How to use Segments in Google Analytics: 5 Examples of Quick Insights Using Custom Segments

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There’s a line that separates the Analytics beginners from the Analytics experts.

It’s not an abstract line. It’s an actual physical line in Google Analytics.

It’s the line that separates the menu for the reports (on the left) from the reports themselves (on the right)

Clicking on the left brings you to aggregate data …and not a lot of insights.

Clicking on the right slices up that data …giving you deep and actionable insights.

All the fun stuff is on the right side of that line, including:

• Drill downs taking you deeper into each report
• Filters and advanced filters to see subsets of the data
• Secondary dimensions, letting you combine data from two reports
• Table display buttons, for comparison charts, pivot tables, etc.
• Segments, for looking at subsets of users.

That last one is a biggie. Segments are a fast and powerful way to make your reports more accurate and more useful.

This guide will show you how to use Google Analytics segments for better data, better decisions and better digital marketing. We’re going to use five examples of segments:

1. Remove spam traffic
2. Remove visitors who log in
3. See all of your social media traffic
4. Compare visitors who do (and don’t) watch videos
5. Compare high-intent and low-intent visitors (blog readers)

1. Use segments to remove spam and bot traffic

What’s that traffic spike? Did we send an email? Did something go viral? Was it a press hit?

No, it’s spam.

When you see a spike in traffic that has the same strange, unexplainable traffic pattern, it’s probably spam. It often looks like one of these:

• It’s a sudden spike from on traffic source …at a random time.
• It all comes from the same random country …where you don’t have an audience.
• It’s a lot of pageviews for the same “page” …but the page isn’t actually a page on your site.

How did the spammers visit a page that didn’t exist? They didn’t. They never actually visited your site. They exploited a weakness in javascript to inject data directly into Google Analytics servers, using your UA code, but without touching your web server.

Here’s what spam traffic looks like in the All Pages report.

If you’re not sure which row in the reports explains the spike, the “plot rows” feature can help. Just check the box on the row of the prime suspect and click the “Plot Rows” button above.

Found the troublemaker? Let’s zap him out of there with a custom segment. Everything you need to do fits in this one screenshot:

Step 1. Click the + Add Segment button

It’s at the top, above the trendline in every report.

Step 2. Click the + New Segment button

It’s the big red button. Give your segment a name, like “Non-Spam.”

Step 3. Click “Conditions”

We’re going to create an advanced segment using conditions.

Step 4. Set the conditions for your new segment

Segmentation can apply to sessions (visits) or users (visitors). Probably, it makes no difference which you choose. You’ll get very similar insights either way.

Here we tell Analytics to remove the culprit, as in?exclude sessions?when?a page contains?the spam URL.

Step 5. Bonus mini-report!

Even before you save the segment, you can see what percentage of your traffic you’re removing.

This is useful for just troubleshooting?(did I do this right?). Or for answering fun new questions?(what percentage of my social media visitors are on mobile devices and have visited before?)?The answer appears even if you don’t save the segment …but don’t forget to save.

Analytics is fixed!?All better. Spam traffic removed. Now you can navigate around all your favorite reports knowing that metrics like bounce rates and conversion rates are meaningful again.

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