entrance
Also called: entry page, entrances
In web analytics, an entrance (or entry page) is the page where a visitor's session begins. Google Analytics 4 counts it as the number of times the first event in a session happened on a given page. Entrances closely track a site's total sessions, though the two can differ because some sessions start without a pageview.
Entrance vs landing page
GA4 splits the idea into two objects. Entrances is a metric (a count), and Landing page is a dimension (the path where the session started). Pair them in an exploration and you get a ranked list of the pages that most often kick off a session.
A session usually logs one entrance, on its first page with a pageview. Every later page in that session records a view but zero entrances, which is why entrances closely track sessions. The two are not always identical: a session can begin without any pageview (for example, an event fires before the page loads), so total sessions can slightly exceed total entrances. Universal Analytics counted only the first pageview; GA4 widened the definition to the first event of any kind in a session, though pageviews still do most of the counting in practice.
Two derived numbers are worth watching. Entrance rate measures how often a page is the first one people see in a session, and it shows how much of a “front door” that page is. Its mirror is exits (the last event in a session) and exit rate. GA4 records entrances and exits automatically, so no extra tagging is required, though you view them through an exploration rather than a standard report.
For SEO, the entry page is where organic traffic actually lands, and that is rarely your homepage. Blog posts, comparison pages, and long-tail articles often carry the bulk of entrances. Each one is a first impression that decides whether a session continues or bounces, so knowing your top entry pages tells you which URLs are doing the real work of pulling people in.
How it affects your traffic
Your top entry pages are the ones Google actually ranks and sends sessions to, so they set the ceiling on your organic traffic. If those pages are slow, thin, mis-titled, or aimed at the wrong intent, every visitor who lands there is at risk, and fixing them moves more traffic than polishing pages nobody enters on. An SEO audit reads your entrance data first, then checks whether each top entry page is indexable, fast, and matched to the query it ranks for, so effort goes where sessions actually begin.
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