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Sure, I got you. Instead of going to Reports in GA4, use the Explorer view. You see, Reports in GA4 aren’t as flexible as they used to be in Universal Analytics where you could add filters and secondary dimensions. Here’s a way around it:
1. Go to the Explorer view. Be aware, though, that it’s subject to your data retention settings. You might need to change this setting if it’s currently set at 2 months default to something longer like 14 months.
2. In Explorer, you only need the pageviews metric so no need to add any dimensions. This is how it looks like for a property I just recently switched from Universal Analytics:
3. Adding a dimension will break down the graph by that dimension. But you can still filter without adding dimensions to your graph.
Now, let me walk you through the steps to reconstruct your graph from Universal Analytics in Explorer:
1. Go to the Explorer option.
2. Click ‘New exploration’.
3. Click ‘Add metric’.
4. Go to the ‘Page’ section under Metrics and import Views.
5. Change your data visualization to line graph.
6. Drag and drop your views metric in the Rows section.
GA4 might take a little getting used to but it offers a lot of similar functionalities as UA. They set out to make it like Adobe Analytics, but it’s not quite there. Still, it has its own merits. Let’s just focus on optimizing that!
