In this SharePoint 2016 tutorial we will discuss SharePoint 2016 usage analytics and about web analytics in SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2013/2016.
Web Analytics has become a component of Search Service in SharePoint 2016. Things like views, click distance, social tags, and social distance are all things we’re used to with search engines and social networking sites and will now be part of SharePoint 2016.
Activate Web Analytics in SharePoint
To activate web Analytics on a site collection in SharePoint server 2016, following the below steps.
Go to Site Settings->site collection administrator->Click on site collection features (see the feature is highlighted in below screen).

In site collection feature, for activating Reporting feature click on the active button.

Two things would be added after activating the Reporting, i) “Popularity Trends” option is added under site administration and ii) “Popularity and Search Reports” option added under Site collection administration (please check the image below).

Popularity Trends
This is an excel report showing daily and monthly statistics for item hits/users in SharePoint 2016. We can get this report at different levels-Site Collection, Site, and List/Library item.
Go to “Popularity Trends” and click on it. It will give us usage information about the site, such as the number of views and unique users. Use this report to identify usage trends and to determine times of high and low activity. See the below screenshots for understanding.

For a specific page, we can access the “popularity trends” through the ribbon, under the “Share & Track group”.

Click on “popularity trends” and save the excel file and open it. It will give the graphical representation of the data in the report.

For specific list/library, Select an item from the library for which report is required and go to File tab and click on popularity trends from “Share & Track”.

Now it is downloaded and open the excel file see the below screen in the graphical representation of the data in the report.

Popularity and Search Reports
Go to “Popularity search reports” and click on it. We will get to a window where you can view the “Usage reports” and “Search reports”.

Download the above excel files and see, it will give the graphical representation of the data in the report. See below report how it will look like. It gives us a daily view as well as a monthly view.
SharePoint 2016 Usage report example

SharePoint Search Report example
Below is a SharePoint search report example.

Most Popular Items in SharePoint
This report shows the most popular item usage types for all item in the list/library in SharePoint 2016/2013. We can get this report at different levels-Site Collection, Site, and List/Library item. To access this functionality within a document library, click the “Most Popular Items” button in the ribbon:

Click on Most Popular Items, we’ll get search results for the document library which we can view by:-
Most Viewed Documents in SharePoint
By default, the report lists items in the list/library that has most views for the recent time period.

Most viewed by unique users
The below reports shows most viewed items or documents by unique users in SharePoint 2016/2013 or SharePoint Online.

Most recommendation clicks
Below it is showing most popular items in SharePoint usage report.

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Here I explained sharepoint 2016 usage analytics, sharepoint online usage analytics, and web analytics sharepoint online or SharePoint 2013/2016.
Hello Everyone!! I am Bhawana a SharePoint MVP and having about 10+ years of SharePoint experience as well as in .Net technologies. I have worked in all the versions of SharePoint from wss to Office 365. I have good exposure in Customization and Migration using Nintex, Metalogix tools. Now exploring more in SharePoint 2016 🙂 Hope here I can contribute and share my knowledge to the fullest. As I believe “There is no wealth like knowledge and no poverty like ignorance”