Entrances in GA4

December 24, 2025
  • First Published: December 24, 2025
  • Last Modified: December 24, 2025

If you’ve spent any time poking around Google Analytics 4, you’ve probably noticed the “Entrances” metric. At a glance, it seems identical to a landing page. And that’s where the confusion usually starts.

Here is the thing: while they are related, they function very differently in your reports.

What is the Entrances metric?

Put simply, Entrances is a metric that counts the number of times the first event in a session occurred on a specific page or screen.

If you’re tracking an app, “screen” is the equivalent of a page.

Essentially, it marks the starting line of a user’s session.

Table of Contents

Difference between landing page and entrances

Yeah, it can catch people out.

The key difference lies in the data type:

Landing Page is a dimension. It describes the specific page path or query string where the user arrived (e.g., /blog/ga4-guide).

Entrances is a metric. It provides the numerical count of how many sessions began on a particular page.

Think of it this way: The “Landing Page” tells you where they arrived. “Entrances” tells you how many times a session started there.

Entrances vs. Page Views

This is another one that can trip people up, and I’ve seen it with my clients too.

A pageview is a count of the number of times that a page was visited, whereas entrance is the number of times a page was the first page in the session.

Let’s say a user visits your site and follows this path:

  1. Page A (They arrive here)
  2. Page B (They click a link)
  3. Page C (They browse further)
  4. Page A (They navigate back to the start)

In this scenario, for Page A, the data would look like this:

  • Entrances: 1 (Because the session started here).
  • Page Views: 2 (Because they viewed it twice: once at the start, and once after navigating back).

Even though they looked at Page A twice, it only triggered a session start once. This distinction is vital when you are trying to measure the true popularity of a page as a gateway to your site, rather than just its general traffic volume.

Why Don’t Entrances, Exits, and Sessions Always Match?

You might try to balance your books by comparing Entrances, Exits, and Sessions, only to find the numbers don’t perfectly align.

Don’t panic; your data isn’t broken.

There are a few technical reasons for this discrepancy:

  1. Timing: Entrances and exits can technically occur on different days if a session straddles midnight, leading to discrepancies when looking at specific date ranges.
  2. Events without Views: The Entrances metric isn’t affected if a new session is triggered by an event that isn’t a page or screen view.

How to Build an Entrances Report in GA4

You can’t view entrances in the report section of GA4, so the best way to analyse this data is by building a custom report in the Explore section.

Here is a quick step-by-step to get the data you need:

  1. Go to Explore: Select ‘Blank’ to create a new freeform exploration.
  2. Set Your Dimensions: Search for and import Page path + query string (or Page Title or Page Location). Drag this into the ‘Rows’ section.
  3. Set Your Metrics: Search for and import Entrances, Views, and Exits. Drag these into the ‘Values’ section.
  4. Visualise with Heatmaps: In the ‘Cell type’ settings, select Heatmap.

Using the heatmap view is particularly helpful.

It allows you to spot patterns instantly.

For example, if a page has a high number of Views but a surprisingly low number of Entrances, it’s a popular internal page but not a major traffic driver from external sources.

Entrances Exploration Report in GA4

The importance of the Entrances Metric

So, why bother tracking this?

Entrances help you identify which pages are your true “power players” for attracting new traffic.

These are the pages that are ranking well in search engines or performing well in your email and social campaigns.

By coupling the Entrances metric with engagement metrics (like Engagement Rate) or Exits, you can audit the performance of your key landing pages.

High Entrances + High Exits: This might indicate a problem. Users are finding the page, but leaving immediately. Is the content relevant? Is the load time slow?

High Entrances + High Engagement: This is your gold standard. These pages are doing their job perfectly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I see Entrance Rate in GA4?

Not as a standard out-of-the-box metric in the same way you might be used to seeing simple percentages in older tools. You are better off analyzing Entrances alongside Exits in the Explore report to spot trends.

Is an Entrance the same as a Session?

They are closely linked but not identical metrics. An entrance is incremented when the first event of a session is a page_view or screen_view.

Why do I see more Page Views than Entrances?

This is normal. A user can view a page multiple times in a single session, but can only “enter” the site once per session.

Kyle

Author

Hello, I'm Kyle Rushton McGregor!

I’m an experienced GA4 Specialist with a demonstrated history of working with Google Tag Manager and Looker Studio. I’m an international speaker who has trained 1000s of people on all things analytics.

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