Pageviews tell you what got read. Journeys tells you what readers did next. For any article in the Unified Dashboard, Journeys shows the links readers clicked from that article, so your editorial, audience, and revenue teams can see which internal links drive readers deeper into your site and which external links, such as affiliate or partner links, are earning clicks.
Journeys is included for all Chartbeat accounts and works with your existing Chartbeat tracking code. No additional implementation is required. The optional Page Variant filter requires a small addition to your tracking configuration (see below).
Where to find it
Journeys is available at the article level in the Unified Dashboard. Click any article in Top Pages to open its Article Detail view, then find the Next Pages module. The Next Pages data respects the date range and filters you have applied to the dashboard.
Next Pages: Internal and External links
Next Pages lists every link readers clicked from the article you are viewing (the "source page"), grouped into two views:
- Internal: links to other pages on the same site (for example, related articles, section fronts, or your homepage). Use this view to understand recirculation and which links keep readers on your site.
- External: links that take readers off your site, including affiliate and commerce links, partner sites, other sources, and sites in your network. Use this view to measure the performance of monetized and partner links at the article level.
Sorting Next Pages
You can sort Next Pages by any of the following:
- Clicks: the total number of clicks on that link from the source page during the selected time range.
- CTR (click-through rate): clicks on the link divided by pageviews of the source page you are viewing. CTR tells you how effective a link is relative to how many readers saw the page, which makes it easier to compare links on high- and low-traffic articles.
- Link Position: an estimate of where the link sits on the page, measured as vertical (scroll depth) position. Sorting by Link Position lets you see how far down the page readers are clicking. Because this is an estimate based on the clicks we observe, it can be inaccurate for pages or links with low traffic.
Filtering by Page Variant
Page Variant is a new page metadata field that lets you send Chartbeat the version of a page a reader was on. It is designed for teams that run different versions of the same page, for example:
- A homepage with regional editions (North America vs. International)
- A homepage that differs for guests vs. logged-in readers
- An article page where you are testing a new layout against the current one
When Page Variant data is being sent, Journeys lets you filter Next Pages by variant so you can compare clicks and CTR for each version of the page. Pageviews and clicks from pages with no variant set are grouped under Default.
To use the Page Variant filter, your web team needs to add the pageVariantId variable to your Chartbeat tracking configuration. See the implementation instructions at https://docs.chartbeat.com/cbp/tracking/standard-websites/configuration-variables#page-variant.
Tips for using Journeys
- Sort Internal links by CTR to find the related-article placements that work best, then reuse those placements on other stories.
- Filter by External links to see which affiliate or partner links readers act on most, and by CTR to see which ones perform best relative to traffic.
- Sort by Link Position to check whether high-value links are placed too far down the page to be seen.
- Combine Page Variant with CTR to compare how the same link performs across two versions of a page.