Download Report - GA4

This article will show you how to retrieve data from our download event.

A download is triggered when a user opens a specific publication for the first time. A download event can only be registered once per specific publication, unless the publication is deleted and downloaded again.

On web 1.0 a download event is cached at the first opening of a publication. Where on web 2.0 a download event is only triggered if a user downloads the pdf file to its computer. For web 2.0 there is instead of the download event been introduced a new Login event. You can read more about that here.  

1. Go to your GA4 property.
2. Go to ‘Explorations’ by clicking on Explore in the menu to the left.
3. Click on the '+' Create a new exploration

4. Every time a new report is created you need to add the ’Dimensions’ and ‘Metrics’ that should be used in the report.

4.a Dimensions: When clicking on Dimensions you will get a list of all googles standard dimension and Visiolink’s custom parameters. You always need to include the Dimension ‘Event Name’ as this is used in all our filters. Further, you can view the list of custom parameters that can be included for the download event here. In this Example we will add the dimensions ‘Publication Title’ and 'Event Name'.

4.b Metrics: Here we will use the metric ‘Event Count’ which is a standard google metric that refers to the number of times an event is triggered.

5. When the Dimensions and Metric is added, you can start setting up your report.
6. Start by filling out the report as this (See picture below):
Add a filter for ‘event name’ Contains ‘vl_event_download’
Add ‘Event Count’ under Values.
Add ‘Event name’ under Rows.

7. Now you can see the total number of Downloads for the time period you have chosen.
If you want to see the downloads for a specific title then add 'Publication Title' as a row.  Further, you can check the list of parameters send with the download event here and add them as well.

8. Remember to name your report - then you will be able to find the report again: