Transitions report

The Transitions report provides details about how visitors got to a page and what they did after viewing it.

It's a drilldown report available from these Behavior reports:

• Pageviews
• Entry pages
• Exit pages
• Page titles

How to view the report

To open the Transitions report:

1. Go to Reporting > Owl Analytics.
2. Select one of the Behaviors reports from the Choose your report > Type dropdown. (The Searches report and Downloads report don't include the Transitions drilldown report).
3. Locate the page entry you want to view transitions for and hover over it.
4. Select the Open Transitions icon, which looks like two diagonally crossed arrows. The Transitions report opens in a modal over the main report.

Anatomy of the report

The Transitions report opens in a modal over the main report:

Sample Transitions report
Let's review each section in more detail below.

1: Transition sources

This section answers the question: How did visitors get this page?

Data is broken into five sections, most of which tie to referrers. The sections displayed depend on which transition actions occurred. Select the plus (+) icon next to each transition source to view a more detailed breakdown:

1. From internal pages: If your visitor opened this page from another page in your knowledge base, this section displays the URL of that page. If the navigation seems unusual, this may mean you want to update content or link text on the original page to better guide visitors to what they need.
2. From internal search: If your visitor opened this page from either typeahead or full search, this section displays the word or phrase they searched for. This can help you identify errant keywords or concepts that may drive people to the wrong content, or identify ways to strengthen search performance to get even more readers here.
3. From social networks: If your visitor opened this page through a social media link or post, this section displays the social media platform, such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT, and so on. Learn more about this type of referrer.
4. From websites: If your visitor opened this page from a link on a site outside your knowledge base, this section displays that website.
5. Direct entries: If your visitor opened this page by typing the URL directly into their browser, opening a saved bookmark, opening a link in a desktop app, or opening a link from an untrackable source (like an email client or a PDF), it's logged as a direct entry. No details for the direct entry are available since there is no explicit referrer or tracking to tell us where they came from.

2: Page summary

The center section of the Transitions report provides a summary of the page you opened the Transitions report from:

1. The relative URL
2. The total number of pageviews
3. Summary statistics for incoming traffic and outgoing traffic
4. The number of page reloads

3: Transition destinations

This section answers the question: Where did visitors go after they viewed this page?

Data is broken into five sections. The sections displayed depend on which transition actions occurred. Select the plus (+) icon next to each transition destination to view a more detailed breakdown:

1. To internal pages: If your visitor left this page for another page in your knowledge base, this section displays the URL of that page. If the navigation seems unusual, this may mean you want to update content or link text on this page to better guide visitors to what they need.
2. Outlinks: If your visitor left this page by clicking a link on the page to a resource outside your knowledge base, this section displays the URL they clicked on. Refer to Outlink for more information.
3. Downloads: If your visitor's last action on this page was to click a link to download a resource on the page, this section displays the link to that resource. This can help you identify if visitors are actually downloading resources you share. Refer to Download for more information about what types of downloads are tracked.
4. Internal searches: If your visitor conducted a search after viewing this page, this section displays the word or phrase they searched for. This can help you identify similar or related content you may want to link to from this page.
5. Exits: If your visitor exited your knowledge base after viewing this page, it's logged as an exit. Since we stop tracking actions once they leave your knowledge base, no further data is displayed here. Refer to Exit/Exit rate for more information.