How to Create a Trend Report in Google Analytics
Looking at your website analytics shouldn't feel like a one-day snapshot. To truly understand your performance, you need to see how your metrics change over time. This guide will walk you through creating trend reports in both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4, helping you transform raw data into a clear story about your website's growth.
What is a Trend Report and Why Does it Matter?
A trend report visualizes your data over a specific period, allowing you to identify patterns, seasonality, and the long-term impact of your marketing efforts. Instead of just knowing you had 1,000 visitors yesterday, a trend report shows you if that number is part of an upward trajectory, a seasonal spike, or a troubling decline.
Here’s why they are so valuable:
Spot Seasonality: An e-commerce store might see traffic surge before holidays, while a B2B SaaS business might slow down during the summer. Recognizing these patterns helps you plan campaigns and manage expectations.
Measure Campaign Impact: Did traffic from social media increase after you launched a new ad campaign last month? A trend report makes the answer obvious.
Identify Long-Term Growth: Are your SEO efforts paying off? A slow, steady increase in organic traffic over twelve months is a clear sign of success that a daily report would miss.
Diagnose Problems Early: A sudden and sustained drop in traffic from a specific channel could signal a technical issue, a penalty, or a change in an algorithm. Spotting this trend early allows you to investigate and fix it before it becomes a major problem.
Moving from daily numbers to long-term trends is the first step toward making strategic, data-driven decisions instead of reactive ones.
How to Create a Trend Report in Universal Analytics (UA)
While Google has officially moved to GA4, you likely have years of valuable historical data stored in a Universal Analytics property. Learning how to analyze trends here is still a useful skill for looking back at your site's history.
UA’s standard reports are already built around trend lines, so creating a report is more about adjusting the settings to get the view you need.
Step 1: Choose a Core Report
Start with a report relevant to the data you want to analyze. The process is the same for nearly all standard reports. Good starting points include:
Audience > Overview: For a high-level look at overall user and session trends.
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels: To see trends across different traffic sources like Organic Search, Direct, and Social.
Behavior > Site Content > All Pages: To track the popularity of specific pages or blog posts over time.
Step 2: Adjust the Date Range
The key to trend analysis is looking at sufficient data. The default 7-day or 30-day view won't reveal much.
In the top right corner, click the date range. You can select pre-set options like "Last 90 days," "This year," or set a custom range that spans several months or even years. The longer the time frame, the clearer the long-term trend will be.
Step 3: Change the Graph's Time Interval
Once you’ve expanded your date range, the line chart at the top might look noisy and chaotic. This is because it's probably still displaying data by the day. Daily fluctuations (like low traffic on weekends) can obscure the bigger picture.
Directly above the line chart, you’ll see buttons for Hour, Day, Week, and Month. Click on "Week" or "Month" to smooth out the data. This will instantly make the underlying trend much easier to see.
Step 4: Use the "Compare to" Feature
One of UA's most powerful features for trend analysis is the date comparison tool. It lets you overlay two time periods on the same chart, which is perfect for understanding seasonality and growth.
In the date range selector, check the "Compare to" box. You can choose to compare to the "Previous period" (e.g., the last 90 days vs. the 90 days before that) or "Previous year" (e.g., this November vs. last November).
Comparing year-over-year is the best way to determine if a spike or dip is due to growth or just a predictable seasonal pattern.
Step 5: Add a Secondary Dimension for Deeper Insights
Let's say your overall traffic trend is flat. That doesn’t mean nothing is changing. Maybe mobile traffic is growing rapidly while desktop is declining. To find these stories, you need to add a secondary dimension.
Below the main report table, click the "Secondary dimension" dropdown menu and select another dimension, like "Device Category" or "Country". Now you'll see your primary dimension (e.g., "Channel") broken down by your secondary dimension, revealing deeper trends within your data.
How to Create a Trend Report in Google Analytics 4
GA4's standard reports offer some trend lines, but the real power lies in the Explorations section. Here, you can build completely custom reports from the ground up. We’re going to create a line chart report to visualize our trends over time.
Step 1: Navigate to Explorations and Choose "Free Form"
Click on the "Explore" tab in the left-hand menu and then select "Free Form" as your template.
Step 2: Set Up Your Variables
The Exploration interface has three main panels: Variables, Tab Settings, and the final report canvas. You’ll set up your "Variables" column first.
Name the Exploration: Click the edit pencil to give it a descriptive name like "Monthly Website Traffic Trend".
Set the Date Range: Click on the date range and choose a pre-set option like "Last 12 months" or create a custom range.
Choose Dimensions: These are the "what" of your report – the categories you want to break your metrics down by. Click the plus sign next to "Dimensions" and import important ones like:
Month of Year
Session default channel group
Device category
Import Key Metrics: These are the numbers you’re interested in analyzing. Click the plus sign next to "Metrics" and import some key ones:
Sessions
Active Users
Conversions
Step 3: Configure Your Report in "Tab Settings"
Now it’s time to pull your variables into the report itself. Go to the "Tab Settings" panel and drag and drop your metrics and dimensions.
Set Your Time Granularity: Drag "Month of Year" from the Variables column and drop it into the "Rows" section.
Add Your Metrics: Drag "Sessions", "Active Users", and "Conversions" into the "Values" section. This will display the numbers in your chart.
Step 4: Set Your Visualization to Line Chart
Under the "Tab Settings" panel, you’ll see a dropdown menu of different chart types. Click the chart icon at the top and change the "Chart Type" to "Line Chart".
Voilà, now you have a beautiful time trend line chart showing the rise and fall of your website's traffic, users, and engagement over time.
Step 5: Segment Your Data and Dive Deeper
A single trend line is good, but the real insights come from seeing how different segments perform.
Breaking Down by Channels
To see separate trend lines for each marketing channel, drag "Session channel group" from the Variables column and drop it into the Segments section of your Tab Settings. Now, you can see how organic traffic is comparing to paid or referral, revealing where your real growth is happening.
Filtering Your Data
Want to see only the trend of mobile traffic? In the "Filters" section, click "Add filter" and set a new filter for "Device category". Choose what matches "mobile". This is a great way to analyze specific trends within your larger dataset.
Keeping the Effort Worthwhile
Creating the chart is only half the battle. The interpretation is where you'll truly derive value.
Always Ask the 'Why': Go beyond just seeing a spike or decline. Did you launch a new ad campaign? Correlate analytics data with business activities to tell the complete story.
Context is Key: Compare data year over year to understand if growth this year is genuine or just a predictable seasonal blip.
Use Longer Timeframes: Don’t rely on day-to-day views to make broad decisions. Use these reports to achieve a clear understanding of underlying trends.
Decipher Changes: If your traditional trend signals an increase in mobile traffic and a decrease in desktop traffic, segment by channel, device, and content to understand the cause of shifts in your data.
Final Thoughts
Creating a trend report in Google Analytics isn’t just about looking at data, it's about understanding how your business performs over time. It allows you to explore what your data has been and project what more it can achieve in the future.
While Google Analytics is incredibly powerful, putting these insights to practical use in real-world marketing strategies (like evaluating ad spend, SEO, or your CRM) is still a manual process. You can master these skills yourself, and it’s exciting to see how we support Graphed users to simplify this. Instead of manually reading these charts, you can just ask, “How did my website traffic grow by channel for the last year?” and get an interactive visualization connecting all of your insights.