Please Note: The following blog was written November 2022. As a developing tool, GA4 is constantly evolving. As such, parts of the information below may no longer be accurate if you're viewing this blog at a later date.
Custom views and filtering are a core functionality of Universal Analytics (UA). They allow you to create customized segments of your data to analyze. You can also define what you don't want to see - like internal traffic or spam traffic. With the switch to Google Analytics 4, a great first step is to start setting up the same views you had in your UA view.
Before I get into the meat of this blog post, I need to rip off a band-aid first:
If you've spent any time playing around with GA4, you probably already know that views are no longer technically available, at least not the way they used to work in UA. GA4 did away with views because the fundamentals of Google Analytics shifted to prioritize mobile and focus on events.
If you're looking to create a custom view like you would in UA - that's no longer an option. However, that doesn't mean that you can't still find details on data and traffic in GA4. You just have to do it a little differently.
Data filters parse out internal or developer traffic similarly to how you would work with views in UA. Explorations create reporting that filters out other traffic so you can focus on specific traffic, such as creating a custom view in UA to look at mobile-only traffic.
Skip to a section:
Use this for: Filtering out internal traffic or developer traffic
One of the key ways views in UA are currently used is to filter out your own employees and developers so that you're not counting their traffic while looking at overall data. Because of how important this is, it's still an option in GA4 in the form of data filters. Currently, only two types of data filters are available: internal traffic and developer traffic.
By default, GA4 includes a custom event parameter of traffic_type with a value of internal, but you have to tell Analytics which IPs are your internal traffic.
How to Define Internal Traffic
Here's a video showing you how to define internal traffic:
How to Exclude Internal Traffic Using Data Filters
Here's a video showing you how to exclude internal traffic using data filters:
By default, developer traffic originates on development devices and is identified with the event parameter debug_mode=1 or debug_event=1. This means you don't need to define your developer traffic like you need to with internal traffic and can instead cut straight to creating a data filter.
Here's a video showing you how:
Use this for: Creating something like custom views in UA, to focus in on specific audience segments or areas of your site, OR to exclude other traffic not offered in data filters
If you currently use custom views and/or filters in UA to segment your data, then you'll want to create Explorations in GA4 to capture that same data. Explorations in GA4 are sort of like the superpowered child of Filters and Reporting in UA - they give you advanced techniques to filter, configure, and sort data.
Creating an exploration is a simple three-step process:
Now, it's steps two and three where it's a bit more complicated. It is truly open to whatever it is you want to look at, data-wise. The key is to know what you want to report on and the options you have in the editor:
PRO TIP: There is no option to "save" or "publish" an Exploration. Instead, it saves automatically as you create the Exploration.
The best way to get familiar with Explorations is to play around directly with the tool. If you don't want to mess around in your own account, you can use the free Google Demo account to create Explorations and get a feel for how they work.
For example, here is a very basic Exploration looking at first visits (on web), first opens (on app), and entrances (both) per user for Minneapolis traffic only:
So far I've covered creating a "view" to remove internal and developer traffic, but the other common use of views and filters in UA is to try and remove spam and bot traffic. For example, if you notice a lot of traffic from a suspicious URL or if you need to filter out specific countries, right now you create that as a view and/or filter in UA.
That is no longer an option in GA4. As of now, there are two things to know:
We'll keep you posted as soon as updates come from Google, but as of now the only strategy to replicate this action from Universal Analytics is to rely on known data and create Explorations.
GA4 is completely free to use and set up. However, it will only start pulling data from the date it's created, and only uses default data unless you customize your settings. If you want historic data pulling through as well as custom events and data streams to truly reflect the metrics that matter to you, you need an expert.
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