Exhibits analytics seem to be displaying incorrect statistics?

[caaster]

I was working with Jacob Hill last week on creating some custom views in Looker Studio for exhibits statistics. We stumbled across the fact that the analytics page in exhibits seems to be displaying incorrect data, but I need a reality check please.

I'm providing screenshots below for Parker from 5/1/2024 - 5/1/2025, from the exhibits analytics page, and from GA4 for Parker. Other exhibits seem to have discrepancies as well, but I don't have a good understanding of which data in GA4 feeds into which data that is displayed for exhibits analytics. Would it be possible for someone to provide documentation of this, or explain it to me? That would be super helpful.

[corylown]

@caaster looking back to the ticket where we implemented this (#1556 (comment)) we could not get session information out of GA4 API so we switched to reporting search analytics in the second row. I think the labeling was not updated to reflect this change.

In the first row "Visitors" we are reporting visits: totalUsers="32,583", activeUsers="32,474", screenPageViews="108,716"
In the second row "Sessions" we are reporting searches: sessions="56,883", screenPageViewsPerSession=1.9112212787651848, engagementRate=0.5034017193186013

(API responses above are for Parker from May 2, 2024 to May 2, 2025).

I do not know how the API fields correspond to specific reports/views in GA4, but maybe seeing the API fields/response above this helps somewhat.

The problem that I see that needs to be corrected is the header "Sessions" should probably be "Searches." And my assumption is that "screenPageViewsPerSession" really means "Searches per session," etc.

[caaster]

Thank you @corylown - those label changes sound pretty important. I will also need to update user-facing documentation. Is this a ticket that belongs in Spotlight? I can create it. It seems like it could be an easy fix?

[corylown]

@caaster yes, this is a Spotlight issue (and should be easy). If you or @alundgard have opinions about the new labels that would be helpful to add to the issue. Thank you.

[alundgard]

@corylown I'm new to GA4, and so a little confused by the idea that sessions and screenPageViewsPerSession correspond to searches. Does this mean our implementation diverges from the GA API documentation (which defines sessions as "The number of sessions that began on your site or app (event triggered: session_start)")?

[corylown]

@alundgard I find Google Analytics to be difficult to understand with much confidence. We're asking for the metrics: sessions, screenPageViewsPerSession, and engagementRate on the dimension: searchTerm and getting back what I posted above: sessions="56,883", screenPageViewsPerSession=1.9112212787651848, engagementRate=0.5034017193186013

[alundgard]

@corylown I see, that makes more sense—thanks for clarifying.
So sessions is recording the number of times a user visits a page with q= in the URL (ie, starting a new search).
Then screenPageViewsPerSession is the average number of pages the user navigates to after starting a search session.

If that understanding is correct, in the analytics dashboard UI, I agree we should change "sessions" (corresponding to sessions on searchTerm) to "searches".
I think "pages per session" (corresponding to screenPageViewsPerSession on searchTerm) might be more-clearly expressed as "page views per search".