GA4 Tip: Search Bar Filtering

This is either a nice feature I stumbled on today. Or a bug that will get "fixed" soon. Hard to tell with GA4*.

Easier Data Filtering in GA4

Now for the search bar trick part.

The search bar above the table filters the results (duh, Kyle).

But!

If you change the dimension you're displaying after you use search to filter, it will return only the dimensions that match that filter.

That sentence makes so sense, so let's use pictures.

Here's our default channel grouping view you see when you first navigate to the traffic acquisition report

Here we've used the search bar to filter for only the Paid Social channel group

And now we've changed the dimension dropdown from default channel grouping to Session source / medium

The final table shows us only the Session source / mediums that are present within the Paid Social default channel grouping.

We have Content Groups setup for a client and this filtering trick works the same way there. Letting you narrow to a specific content grouping and then look at page level detail for pages within the group.

How To Find Source / Medium Data in GA4

Not sure where to find your source / medium level data? I got you 👇

*Remember this...

GA4 is a young platform. Google bought the company they used as the foundation for Universal Analytics back in 2005, that's almost 20 years of development and user experience by the time it sunset.

Google Analytics 4 is built on a toolset that was mobile-only until a few years ago, only hitting Web+App beta in 2019.

You can't compare the two, they're at different life stages. Yes, it feels like GA4 is still in beta sometimes, but that also means new features and functions are being added regularly.

You can lament that it isn't like UA and you have to learn your analytics platform all over again. Or you can level up and future proof yourself.

Stay curious.