How to use content grouping in Google Analytics to analyse your site

Executive overview

Sifting through 50,000+ page URLs to answer "how is the blog doing?" is impractical. Content grouping lets you file pages into named buckets — blog, case studies, product lines — so you can analyse traffic at a category level instead of a URL level.

You get five content groups per reporting view. Set them up once and they run permanently. Groups also work as secondary dimensions and segments in acquisition reports.

The data doesn't apply retroactively — but a Data Studio calculated field workaround lets you apply the same rules to historical data.

The problem content grouping solves

• A typical site can have tens of thousands of unique page URLs in the behaviour report
• Counting manually or filtering in Excel is slow and error-prone
• Stakeholders ask category-level questions ("how is the blog performing?") that raw URL data can't answer quickly
• Without grouping, secondary dimensions in acquisition reports produce the same URL explosion

Planning your groups

• Use post-it notes to map your site into logical buckets before touching Analytics
• Common first group: website navigation (home, blog, services, about, contact)
• Additional groups: by product, brand, content stage of awareness, or campaign type
• Crawl the site with Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs; ~$120/yr for larger sites) and export to a spreadsheet to audit all URLs before writing rules

Setting up the rules in Google Analytics

• Always work in a test view first; roll to production when confirmed
• Go to Admin → View → Content Grouping → create a new group
• Define rules: "page starts with /blog" → Blog; "page contains accessories" → Accessories
• Use regular expressions (RegEx) for complex or large e-commerce URL structures
• Tracking code is a third option but rarely used in practice
• Small sites: ~2 hours to set up; enterprise sites: ~1 day

Using groups in reports

• In the All Pages report, switch the primary dimension from URL to a content group for instant category-level metrics
• Add a content group as a secondary dimension in acquisition reports to see which marketing channels drive traffic to which content categories
• Build segments based on content groups to profile audiences by the section they visit — useful input for copywriting and persona research

Applying grouping to historical data via Data Studio

• Google Analytics content groups are not retroactive; new rules only apply from the creation date forward
• Create a calculated field in Data Studio using the same URL rules (e.g. "if page starts with /water → water brand")
• Kia Street at CEO Interactive has published a Google Sheet that auto-generates the RegEx calculated field formula — fill in your URL rules on the left, copy column C into Data Studio
• This gives full historical visibility without rebuilding anything in Analytics
• Real example: a content manager proved her water-brand pages drove outsized traffic, secured renewed budget, and was held up as a model for the rest of the team