Google Analytics: Need to understand some data in user flow

Question

I just started using Google Analytics, for learning purpose, I'm a little obsessed with some data discrepancy, hope someone can explain to me. I was checking user flow by landing page

Here it shows there are 879 sessions landed on this page, among them 814 are without any queries

However, on Behavior -> Site Content -> Landing Pages, there are 860 sessions for the URL without any queries, as the below picture shows

Another thing I don't understand is,

As the above picture shows, the same URL is regarded as different landing page if there are queries, why would GA do this? And, as the below picture shows, among the 860 sessions that landed on the URL without any queries, a lot are actually referred by Facebook. Shouldn't all Facebook referred URLs have queries like fbcid=xxxx?

Answer 1

Well, you have a few questions here, let's go through the list...

1. The data discrepancy: It is hard to say for certain without more information, but the User Flow report may be sampled even when you haven't changed any of the default settings. Instead of that information being shown via a yellow shield next to the report title, there is a yellow box on the right hand side of the page.

2. Queries separating the pageview count: GA treats query strings as defining distinct pages because it's possible they could - so it defaults to the option that does not destroy information. You can strip specific query name/value pairs out in the View Settings admin screen, as described in this answer about fbclid specifically.

3. Facebook traffic without fbclid: I have not found "official" information about fbclid, but it appears that it is only attached to links in advertisements. In our traffic, varying with which FB source/medium you look at, only 2-4% of the traffic from FB has that parameter.