why does Google Analytics show different top content results for URL and Page Title?

Question

in GA content>AllPages the default view shows the top pageviews by URL. Since my site does not have friendly URLs I prefer to view by page title, but when I click to change the view instead of showing the same pages by top pageviews it shows completely different pages. I want it to simply switch to the title of the same pages instead of the URL, why would the top pageviews be different based on URL and title?

Answer 1

The best way would be showing title as second dimension, and url as first. You can find out if you have duplicate titles too this way.

With default GA settings, you cannot do this. However, there is an hack how to do this: from Content->Site Content->All Pages, add a second dimension (Source for example). Then go and edit the url bar, and instead of source (last word) add pageTitle.

For example:

www.google.com/analytics/web/ (some more stuff) table.secSegmentId%3Danalytics.source/

To

www.google.com/analytics/web/ (some more stuff) table.secSegmentId%3Danalytics.pageTitle/

this should do it