Explorations

Explorations are GA4's ad-hoc analysis workspace, where you build custom tables and charts from your own choice of dimensions, metrics, and segments instead of the fixed standard reports.

You reach them from the Explore section in the left nav. You start from a blank template or one of the built-in techniques, then drag dimensions and metrics onto rows, columns, and values. Everything is stored per user, so an exploration you build is private to your account until you share it. You can apply segments and filters that standard reports do not allow.

You want to know which landing pages drove key events for first-time users on mobile. No standard report crosses those four things, so you open a free-form exploration, set landing page as the row, add a first-time-user segment, filter to mobile, and drop key events as the value. The answer is one table you built in a minute.

Explorations use event-level data with cardinality and sampling limits. On large date ranges or high-traffic properties, high-cardinality dimensions get bucketed into "(other)" and results can be sampled, so the totals will not always tie back to standard reports. Know when you are looking at an estimate. The techniques are Free-form, Funnel, Path, Segment overlap, Cohort, User lifetime, and User explorer.

This is where GA4 stops being a dashboard and starts being an analysis tool.