User Tracking with GA4: Custom Looker Studio Report vs. GA4 User Explorer

Despite the fact that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is not primarily designed to focus on individual user behavior, it does offer a User Explorer report to analyze the activity of individual users. This report allows businesses to see detailed data on how users interact with their website, including event tracking and session data. However, while the User Explorer report provides valuable insights, it has some limitations that can affect its overall effectiveness. In this post, I’ll highlight these limitations and introduce you to a faster, more customizable report I’ve built in Looker Studio using GA4 BigQuery data.

What is the GA4 User Explorer Report?

The User Explorer report in GA4 allows businesses to analyze individual user journeys by tracking events such as page views, conversions, and engagement times. It provides a timeline of activities for each user, detailing each event and session they interacted with on your website or app. Marketers can use this report to identify behavioral patterns, understand user flows, and even retarget individuals based on their interactions.

Limitations of the GA4 User Explorer Report

While the GA4 User Explorer offers valuable data, there are several key challenges:

1. Performance: Many users find the report slow to load, especially when working with large datasets. This delay can make real-time analysis difficult.
2. Sampling Issues: GA4 often uses sampled data when dealing with large user bases, which means the report might not reflect the full scope of user interactions​.
3. Customization Limits: The User Explorer report offers only limited flexibility in terms of customization. You can only filter out some events but you cannot adjust the dimensions that are displayed in the report.
4. Page view parameters are not displayed: the most frustrating limitation in the GA4 User Explorer report is that it does not show any page path or URL parameters for the page_view events. While the report might indicate that a user viewed a certain number of pages, you never know which pages they visited. For businesses that rely on detailed page-level data to optimize user journeys, this can be a major drawback.

A Better Solution: Custom Looker Studio Report

To address these limitations, I created a custom Looker Studio report that is connected to BigQuery (linked to GA4). This report is not only faster than GA4’s User Explorer, but it also allows for greater flexibility in the data you can see and analyze.

Key Benefits of My Custom Report:

1. Speed: One of the most significant improvements is speed. Looker Studio, powered by BigQuery, processes large datasets much more efficiently.
2. Customizable Data: My report is designed to display the data that matters most to your business. For example, in my template, I’ve included the page URL for every page view event, which provides a more granular look into user behavior. You can add or remove metrics depending on your needs.
3. No Sampling: Because the report leverages BigQuery data, there’s no need to worry about data sampling. You’re always working with the full, unsampled dataset, ensuring accuracy in your analysis.
4. Any report updates are possible: I am open to make any updates to this report to meet your business requirements.

Why This Custom Report is Better for Your Business

If you're looking for a faster, more flexible solution to track individual user behavior, this custom Looker Studio report offers a significant advantage. By providing quicker insights and more customizable tracking options, it allows businesses to dive deeper into their data without the constraints of GA4’s limitations. Additionally, by using BigQuery, you avoid the issues of sampling and ensure you're working with accurate, complete data sets.

Here is the template of this report:

While GA4’s User Explorer report is a helpful tool, it has its drawbacks, especially when it comes to speed and customization. My custom Looker Studio report, backed by BigQuery, addresses these issues, offering a more robust, user-friendly solution for analyzing individual user behavior. By leveraging this report, you can gain deeper insights into your users' actions and make data-driven decisions faster and more effectively.