How to Create a Simple Dashboard in Google Analytics with AI
You know there are valuable insights hiding in your Google Analytics account, but turning that dense data into a simple, clear dashboard can be a real struggle. Google Analytics 4 is incredibly powerful, but its interface can feel overwhelming. This guide will show you how to use GA4's often-overlooked AI search feature to ask direct questions, get instant answers, and assemble a custom report that actually makes sense to you.
Why Building Reports in GA4 Can Be a Headache
Google Analytics 4 promised a more flexible, user-centric way to understand website and app behavior. While it delivers on that promise for data analysts, for busy marketers, founders, and content creators, it often presents more challenges than its predecessor, Universal Analytics.
The standard, out-of-the-box reports in GA4 are a firehose of information. You're presented with a wall of charts and tables, each packed with metrics. Buried in there is the answer to "Which blog post drove the most new users last month?" or "How many leads did our latest social campaign generate?" but finding it requires knowing exactly where to look, which filters to apply, and how to interpret the results. It's easy to get lost.
To go deeper, GA4 pushes you toward the "Explorations" section. This is a powerful workspace where you can build completely custom reports, Funnel explorations, and Path explorations. The problem? It comes with a steep learning curve. Creating a simple table showing sessions by landing page from a specific traffic source requires manually dragging and dropping dimensions, metrics, and filters. It feels less like asking a question and more like assembling a complex puzzle. You just want quick answers, not a part-time job as a data analyst.
Using GA4's Built-in 'Analytics Intelligence' for Quick Insights
Tucked away in plain sight at the top of every GA4 screen is a search bar with the prompt "Search & ask Analytics Intelligence." Most users ignore it, assuming it's for finding settings or help articles. In reality, it's a direct line to GA4’s built-in AI, allowing you to ask questions about your data in plain English.
This feature won’t build you a full-blown, multi-tabbed interactive dashboard, but it’s the fastest way to get specific data points visualized and then assemble them into a simplified, custom report overview. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: Find and Use the Search Bar
Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property. At the very top of the page, you'll see the search bar. This is your command center. Instead of navigating through the left-hand menu, you’ll start all your queries here.
Step 2: Ask a Direct Question
Click on the search bar and type your question. You don’t need to know the official names for every metric or dimension, as the AI is pretty good at translating common language into GA4 terminology. As you type, GA4 will suggest questions, dimensions, and metrics, which can help guide you.
Think about what you want to know and start typing. Here are some examples of effective prompts:
For Content Performance: Top pages by user last 30 days or How many users from Google last week?
For E-commerce: show me revenue by item name for the last 7 days or Total revenue on Black Friday
For Lead Generation: How many form_submission events in the United States?
For Overall Traffic Trends: Users from Canada compared to users from Mexico over the last quarter
For Technical Analysis: Users by browser or Sessions from mobile devices vs desktop
Press Enter, and GA4 will process your request and present the answer in a pop-up "Insights card." This card usually contains a quick summary and a chart (often a bar chart or line graph) visualizing the data.
Step 3: Add Your Insight to a Custom Report
Answering a single question is useful, but the real magic is in collecting these answers to form a simple dashboard. Once GA4 shows you an Insight card, you have an opportunity to save it.
In the top right corner of the Insights panel, you'll see a small “Share & Export” icon. Click it, and then click “Add to a report.” GA4 will prompt you to add it to an existing "Reports snapshot" or create a new one. Think of this snapshot as your custom, at-a-glance dashboard.
Step 4: Keep Asking and Adding
Now, just repeat the process. Close the current insights panel and go back to the search bar. Ask your next question. Maybe this time you want to see your top traffic channels.
Try a prompt like: Top channels by session last 30 days
When the Insights card appears, add it to your report just like you did before. Continue this process for your top 5-10 key metrics:
Your main traffic sources
Top converting pages
Revenue trends
User engagement by device
Performance in key geographic regions
After a few minutes of asking questions and adding cards, you'll have assembled a collection of your most important metrics in one place. You can access this report directly from the "Reports" section, giving you a quick, customized view you designed yourself without needing to fight with the Exploration builder. It might not look as polished as a Tableau dashboard, but it puts your essential KPIs front and center.
The Limits of GA4's Native AI
While using Analytics Intelligence is a great shortcut, it's important to understand its limitations. This approach is a fantastic way to bypass the complexity of the main interface for simple questions, but it's not a true substitute for a dedicated business intelligence tool.
1. It's More of an 'Answer Engine' Than a Dashboard Builder
The system is designed to provide quick, individual insights. The "dashboard" you create is just a collection of these static insight cards. You can't drill down into the data directly from the card, adjust date ranges for all cards at once, or see how they interact with each other. It’s a snapshot, not a dynamic, interactive workspace.
2. The AI Can Be Finicky
Sometimes, the AI doesn't understand your question or misinterprets it. You might ask for "leads from our last campaign" and get a generic summary of conversions instead. You often have to rephrase your questions using more specific GA4 terminology (e.g., using "session default channel group" instead of "channels") to get an accurate answer, which new users may not know.
3. It Lives in a Silo
This is the biggest limitation. Your Google Analytics data tells you what's happening on your website, but that's only one piece of the puzzle. It knows nothing about your other marketing and sales activities. You can't ask it crucial business questions like:
"What was our ROI on Facebook Ads this month?"
"How many Shopify sales came from our recent email campaign?"
"Which Salesforce leads originated from organic search?"
To answer those questions, you’re back to where you started: exporting CSV files from multiple platforms and manually stitching them together in a spreadsheet. GA4's AI can analyze what it sees, but its vision is restricted to its own dataset.
Beyond Simple Insights: What a True AI Analyst Can Do
The process of using GA4’s search bar is a step in the right direction - it shows that the future of data analysis isn't about memorizing menu locations or learning a complex tool. It’s about asking questions in your own language and getting immediate, understandable answers.
A true AI-powered analytics experience takes this idea much further. It breaks down the data silos by connecting directly to all your different tools: your ad platforms, your e-commerce store, your CRM, and your email service. This allows it to see the full customer journey, from the first ad they saw to the deal they closed with your sales team.
Instead of just answering a question, a more advanced AI can create a truly interactive, real-time dashboard for you in seconds. You can describe what you want - "Create a dashboard showing our marketing funnel, from ad spend to Shopify revenue, by campaign" - and watch it get built instantly, pulling in live data from all your connected sources.
Final Thoughts
Using Google Analytics 4’s built-in AI search is a clever and effective way to get quick answers and build a simple, customized report snapshot without getting tangled in the complexity of the Exploration builder. It lets you bypass the menus and get straight to the insights you care about most, one question at a time.
However, to see the full picture - tying ad spend to sales revenue or website behavior to downstream customer value - you need a tool that can look beyond a single data source. We built Graphed to solve this exact problem. By connecting all your tools in one place, we enable you to ask questions in plain English and instantly get live, cross-platform dashboards that update in real-time, giving you the complete story of your business performance in seconds, not hours.