Have you ever wondered how your website performs throughout the day? Do you have peak traffic hours? Are there differences between weekdays and weekends? Google Analytics hourly report can be incredibly helpful for you to view and track how your website performs hourly.
GA4 hourly reports are like having a minute-by-minute play-by-play of your website’s visitors. Instead of just knowing the total traffic, you can see exactly when people visit throughout the day. This is super helpful for businesses that run paid advertising campaigns.
You can see if there are peak hours for traffic, which days are busiest, and even compare different timeframes. This info helps you understand your audience better and make informed decisions. For example, if you see a dip in traffic during lunch hours, you might adjust your marketing campaigns to target those times.
This is a step-by-step guide on how to create and compare GA4 hourly traffic reports.
So, We are sharing 2 easy ways to create your GA4 hourly report.
How to view the GA4 hourly traffic report
You can view your GA4 hourly traffic report using two main methods within the GA4 Explore feature:
Method#1: Create a GA4 Hourly Traffic Report using Free Table visualization
This method provides a detailed breakdown of your website’s hourly traffic.
Here’s how to view it.
Access GA4 Explore: Log in to your GA4 and navigate to the “Explore” section.
Choose the Free Form Report: Select the “Free Form” report template.
Set Up Dimensions and Metrics: Drag “Date + Hour” into the “Rows” section. This will display data for each hour within your chosen date range.
Metrics: Drag and drop your desired metrics like “Users” (total & new), “Sessions,” or “Conversions” (if applicable) into the “Values” section.
Refine Your Report:
Adjust the date range at the top to specify the timeframe you want to analyze.
Consider segmenting your data (optional) to see traffic from specific sources or devices.
This creates a table displaying hourly traffic data for the chosen metrics.
Method 2: Line Chart Visualization
This method provides a visual representation of your hourly traffic report. Remember that this will only show one metric at a time.
Here’s how to view it:
- Access GA4 Explore: Log in to your GA4 and navigate to the “Explore” section.
- Choose the Free Form Report: Select the “Free Form” report template.
- Switch to Line Chart: After creating your report with dimensions and metrics, change the visualization from “Table” to “Line chart.”
- Analyze Trends: The line chart will visually display your hourly traffic patterns, making it easy to identify peak hours, dips, and overall trends.
How to Automatically Monitor Hourly Website Traffic in GA4
- Go to the GA4 home page and scroll down to the “Insights & Recommendations” section. Click on “View all insights.”
- Click “Create” to make a new custom alert.
- Configure the custom alert rules:
- Set the evaluation frequency to “Hourly (Web only)”. This ensures the alert checks for changes every hour.
- Apply a segment that includes the “Platform” value “Web”. This filters the data to focus only on website traffic.
- Select the metric and condition for the alert. A common option is “Total Users” with an anomaly condition. This will notify you when there’s a significant deviation from your usual hourly traffic patterns.
- Write a descriptive name for the custom insight and set up email notifications if needed.
Click on the “create” button at the right to save custom insight.
Final thoughts
Looking at your website’s hourly traffic allows you to have a better understanding of when and how people are interacting with your website. By getting your hourly traffic data, you will be able to make better decisions.
GA4 hourly traffic report helps you view and track your website traffic. There are two main methods to explore it as I have mentioned step by step in this guide. By following these steps you can easily view the hourly traffic report of your website in GA4.
FAQs
What is the hourly traffic report in GA4?
GA4 hourly reports are like having a minute-by-minute play-by-play of your website’s visitors. Instead of just knowing the total traffic, you can see exactly when people visit throughout the day. This is super helpful for businesses that run paid advertising campaigns.
How do get hourly traffic in Google Analytics 4?
There are two main ways to view hourly traffic in Google Analytics. For both Universal Analytics and GA4, you can adjust the timeline view to “Hourly” within most reports to see an average hourly traffic pattern over your chosen date range.
If you want a more detailed breakdown with specific user counts for each hour, you can create a custom report using “Hour” as a dimension. In GA4, you can also build a custom exploration report with “Date + Hour” to get a more granular view of traffic by each specific hour.
