How to Create Custom Reports in Google Analytics 4

Going beyond the standard reports is where you'll find the most valuable insights in Google Analytics 4. While the default dashboards are great for a quick overview, they rarely answer the specific, nuanced questions you have about your business. This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to build powerful custom reports in GA4's 'Explorations' workspace.

Why Create Custom Reports in GA4?

The pre-built reports in GA4, like the "Traffic acquisition" or "Pages and screens" reports, are designed to give a general overview of your website traffic and user behavior. They answer common questions, but they often lack the specificity your team needs. Your business has unique goals, specific customer segments, and campaigns that don't fit neatly into a pre-made template.

Creating custom reports allows you to:

Answer Specific Business Questions: Instead of asking "How much traffic did we get?" you can ask, "Which blog posts published last month drove the most newsletter signups from organic search visitors using a mobile device?"
Focus on Relevant Metrics: You can filter out the distracting metrics that don't matter to your key performance indicators (KPIs) and build a report that only shows the dimensions and metrics you truly care about.
Combine Data in New Ways: Custom reports let you mix and match dimensions and metrics to uncover relationships you wouldn’t see in the standard reports. For example, you might combine user location, device category, and conversion data to inform your regional marketing strategy.

Essentially, custom reporting transforms GA4 from a generic analytics tool into a bespoke business intelligence platform tailored to your specific needs.

Understanding the 'Explorations' Workspace

If you're coming from Universal Analytics, the process for creating custom reports has changed significantly. In GA4, all custom reporting happens within a dedicated section called 'Explorations'. Think of it as your analytics sandbox - a place where you can freely build, test, and visualize data without altering any of the standard reports.

When you first open 'Explorations', you'll see a gallery of templates and the option to start a blank one. To build a custom table or chart from scratch, you'll almost always start with the "Free form" exploration. Let's break down the "Free form" interface into its core components.

1. Variables Column

On the far left, you'll find the "Variables" panel. This section acts as your palette. It holds all the potential ingredients - Dimensions and Metrics - that you can use to build your report. Before you can use a dimension or metric in your report, you must first add it here by clicking the plus (+) icon next to each section.

Dimensions: These are the attributes or characteristics of your data. Think of them as the "what" or "who" categories. Examples include 'Page path', 'Device category', 'Country', and 'First user source'.
Metrics: These are the quantitative measurements - the numbers. They represent the "how many" or "how much". Examples are 'Sessions', 'Users', 'Conversions', and 'Event count'.

2. Tab Settings Column

The "Tab Settings" column in the middle is where you assemble your report. You build it by dragging and dropping the dimensions and metrics from your "Variables" palette into the appropriate fields in this section. This column controls what the report on the right actually shows and how it's visualized.

Technique: For this guide, we'll stick to "Free form," which creates tables and charts. Other techniques allow for funnel and path analysis.
Visualization: You can choose how your data is displayed. The default is 'Table', but you can change it to a 'Donut chart', 'Line chart', 'Scatter plot', and more.
Rows, Columns, and Values: These are the structural components of your report. You'll drag Dimensions into 'Rows' or 'Columns' to structure your data, and drag Metrics into 'Values' to populate the report with numbers.
Filters & Segments: This is where the real customization happens. You can apply filters to narrow down your data (e.g., show only 'Organic Traffic') or apply segments to analyze a specific subset of users (e.g., 'Mobile Users').

3. The Canvas

On the far right is the 'Canvas'. This large area is where your report visualization appears. As you add, remove, or change elements in the "Tab Settings" column, the report on the canvas will update in real time.

Step-by-Step Guide: Building a Content Performance Report

Theory is great, but the best way to learn is by doing. Let's build a common and highly useful custom report: a Content Performance Report that shows us which landing pages are most effective at driving sessions and conversions specifically from organic traffic.

Step 1: Navigate to Explorations

In the left-hand navigation of GA4, click on Explore. This will take you to the 'Explorations' gallery.

Step 2: Start a New "Free form" Exploration

In the template gallery, click on the large blank box titled Free form. This will open a new, empty exploration report for you to work with.

Step 3: Name Your Report

In the top left corner, click on "Free-form Exploration" and give it a descriptive name, like "Organic Content Performance Report". This will make it much easier to find later.

Step 4: Add Your Dimensions to the Variables Palette

In the "Variables" column, find the 'Dimensions' section and click the plus icon (+).

A panel will slide out showing all available dimensions. Use the search bar to find and select the following dimensions. Check the box next to each one:

Landing page + query string (This shows the first page a user landed on during their session)
Session source / medium (This is how we'll isolate our organic traffic)

Once both are selected, click the blue Import button in the top right to add them to your palette.

Step 5: Add Your Metrics to the Variables Palette

Now, do the same thing for metrics. In the "Variables" column, find the 'Metrics' section and click the plus icon (+).

Search for and select these essential performance metrics:

Sessions
Engaged sessions
Conversions

Click the Import button to add them to your metric palette.

Step 6: Build the Report Structure

This is where it all comes together. Go to the "Tab Settings" column and drag and drop the dimensions and metrics from the "Variables" column into the appropriate fields:

Drag Landing page + query string from 'Dimensions' into the Rows field.
Drag Sessions, Engaged sessions, and Conversions from 'Metrics' into the Values field.

Almost instantly, you’ll see a table appear on the canvas to the right. It will be populated with all your landing pages and show the sessions, engaged sessions, and total conversions for each one. But this is for all traffic — we only want to see organic.

Step 7: Filter for Organic Traffic

This is the final step that customizes the report for our specific question. In the "Tab Settings" column, scroll down to the bottom where you see a section titled Filters. Click "Drop or select dimension or metric."

Choose Session source / medium from the list.

Now, configure the filter settings:

Set the match type to contains.
In the 'Enter expression' field, type organic.

Click the blue Apply button. The table on your canvas will immediately update, filtering out all other traffic sources. You're now looking at a powerful custom report showing content performance for only visitors who arrived from an organic search channel.

Advanced Tips for Custom Reporting

Once you've mastered the basics of building a report, you can begin to use more advanced features to find deeper insights.

Change the Visualization

You’re not limited to tables. In the "Tab Settings" panel, look for the 'Visualization' section. You can change this to a 'Bar chart' to quickly see your top-performing pages or a 'Line chart' if you add a time-based dimension (like 'Date') to see trends over time.

Use Comparisons

Above 'Filters', you'll find the 'Segment comparisons' section. You can use this to compare different user groups side-by-side. For example, you could drag in the pre-built 'Mobile Traffic' and 'Tablet and desktop traffic' segments to see how content performance differs across device types.

Save and Share

Your exploration saves automatically. You can find it again anytime in the main 'Explorations' view. To share your report with a team member, simply click the share icon in the top right. Be aware that this gives them read-only access to view and export the report data, they cannot edit your original exploration.

Final Thoughts

Learning to build custom reports in GA4's Explorations workspace is a fundamental skill for moving beyond surface-level metrics. It unlocks the ability to ask very specific questions of your data and get clear, focused answers that help you make better marketing and business decisions.

Connecting all your data sources and building these reports, even within a single tool like GA4, can quickly become repetitive and time-consuming. We know data analysis often becomes a frustrating time-suck, which is why we built Graphed. It allows you to connect your marketing and sales platforms (like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and Shopify) and then simply ask in plain English for the dashboard you need. Instead of manually building reports, you can get real-time answers and cross-channel insights in seconds, giving you back time to focus on strategy.