On March 14, 2023, Google Analytics 4 received a new feature – custom channel grouping. And Google team called this day “Happy Pi Day”, and we don’t need to wonder why because it’s indeed one of the happiest days in our GA4 lifetime when we received an essential but precious feature that we missed in GA4 compared to Universal Analytics.

What is custom channel grouping in GA4, and why should you use it?

Unlike default channel grouping in GA4, custom channel grouping allows you to create your own groups (or buckets) for channels and specify GA4 precisely to your business needs. 

For instance, you can switch from having one “Referral” channel to having “Free Referral” and “Paid Referral”. It will help you better understand how these sub-channels perform and where you should optimise.

“Free Referral” can stand for some organic backlinks you acquired or websites that mentioned your business, but you didn’t pay a penny for that. “Paid Referral” will include partners that you need to pay periodically. 

Of course, it’s just an example, and you can configure groups according to your business needs.

It’s worth mentioning that Google gives another example. 

Let’s say your company, example.com, is running a summer campaign for beachwear and your group is responsible for monitoring data from the campaign that focuses on social-media exposure.

1. You create a new channel group Summer Swim Social Media.
2. You keep the existing channel Paid Social to capture all traffic-source data related to social-media ads.
3. You create new regional channels for each of the Facebook Market Pages you create for localized content (e.g., Côte d’Azur, Liguria, etc.)

You could configure each of your new regional channels as follows:

• Channel name: Cote d’Azur
• Campaign name exactly matches (=) Summer Swim
• Source exactly matches (=) facebook.com/ExampleCotedAzur
• Channel name: Liguria
• Campaign name exactly matches (=) Summer Swim
• Source exactly matches (=) facebook.com/ExampleLiguria

After figuring out how to merge your channels into the new format, you should configure them in Google Analytics 4.

How to create custom channel groupings in GA4?

So, in order to create custom channel groups, take the following actions:

Note: If you don’t see “Channel Groups” under “Data Settings”, give it a bit of time (1,2,3 or even 4 weeks) until Google releases it to all GA4 properties worldwide. 

All in all, you can perform the following actions there:

• create new channel groups
• edit groups
• edit channels in a group
• add new channels to a group
• remove channels
• reorder channels
• remove groups

After you modify, remember to save the custom channel grouping and check it in Traffic Acquisition or User Acquisition reports (GA4 -> Acquisition -> Traffic / User Acquisition reports). You can add the custom channel grouping as a second dimension to see it.

Apart from that, you can also use it in GA4 Explore reports.

Limitations of custom channel groups in GA4?

There is only the following limitation of custom channel groups in GA4. 

• You can create a maximum of 2 custom channel groups in GA4 standard properties and 5 in 360 properties.

• You can have up to 25 channels within each group in GA4 standard and 360 properties.

And, of course, the default predefined channel group does not count toward the limit on groups.

All in all, it’s not a significant limitation for us. 

Conclusions

It was a “Happy Pi Day” on March 14th, 2023, because Google Analytics 4 received a new feature – custom channel grouping. It’s one of the most valuable features we have all waited for. 

As a result, it allows you to set up groups for acquisition sources how you need them for your business. 

Therefore, I showed you how you could achieve it in this article. Please let me know in the comment section below if you have more questions.