How to Create Segments in Google Analytics 4

Unlock deeper insights into your audience's behavior by learning how to group them into specific, meaningful buckets inside Google Analytics 4. GA4 segments are a powerful tool for comparing different user groups, and this guide will walk you through exactly how to create and apply them. We’ll cover the different types of segments, provide a step-by-step tutorial, and share some practical tips to get you started.

What Are Segments in GA4, Anyway?

Segments are simply subsets of your data. Think of them as filters you can apply to your analysis to isolate and compare specific groups of users, sessions, or events. Instead of looking at all your website traffic as one giant blob, segments allow you to ask and answer more specific questions, like:

• How do users who found us through Facebook Ads behave differently than users from organic search?
• What are the most popular pages for visitors from a specific country, like Canada?
• What actions do users take before making their first purchase?
• How engaged are users who came to our site on a mobile device versus a desktop?

By creating segments, you move beyond surface-level metrics and start understanding the nuances of your audience. This helps you tailor marketing campaigns, optimize your website, and make more informed decisions.

Key Differences from Universal Analytics (UA)

If you're coming from Universal Analytics, GA4 segments will feel both familiar and distinctively new. The core idea is the same, but the execution and capabilities have changed:

• Focus on Users, Not Just Sessions: While UA centered heavily on session-based segments, GA4 gives you user, session, and event-based options. User segments are particularly powerful, tracking a user’s behavior across multiple visits.
• Retroactive Application: This is a massive improvement. In GA4, when you create a new segment, it can be applied to historical data. In UA, segments were only applied from the day they were created forward.
• Segments Live in 'Explore': Unlike UA where you could apply segments to most standard reports, in GA4, segments are primarily built and used within the "Explore" section to conduct more custom, in-depth analysis.

The 3 Types of Segments in GA4 Explained

GA4 offers three distinct scopes for segmentation. Understanding the difference is the first step to building effective analysis. Let's break them down with simple examples.

1. User Segments

User segments group together users based on their overall behavior and characteristics across all of their sessions. It looks at the person, not just a single visit. Once a user meets the criteria for a user segment, they are added to it and will remain in that segment for all of their future activity – unless you apply a time-based condition.

Use a User Segment when you want to analyze groups based on who they are:

• Example 1: Users who have made at least one purchase.
• Example 2: Users from a specific geographic region (e.g., California).
• Example 3: Users who first visited your site from a specific campaign.

These segments are perfect for understanding your most valuable customer groups and their long-term behavior.

2. Session Segments

Session segments focus on the behavior that happens within a single visit or session. This allows you to isolate user activity that occurred during one continuous period of browsing on your site or app. If a user meets segment criteria in one session but not another, only the qualifying session will be included in the analysis.

Use a Session Segment when you want to analyze what happened during a specific visit:

• Example 1: Sessions that originated from an Instagram ad.
• Example 2: All sessions where a user viewed a specific product category page.
• Example 3: Sessions in which a product was added to the cart, but no purchase was made.

These are great for understanding session-level conversion paths or troubleshooting user journeys.

3. Event Segments

This is the most granular level. Event segments allow you to isolate and analyze specific actions or events. You can filter based on the event itself or the parameters associated with that event.

Use an Event Segment when you want to analyze specific interactions:

• Example 1: All purchase events with a value greater than $100.
• Example 2: A segment of all form_submission events where the form_name parameter was 'contact_us'.
• Example 3: Clicks on a specific promotional banner.

This is extremely useful for drilling down into the performance of specific calls-to-action or website features.

How to Create a Segment in GA4: A Step-by-Step Guide

Now for the fun part. Let's walk through building a segment from scratch. For this example, we’ll create a User Segment for "Users who have made at least one purchase." This is a foundational segment for almost any business.

Step 1: Go to the "Explore" Section

Segments are created and applied within GA4’s custom reporting tool called Explore. You can find this in the left-hand navigation menu. Click on Explore.

Step 2: Start a New Exploration

Click on the Free form report template. This flexible template is perfect for building custom tables and charts, making it an excellent place to start practicing with segments.

Step 3: Open the Segment Builder

In the "Variables" column on the left, you'll see a panel labeled Segments. Click the plus sign (+) to start creating your new segment.

Step 4: Choose Your Segment Type and Configure Conditions

The segment editor will open. First, click on User Segment at the top.

Now you need to define the "rules" for your segment. The builder works on an "if… then" basis. You’ll choose a dimension or event, set the criteria, and GA4 will find every user who matches it.

1. Under "Add new condition," type or search for the event you're interested in. We'll type "purchase" and select the purchase event.
2. The logic is automatically set to "Event count > 0," which means "find all users who have triggered the purchase event at least once." This is exactly what we want.
3. For advanced segments, you can use the AND/OR statements to layer multiple conditions. For example, you could add an "AND" condition to find users who purchased and are from a specific country.

Notice the summary on the right shows you an estimate of how many users and sessions will be included in this segment. This is a handy check to ensure your conditions are working as expected.

Step 5: Name and Save Your Segment

At the top of the editor, give your segment a clear, descriptive name. Something like USR - Purchasers is a good practice (USR for User segment). Click the Save and Apply button in the top right corner.

That's it! Your new segment is now applied to your free-form report. You can start dragging dimensions (like "Session source / medium") and metrics (like "Sessions" or "Engagement rate") into the report rows and values to compare your purchasers against everyone else.

Advanced Segmentation Tips for Deeper Insights

Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can start building more sophisticated segments to answer complex questions.

Create Sequences to Analyze User Journeys

Sequences let you segment users based on actions they took in a specific order. This is incredibly powerful for understanding the user journey.

• Example: You want to find users who first viewed a product, then added it to their cart.

You can even add time constraints, such as requiring Step 2 to happen within 5 minutes of Step 1.

Build Audiences for Remarketing

Here’s where analysis turns into action. At the top of the segment summary panel on the right, you’ll see a checkbox labeled Build an Audience.

If you check this box, GA4 will export your segment as an audience that you can use for remarketing in Google Ads. This lets you re-engage specific groups of users with tailored ad campaigns. For example, you could create an audience of users who abandoned their cart to show them ads encouraging them to complete their purchase.

Use Exclusions to Refine Your Analysis

Sometimes it’s more useful to find out who is not doing something. By using the "Temporarily exclude" or "Permanently exclude" functionality in the builder, you can remove certain users from your segment.

• Example: Create a segment of "Users who visited the site more than three times" but permanently exclude "Purchasers." This gives you a clear list of highly engaged non-converters — a perfect group to analyze further or target with a special offer.

Final Thoughts

GA4 segments are your key to moving from generic data to specific, actionable insights. By learning how to isolate and compare user groups based on their actions and attributes, you unlock a much deeper understanding of how people interact with your business. Don't be afraid to experiment with user, session, and event segments to get the answers you need.

Exploring these deep behavioral patterns is powerful, but navigating the GA4 'Explore' section and building complex segments can still be a manual and time-consuming process. At Graphed, we’ve simplified this entirely. Instead of clicking through menus and configuring conditions, you can just ask questions in plain English, like "Show me my conversion rate for users from the US vs. Canada" or "Create a dashboard comparing Facebook Ads users to Google Ads users." We connect directly to your GA4 account (and other sources like Shopify or Salesforce) to instantly generate dashboards and insights, all without the steep learning curve.