How to Make a Pareto Chart in Google Analytics with AI

The 80/20 rule isn't just a business cliché, it's a powerful framework for making smarter decisions with your website data. The best way to visualize this rule is with a Pareto chart, which instantly highlights the most significant factors driving your results. This article will show you how to create a Pareto chart for your Google Analytics data, first covering the tedious manual process and then a much faster way using AI.

What is a Pareto Chart and Why Does It Matter for Your Website?

The Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, suggests that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In the context of Google Analytics, this could mean:

80% of your website traffic comes from 20% of your landing pages.
80% of your conversions originate from 20% of your marketing channels.
80% of your e-commerce revenue is generated by 20% of your products.

A Pareto chart combines a bar chart and a line graph to make this principle easy to see. The bars display individual values in descending order (like sessions per traffic source), while the line graph shows the cumulative percentage total. This helps you immediately spot the "vital few" - the high-impact areas where you should focus your attention - and distinguish them from the "trivial many." Instead of getting lost in a sea of data, you can zero in on what truly matters.

The Old Way: Manually Creating a Pareto Chart with Google Analytics Data

Before AI-driven tools streamlined this process, building a Pareto chart was a multi-step chore involving exporting data and wrestling with spreadsheets. It’s important to understand this method to appreciate how much time you can save with a modern approach. Let's walk through an example of finding our top traffic sources.

Step 1: Export Your Data from Google Analytics 4

First, you need to get the raw numbers out of Google Analytics.

Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property.
Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
Adjust the date range in the top right corner to fit your analysis (e.g., Last 90 days).
You'll see a table with "Session default channel group," "Users," "Sessions," "Engaged sessions," etc. For this, we'll focus on the raw traffic, so we're interested in "Session default channel group" and "Sessions."
Click the "Share this report" icon (a share symbol) in the top-right corner, then select "Download File" and choose "Download CSV."

You now have a raw data file, but it's not ready to be visualized yet.

Step 2: Clean and Organize Your Data in Google Sheets

Next, it’s time to whip that data into shape. You can use either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, but we’ll use Google Sheets for this example.

Open a new Google Sheet and go to File > Import > Upload and select the CSV file you downloaded.
You'll likely have a lot of extra information, including summary rows at the top. Delete any rows that are not part of the core table dataset. You only need the header row and the data rows listing each channel and its metrics.
For our purposes, we only need the "Session default channel group" and "Sessions" columns. You can hide or delete the others to keep things clean.
Now, we need to sort the data. Select your data columns, then go to Data > Sort range > Advanced range sorting options. Check "Data has header row" and sort by "Sessions" from Z to A (descending order).

Your sheet should now show your traffic channels ranked from highest to lowest by session count.

Step 3: Calculate the Cumulative Percentage

This is where the real spreadsheet work begins. The core of a Pareto chart is the cumulative percentage line, which requires a few formulas to build.

Calculate Total Sessions: Find an empty cell and use the SUM function to get the total number of sessions. For example: =SUM(B2:B11) This gives you the 100% value that all your channels add up to.
Create a "Cumulative Sessions" Column: In the next empty column (let's say it's C), create a header called "Cumulative Sessions".
- In the first data cell (C2), simply reference the sessions value from that row: =B2
- In the second cell (C3), add the current row's sessions to the cumulative value from the row above: =C2+B3
- Drag the fill handle down to the bottom of your data. Each row will now show the running total of sessions.
Create a "Cumulative Percentage" Column: In the next column (D), create a header called "Cumulative %". Here, you’ll calculate what percentage of the total sessions you’ve accumulated at each row.
- In the first cell (D2), divide the cumulative sessions for that row by the total sessions you calculated earlier (make sure to use an absolute reference for the total so it doesn't change when you drag the formula): =C2/$B$13 (assuming B13 is where your total is).
- Select the entire column and go to Format > Number > Percent.
- Drag the fill handle down. The last row should be 100%.

Your data is now fully prepared for charting. It should look something like this:

Step 4: Build the Pareto Chart

Finally, we can visualize the results.

Select the "Channel," "Sessions," and "Cumulative %" columns. Hold Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) to select non-adjacent columns.
Go to Insert > Chart.
Google Sheets will likely guess the wrong chart type. In the Chart editor, under the "Setup" tab, change the "Chart type" to a Combo chart.
Under "Series," ensure that "Sessions" is set to "Columns" and "Cumulative %" is set to "Line."
Check the "Right axis" box for the "Cumulative %" series. This makes the chart readable by giving the percentage line its own scale.
Finally, under the "Customize" tab, you can clean up the chart titles and axis labels.

After all that, you have your Pareto chart. The bars show you the top drivers of traffic, and the line quickly shows that the top three channels - Organic Search, Direct, and Organic Social - drive over 80% of all sessions. But as you can see, it's a lot of work for a single, static chart. If you want an update next week, you have to do it all over again.

The New Way: Using AI to Create a Pareto Chart from Google Analytics in Seconds

The manual method has too many points of failure and takes far too long. Modern tools eliminate this busywork entirely. Instead of exporting, cleaning, and calculating, you can simply ask a question in plain English.

How AI Changes the Process

Tools that use AI for data analysis work by connecting directly to your data sources, like Google Analytics. Once connected, they understand the underlying structure of your data - what metrics and dimensions are available and how they relate. This allows you to skip the manual steps and go straight to the insight.

No More CSV Exports: The data flows from GA directly into the tool, so it's always up-to-date.
No More Spreadsheet Formulas: The AI handles all the sorting, calculating, and aggregating in the background based on your simple request.
No More Chart Configuration: You can just ask for a "Pareto chart," and the AI knows exactly what to build - a combo chart with bars, a line, and a secondary axis.

The Entire Process Becomes Two Simple Steps:

Step 1: Securely connect your Google Analytics account. This is typically a one-time process using a simple, secure OAuth (log in with Google) flow that takes less than a minute.Step 2: Ask a question using natural language. You just type what you want to see, as if you were asking a human data analyst. For the same example above, your prompt would be:Show me a Pareto chart of our top traffic sources by sessions from GA4 for the last 90 days.

The AI model parses this request, identifies the data source, the desired chart type (Pareto), the dimension (traffic sources), the metric (sessions), and the time frame (last 90 days). It then generates the exact same interactive, live-updating chart you just spent 15 minutes building manually - but it does it in about 15 seconds.

Going Deeper: Answering Follow-Up Questions Instantly

The real advantage of an AI-driven approach isn't just about saving time on the first chart. It's about how quickly you can explore your data and dig deeper. Looking at our Pareto chart, you immediately identify Organic Search as your top channel. Without AI, your next step would be another CSV export. With an AI tool, you can just ask a follow-up question: “What are the top 10 landing pages for organic search traffic?” Or maybe you want to combine data from another platform to see the real impact of that traffic: “For our top 5 landing pages from GA, how many of those users convert to a paid subscription in Stripe?”

This "conversational analysis" workflow lets you follow your curiosity without friction. You can move from a high-level view down to granular details as fast as you can think of the questions. A reporting session that used to take an entire morning of spreadsheet work can now happen in a 5-minute conversation with your data.

Final Thoughts

A Pareto chart is a fantastic tool for finding focus and maximizing the results of your efforts by applying the 80/20 rule to your own data. While you can build them by manually exporting Google Analytics data and manipulating it in a spreadsheet, this process is slow, cumbersome, and just doesn't scale for teams that want to make quick decisions.

This is exactly why we built Graphed. We wanted to eliminate the manual drudgery standing between a question and its answer. By connecting directly to your sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and your ad platforms, we let you create live, interactive reports and dashboards just by describing what you want to see. Instead of being a spreadsheet expert, you can focus on asking the right questions and getting actionable answers in seconds, not hours.