Let’s talk about segments in GA4. But, wait—for the most part, there aren’t segments in the Reports section of GA4, where we’d expect to see them. Comparisons are close, but the capabilities are a far cry from what we had in Universal Analytics.
In both Universal Analytics (UA) and GA4, a “segment” is a subset of your Analytics data, either users, sessions, or interactions in a session. In Universal Analytics, you can define a segment based on any number of characteristics—demographics, user behavior, and more—and save it. You can then view just about any report in Universal Analytics through the lens of that segment, and compare it to another segment, or all website data.
In GA4, segments are only available in Explorations, not the Reporting section where the most common reports are found. Explorations feel like a place to investigate, not a place to monitor regular website metrics.
In the Reports section of GA4, we have “comparisons” available, but they are really limited. You can’t save your comparison settings, so you have to recreate your settings every time, which is pretty tedious.
There is a workaround for adding functionality similar to Universal Analytics’s segments in GA4. After creating and saving an audience, you can use that in any comparison in GA4. In the video and the steps below, we’ll show how.
As an example, let’s create a “segment” of users who started their session on one of the blog pages.
Note: Audiences start collecting data only after they’re created. When you create an audience, from this point forward, users will get added to this audience. But it doesn’t work retroactively, the way that segments did in Universal Analytics. Right now, no one is in your audience, but from this point forward, GA4 will add users to this audience if they meet the criteria.
Segments allow you to view data for sessions/users that share common characteristics like geographical location or device type, while comparisons allow you to analyze different segments side by side. Segments are good for collecting sessions/users into groups you’re interested in, and comparisons are good for evaluating how those groups match up. Segments are only available in the Explorations section of GA4.
You can add comparisons to any page in the Reports section of GA4. On desktop, at the top of each report, there will be a button to “Add comparison” followed by a plus sign.
There are several limitations of GA4’s comparisons. The most similar feature to comparisons in Universal Analytics is/was segments, which offered more options for customizing the data you can filter. You also cannot save previously configured comparisons, meaning that every time you want to add a comparison to a report you need to select the specific parameters. You can work around this fact by creating predefined audiences that you can select within the comparison builder, per our instructions above.
It turns out you can have your cake and eat it too! By setting up Audiences in GA4, we can save segment-like conditions and then use them in comparisons in the main Reports section of GA4. We hope this helps you feel more at home with GA4 reports, more like the old days with good ol’ Universal Analytics.
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