel and by source.
- Content and interactions: pages viewed, entries, exits, events.
- Campaigns and exits: tagged campaigns and clicks to the outside.
- Audience: countries, cities, devices, browsers.
- Latest visits: the detail visit by visit, with the timeline of each one.
Cross-referencing the figures
Click any row in a list: a filter is applied and restricts the whole page to that value. Click « Belgium » in the countries, and the pages, sources and devices shown only concern Belgian visitors.
Filters stack. You can therefore answer precise questions: which pages do visitors from organic search read, on mobile, in Germany.
The cards at the top and the visit log do not count the same thing: the cards count page views, the log counts visits. A four-page visit counts as four in one and as one in the other.
The periods
Rolling periods end today, including the day in progress. A « vs previous period » comparison therefore compares an incomplete day with a complete one: it is normal for the start of the day to look behind.
The custom range accepts any dates. Beyond a year, the display switches to weeks to stay readable.
Read next
- Setting goals A goal turns a measured event into a tracked conversion. Click the star next to an event in the dashboard, and it appears among your goals from then on, with its conversion rate.
- Following a journey with a funnel A funnel counts how many visitors clear each step of a journey, and where they drop out. You define the steps by page or by event, in the order in which they must happen.
- Seeing where your visitors click A heatmap overlays your visitors' clicks and scrolling on a screenshot of the page. It is enabled page by page, on the addresses you choose.
- Excluding your own visits Add your IP addresses to the account exclusions, and your visits stop being counted on all your sites. The exclusion applies at collection, so immediately and with no effect on history.
- Why your figures differ from Google Analytics Pulsar almost always shows more visits than Google Analytics, often ten to forty per cent more. The main cause is blocking: extensions and recent browsers block Google Analytics far more often than Pulsar.
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