Implementing view-based page rankings in Google Analytics

To implement a ranking based on the number of page views in Google Analytics (GA), you need to do the following:

1. Integrate GA with Kuroco from the admin panel
2. Set the custom dimensions
3. Embed Google tags on the front-end site
4. Set up an additional field for page views in your content structure
5. Set the number of page views retrieved as content data
6. Create a list API to retrieve the views of 10 pages in descending order for ranking generation

Integrate GA with Kuroco from the admin panel

See Tutorial: How to link Google Analytics for a detailed guide.

Set the custom dimensions

Set either content ID or slug as a custom dimension value, based on your front-end configurations. Either option is fine, since both are used to specify the viewed content.

Example using slug:

Please set the dimension name to any meaningful and understandable name of your choice.

Embed Google tags on the front-end site

See Tutorial: How to link Google Analytics for a detailed guide on how to configure the front-end.　

In this tutorial, we will only retrieve the page views for the content pages we want to rank. Therefore, we will send the page_view event as a mounted embedding:

if (process.browser) {
    const slug = this.$route.params.asset_name // Retrieve slug from page URL, etc.
    this.$gtag('event', 'page_view', {
        'detail_page_slug': slug
    })
}

At this stage, please check the frontend display and if the page_view event is being sent correctly, you can confirm the number of page views as shown below by specifying the custom dimension in the GA console.
※ It may take about half a day for the data to accumulate. If you want to check immediately, you can use real-time tracking to verify the parameters of the page_view event.

Set up an additional field for page views in your content structure

*Make sure you select [Counter] as the field type.
*The identifier value entered here will be used when setting the page views in the contents module.

Confirming PV Count via API

You can verify if you can retrieve the PV count via API by using https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/query-explorer/.

1. Select GA4 from the toggle switch under "Demos & Tools" on the top left.
2. Choose the target property from Select property.
3. Set the values for dateRanges, dimensions, metrics, limit, and orderBys. For dimensions, specify "customEvent:[your custom dimension slug]".
4. Execute the Google Analytics Data API by clicking [MAKE REQUEST].

Set the number of page views retrieved as content data

Create a batch process as follows to execute SmartyPlugin and set the page views retrieved as content data.
Click on [Add] from [Operation]->[Batch Template].

Once the batch processing editing screen opens, add the following batch processing.

{*Retrieve page view count from GA and set it in the counter*}
{googleanalytics var=result
update_column_slug="pv"
update_target_dimension="customEvent:detail_page_slug"
updated_topics_ids='updated_topics_ids'
topics_group_id=1}{*Enter the target content structure ID as the topics_group_id*}

{*Reflects data from the counter in the contents data*}
{assign_array var=ext_data values=''}
{assign var=ext_data.topics_ids value=$updated_topics_ids}
{batch module='topics' name='sync_counter' ext_data=$ext_data}

Once added, set the frequency for running the batch processing.

Available parameters

The following parameters are available for the GA plugin:

Parameter	Description
var	Variable name assigned to the retrieved result
viewId	View ID in GA
update_column_slug	Slug of the column to be updated
update_column_index	Number of columns to be updated (for repeating columns)
update_target_metric	Metric used (default: ga:pageviews)
update_target_dimension	Dimension used (default: ga:pagePath)
topics_group_id	Target content structure ID
startDate	Counter start date (default: 7 days ago)
endDate	Counter end date (default: today)
queries	Direct query specifications
reset_flg	If set to 1, the counter values of all content in the content definition specified by topics_group_id are set to 0 before the values retrieved from GA are applied (default: 0)

caution

Counter values are set only for the content included in the GA response. Content with no page views during the aggregation period is not updated and keeps its previous value (it does not become 0). The same applies to the subsequent sync_counter batch processing, because only the updated content IDs are assigned to updated_topics_ids. In addition, if the GA response contains no rows, no counter is updated.
To reflect only the page views within the aggregation period in the ranking, specify reset_flg=1.

Create a list API to retrieve the views of 10 pages in descending order for ranking generation

Field	Value
Category	Content
Model	Topics
Operation	list
Parameter	topics_group_id: (target content structure ID) cnt: 10 order_query: pv:desc

Related documents

• Google Analytics
• Batch Template
• How to link Google Analytics
• How to use batch process in Kuroco
• How do I generate reports using custom dimensions in Google Analytics?