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Internal linking, structure & UX

Click path

Also known as: Click Path

A click path (also clickstream) is the sequence of pages a visitor views on a website, in the order they were viewed. It shows which routes people take to a goal or to the exit. In software manuals “click path” can also mean the menu route to a function. This entry covers the web analytics meaning.

How is a click path analyzed?

Google Analytics 4 offers path exploration for this. It draws the steps as a tree, starting from a chosen page or event, or working backward from a goal. Each column is one step, and nodes show values such as page paths or event names.

For SEO, a click path can show whether visitors use internal links and where they leave (assessment). Click depth is a different measure. It counts the clicks needed to reach a page from the homepage and describes the site structure, regardless of which routes visitors take. Crawlers report it as crawl depth.

Site architecture and click depthTree of a website: the home page is at depth 0, categories A and B at depth 1, three subcategories at depth 2, three products at depth 3. Product 1 is reached via the home page, category A and subcategory A1, and its breadcrumb shows that path. On the right is an orphan page that no internal page links to.Depth0Depth1Depth2Depth3Home pageCategory ACategory BSubcat. A1Subcat. A2Subcat. B1Product 1Product 2Product 3no linksOrphan pageno link points hereBreadcrumb on Product 1Home page › Category A › Subcat. A1 › Product 1Click depth = number of links from the home page. Google finds pages mainly through links.
Each level sits one click further from the home page. Google finds pages mainly through links and recommends that every page you care about gets a link from at least one other page on the site. The breadcrumb shows the page’s position in the hierarchy. Sources: Google Search Central: Link best practices for Google; Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide; Google Search Central: Breadcrumb (BreadcrumbList) structured data.

Example

A visit starts with a search result for a guide. The visitor then opens a category page, a product page, the cart and the order confirmation. These five steps in that order form the click path. If the visit ends on the product page, path exploration shows that exit point.

Sources

  1. Path exploration – Google Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
  2. Click path – Wikipedia (secondary)en.wikipedia.org
  3. Click Path – Seobility Wiki (secondary)seobility.net

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