Unlike traffic source parameters, the GA4 landing page is still hidden inside event_params.page_location, so you’ll need to dig a bit to pull it out. But don’t worry, it’s not too complicated and definitely worth it for better session analysis.
Here’s a quick guide on how to do it:
1. Gather event data. Start by pulling data from your events table and create a unique session ID by combining user_pseudo_id with the ga_session_id parameter.
2. Extract page URLs (page_location), entrances (entrances), and timestamps for each event.
3. Define landing page types. For each session, you can identify different landing pages (the difference is not critical so you can pick any option you like):
- the first page from any event (click, view, etc.);
- the first page specifically tied to a page_view event (an actual pageview);
- the first page where an entrance event occurred (where entrances > 0);
4. Parse the URLs. In the last part of the query (shown in the image), use bigfunctions parse_url to extract just the path from the full URL.
If you work with GA4 to BigQuery exports, be sure to check out my SQL cheat sheet.
