How to Create Google Analytics Segments

Drilling into your Google Analytics data can sometimes feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack of numbers. You have plenty of traffic, but who are these people, and what are specific groups doing? This is where segments come in handy. This article will walk you through exactly what Google Analytics segments are, how they work, and how to create your own to uncover much deeper insights about your audience.

What Are Google Analytics Segments?

Think of segments as powerful, temporary filters for your data. They let you isolate and analyze specific subsets of your users based on their shared characteristics or behaviors. Instead of looking at your entire audience - which is often a mix of different intentions, devices, and sources - segments allow you to zoom in on a particular group. For example, you could create a segment for:

• Users from a specific country, like Canada.
• Visitors who arrived from your latest email campaign.
• Customers who have made more than one purchase.
• Mobile users who abandoned their shopping carts.

By isolating these groups, you can understand their unique journeys, spot trends, identify high-value audiences, and discover opportunities that are impossible to see when looking at your data in aggregate.

Segments vs. Filters: A Crucial Distinction

New users often confuse segments with filters, but they function very differently. Understanding this difference is critical to maintaining clean and reliable data.

• Segments are non-destructive and temporary. Applying a segment doesn't permanently change your underlying data. You can apply and remove segments on the fly to explore your reports. Crucially, they can be applied to historical data, letting you look back in time to analyze past performance for a specific audience.
• Filters are destructive and permanent. When you create a view filter in Google Analytics, it permanently alters the data moving forward from the moment you apply it. For example, if you set up a filter to exclude traffic from your own company's IP address, that data is gone forever from that specific GA view. Filters cannot be applied retroactively to historical data.

In short: use segments for analysis and exploring subsets of data. Use filters for permanently cleaning and shaping the data collected in your account.

Types of Segments in Google Analytics 4

In Google Analytics 4, segments are primarily built and used within the "Explore" section to build custom reports. Unlike Universal Analytics, where you could apply them to most standard reports, GA4 segments are designed for deeper, ad-hoc analysis. There are three types of custom segments you can build:

1. User Segments: A user segment includes all data from every user who meets your criteria across all of their sessions. This scope is best for analyzing overall user behavior over time. For example: "Show me all users who have ever made a purchase."
2. Session Segments: A session segment groups together all the events that occurred within a single session where your defined criteria were met. This is ideal for answering questions about a single visit. For example: "Show me all sessions that started from my holiday marketing campaign."
3. Event Segments: This is the most granular level. An event segment isolates specific events that meet your criteria. It's useful for zooming in on individual interactions. For example: "Show me every 'add to cart' event for a specific product."

The type of segment you choose depends entirely on the question you're trying to answer. Are you interested in the user's lifetime behavior (User Segment), their behavior during a specific visit (Session Segment), or a particular action they took (Event Segment)?

How to Create a Custom Segment in Google Analytics 4: Step-by-Step

The best way to learn is by doing. Let's build a practical segment from scratch. Our goal will be to create a User Segment for valuable customers: "Users from the United States who have made a purchase."

Step 1: Go to the Explore Section

In the left-hand navigation menu of GA4, click on "Explore." This is where you conduct custom analysis and build detailed reports.

Step 2: Start a New "Free-form" Exploration

Click on the "Free-form" template to open a blank canvas. This is a versatile report type that's perfect for building and comparing segments.

Step 3: Click to Create a New Segment

In the first column, named "Variables," you'll see a section called "Segments." Click the plus sign (+) icon to start building a new segment.

Step 4: Choose Your Segment Type

A new panel will appear asking you what kind of segment you want to build. Since our goal is to analyze the long-term behavior of purchasers from the US, we'll choose a "User segment."

Step 5: Define Your Conditions

This is where you tell GA4 exactly who to include. A segment is built from "conditions," which are just rules based on dimensions or events.

Condition 1: Location In the builder, find the "Add new condition" area. Type in "Country" and select it under the 'Geography' category. Set the filter logic to "is one of" and select "United States." Your first condition is now set.

Condition 2: Behavior Click the "AND" button because you want to find users who meet the first condition and a second one. Add a new condition, but this time, search for and select the event named "purchase."

Your Segment Definition should now look something like this: Include users when: Country is one of United States AND 'purchase' (Event) is greater than 0

You can also create more complex logic using "OR" if you wanted to include users from multiple countries, or build sequences to analyze users who performed actions in a specific order (e.g., viewed a product THEN added to cart).

Step 6: Name and Save Your Segment

Before saving, give your segment a clear, descriptive name like "US Purchasers" at the top of the interface. On the right, GA4 will show you an estimate of how many users and sessions your segment includes. This is a great sanity check to see if your logic is working as expected. If everything looks good, click "Save and Apply."

Step 7: Apply the Segment to Your Report

After saving, you'll be taken back to your Exploration report. Your new segment, "US Purchasers," will automatically be applied as a comparison. You can now drag in dimensions (like Landing Page, or First User Campaign) and metrics (like Sessions, or Conversions) into the report canvas to analyze this specific group's behavior.

3 Practical Segment Examples to Get You Started

Now that you know how to build one, what are some of the most useful segments you can create? Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.

1. High-Engagement Users

• Type: User Segment
• Conditions: Event count of session_start > 3 AND Event count of page_view > 10.
• Why it's useful: This segment helps you identify your most loyal and engaged audience. These are repeat visitors who explore your site deeply. Analyze what content they consume, where they come from (source/medium), and what paths they take to understand what truly resonates with your core fans.

2. Cart Abandoners

• Type: User Segment
• Conditions: Include users when Event name is begin_checkout. Then, add an exclusion group to exclude users when Event name is purchase.
• Why it's useful: Nothing is more important for an e-commerce store than understanding why potential customers don't finish their purchases. This segment isolates that exact audience. You can analyze their device type (is there a bug on mobile?), their geographic location (are shipping costs too high?), or the pages they exited on to spot friction points in your checkout process. You can even use this audience for targeted remarketing campaigns.

3. High-Value Organic Traffic

• Type: Session Segment
• Conditions: Session source / medium contains 'google / organic' AND Event count of a conversion event (like generate_lead) > 0.
• Why it's useful: Not all organic traffic is created equal. This segment moves beyond just measuring clicks from search engines and filters for sessions that actually resulted in a desired business outcome. By applying this segment, you can find the specific landing pages and keywords that attract your most valuable organic visitors, allowing you to double down on your most effective SEO strategies.

Tips for Getting More From Your Segments

• Always Start With a Question. Don’t just build segments randomly. Your analysis will be far more effective if you start with a specific business question, like "Is our paid search campaign attracting the right kind of customers?" or "Do users from a specific blog post convert better than others?"
• Compare. Compare. Compare. The real magic happens when you compare segments against each other or against the "All Users" default. Comparing your "Converters" segment with your "Non-Converters" segment will immediately highlight the key behavioral differences you need to focus on.
• Use Descriptive Names. It’s a simple tip, but you'll be grateful later. "US Mobile Purchasers Aug 2024" is far more helpful than "Segment 2." Your future self - and your teammates - will thank you.
• Build a Segment Library. Once you create a useful segment in an exploration, it's saved in that report. You can create a master "Segment Library" exploration report where you build all your most important segments, ensuring consistency across your analyses.

Final Thoughts

Segments move you beyond vanity metrics, transforming Google Analytics from a simple traffic counter into a powerful user behavior analysis tool. By learning to isolate and analyze specific user groups, you can understand what truly drives your business, optimize your marketing efforts, and ultimately create better experiences for your most valuable customers.

Analyzing Google Analytics data, especially with custom segments, is a huge step up from simply watching traffic numbers. But blending those insights with data from all your other platforms - like your ad accounts, CRM, and e-commerce store - can quickly become a time-consuming manual effort. We built Graphed to solve exactly this frustration. You can connect your GA4 account and other data sources in a few clicks, then ask questions in simple language, like "Show my conversion rate from organic traffic split by landing page last quarter." Our AI finds the right data and instantly builds the report for you, so you can skip the setup and get straight to the insights.