How to Create a Report in Google Analytics with AI
Wrestling with Google Analytics 4 can feel like trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. If you're struggling to build meaningful reports in GA4, using AI can be a game-changer, turning confusing data into clear, actionable insights. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create reports in Google Analytics using its built-in AI, as well as how to connect it to more advanced tools for even richer analysis.
Why GA4 Reporting Can Be So Challenging
If you find GA4's reporting interface less intuitive than you'd like, you're not alone. The shift from Universal Analytics to an event-based model means many of the familiar, pre-built reports are gone. Instead, GA4 gives you powerful but complex tools like "Explorations," which require a significant learning curve to master.
For many marketers and business owners, the goal isn’t to become a data analyst, it’s to get quick answers to simple questions:
Which of our marketing campaigns are driving the most sales?
Where is our website traffic coming from?
How are users behaving on our key landing pages?
Manually building these reports in GA4 can be a time-consuming and frustrating task. This is precisely where AI-powered features come in to bridge the gap, making data analysis accessible to everyone, not just the experts.
Using GA4’s Built-In AI for Quick Insights
Google Analytics 4 has two primary AI-driven features designed to give you quick answers without needing to build a custom report from scratch: Analytics Intelligence Search and Automated Insights.
1. Ask Questions with the Analytics Intelligence Search Bar
One of the most underutilized features in GA4 is the search bar at the very top of your dashboard. This isn't just for finding a specific report, it's a powerful natural language search engine that can answer your questions and create mini-reports on the fly.
Instead of clicking through menus, you can simply type your question in plain English. GA4's intelligence will interpret your query and pull the relevant data for you.
How to Use It:
Go to your GA4 property's home screen.
Locate the search bar at the top, which says "Search in reports and press / to search."
Type a question about your data. Be as specific or as general as you need.
Examples of Questions You Can Ask:
"How many new users did we get last week?"
"Compare traffic from Google vs. Facebook last month."
"Top pages by views in the last 7 days."
"What is the conversion rate for users on mobile devices?"
"Users by country for the past year."
When you ask a question, a dropdown will appear with an instant answer, often accompanied by a small chart or graph. You can click on the answer to be taken to a more detailed, auto-generated report card. It’s the fastest way to get a simple data point without navigating the standard reporting interface.
2. Leverage Automated Insights and Alerts
GA4's machine learning constantly analyzes your data in the background to spot significant trends, anomalies, or changes you might otherwise miss. These findings are presented on cards on your "Home" report and your "Reports snapshot."
For example, GA4 might automatically generate an insight like:
"Spike in weekly users from the 'Summer Sale' campaign."
"45% increase in revenue from a specific product last week."
"Unexpected drop in user engagement from organic social traffic."
These automated insights are incredibly valuable because they surface opportunities and potential issues without you having to go digging for them yourself.
Creating Custom Insights (Alerts)
You can also create your own custom insights to monitor for specific occurrences. Think of these as intelligent alerts that notify you when something important happens.
Here’s how to set one up:
Click on any insight card you see in your reports. At the bottom of the right-hand panel, click "View all insights."
On the insights screen, click the "Create" button in the top right.
You'll be asked to set up the conditions for your alert. You can choose to be evaluated on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Define the conditions. For instance, you could create an alert for a sudden drop in e-commerce transactions.
Metric: "Transactions"
Condition: "% decrease is more than"
Value: "20%"
Compared to: "Previous day"
Name your alert (e.g., "Daily Transaction Drop Alert") and specify who should be notified via email.
Click "Create" in the top right.
Now, if your daily transactions ever drop by more than 20%, you and your team will receive an email alert. This proactive monitoring helps you react to issues immediately.
Going Beyond GA4: Analyzing Your Data with External AI Tools
While GA4’s built-in AI is great for quick snapshots, you'll often need more advanced analysis. A common workflow is to export GA4 data and use more robust AI platforms like ChatGPT or dedicated analytics tools.
Analyzing GA4 Exports with ChatGPT
ChatGPT and other large language models are surprisingly adept at performing data analysis on structured data, like a CSV file you export out of Google Analytics.
Step-by-Step Process:
Create a Report in GA4 Explorations: First, you need to gather the data. Let’s say you want to analyze your traffic sources. Go to Explore > Free Form and build a simple report with "Session source/medium" as the row, and "Sessions," "Engaged sessions," "Conversions," and "Total revenue" as the columns.
Export the Data: In the top right of your Exploration report, click the share icon and select "Download File" > "CSV."
Upload to ChatGPT: In a ChatGPT-4 chat window, click the paperclip icon and upload your CSV file.
Prompt for Analysis: Provide a clear prompt explaining what the data is and what you want to know. For example:
“This is a CSV file exported from my Google Analytics account. It shows traffic performance by source. Please do the following:”
Identify the top 3 traffic sources by total revenue.
Calculate the conversion rate for each source (conversions divided by sessions).
Summarize the findings and suggest which channel seems most effective and why.
ChatGPT will perform the calculations and provide a written analysis, saving you the manual work in a spreadsheet. However, there are key limitations to remember: the data is static (it won't update in real-time), and there's always a risk of AI "hallucinations" or misinterpreted data.
The Modern Approach: AI Analytics Platforms with Direct GA4 Connectors
The manual export-import process introduces friction and relies on static data. A far more efficient solution is to use one of the new breeds of AI analytics platforms that connect directly to your Google Analytics account via an API.
These platforms completely eliminate the tedious work of reporting by allowing you to create entire dashboards just by describing what you want in plain English. They act as an intelligent layer on top of your GA4 data, giving you the real-time insights you need without the steep learning curve.
With a tool like this, your workflow becomes effortless. You simply connect your GA4 account once, then you can start asking questions like:
"Show me a line chart of daily active users from GA4 over the last 90 days."
"Create a report that compares my Google Ads spend vs. the revenue attributed to those campaigns in GA4."
"Which landing pages are generating the most conversions from organic traffic?"
The AI will instantly build an interactive, live-updating dashboard to answer your question. This is the most powerful and efficient way to use AI for GA4 reporting because it combines the simplicity of natural language with the power of real-time, accurate data.
Final Thoughts
Creating reports in Google Analytics doesn't have to be a battle. By leaning into AI - whether it’s using GA4's native search and insights, analyzing exports with ChatGPT, or leveraging a fully integrated AI analytics platform - you can get over the technical hurdles and focus on what the data is actually telling you. AI empowers you to move from data gathering to data-driven decision-making, faster than ever before.
At my company, we built Graphed to be the intuitive AI data analyst we always wished we had. Instead of wrestling with GA4 explorations or dealing with static CSV exports, you can simply connect your Google Analytics account and ask for the reports you need in plain English. Graphed automatically builds live, interactive dashboards, helping you combine your GA4 data with other sources like your ad platforms and CRM to get a complete picture of your business's performance in seconds.