What's the difference between Second Page and Next Page Path?

Question

What's the difference between Second Page and Next Page Path for a Landing Page?

Edit1 I'm not able to upload attachments yet so I uploaded two screenshots here:

I go to "Site Content->Landing Page" and select "Second Page" and "Next Page Path" as secondary dimension respectively.
I'm a little confused about the results... You can see that we get a lot of results with "Second Page" as secondary dimension, but only one result using "Next Page Path" as secondary dimension.
So what's the difference between the two?

What I actually want to get is: I give a customized visit flow/path to GA (PageA->PageB->PageC), and GA tells me how many visitors follow this route.

Solution 1

"Next page path": the next page after visiting the page you have selected for analysis "Second page": the absolute second page of the visit.

Second page works if the page you are currently viewing, is indeed the landing page (first page) of the visit. If you are viewing data of a page the visitor just viewed somewhere during his visit, it is not the next page in the flow.

Example:

The visit: Page A > Page B > Page C > Page D

If you add 'next page' as a second dimension to Page A, it will show Page B. If you add 'second page' as a second dimension to Page A, it will show Page B. If you add 'next page' as a second dimension to Page C, it will show Page D. If you add 'second page' as a second dimension to Page C, it will show Page B.

Solution 2

Next page path is deprecated . Google Analytics tracks the page you are on, and it records the page you came from. Since it can't know where you are going next, it can't record the 'next page'.

In the application, the 'next page' is actually the same as the 'page'. The 'previous page' is where they came from. They intended that you use 'next page' and 'previous page' together. You should not be used them with 'page'.

If you see 'next page' and 'previous page' being the same, people are refreshing the page or clicking a link that redirects them to a point elsewhere on the same page.

And Second Page Path is the second page in a user's session.So The Second Page will always be the second page browsed in a session.

Comments

[ChandlerQ]

but what's the difference between "Next Page Path" and "Second Page"?

[ChandlerQ]

Still not clear about "Next Page Path"...