How to Filter by State in Google Analytics

Knowing where your website visitors come from is crucial for smart marketing, and filtering your data by state in Google Analytics gives you an incredibly useful lens for understanding regional performance. Moving from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 has changed how this is done, but it's still simple once you know where to look. This guide will walk you through exactly how to find, filter, and report on your state-level and region-level data in GA4.

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Why Bother Filtering By State?

Analyzing traffic by state isn't just a vanity metric, it's a strategic tool. Before we get into the "how," here's a quick look at the "why":

• Sharpening Your Local SEO: Trying to rank for "best pizza in Chicago"? Seeing high traffic from Illinois confirms your message is hitting home. Low traffic from your target state, on the other hand, tells you it's time to refine your local SEO strategy.
• Tailoring Your Ad Campaigns: If you run a service-based business in Texas but see conversions from all over the country, you might be wasting ad spend. Filtering by state helps you focus your budget on geographic areas that matter and create region-specific ads that speak directly to local customers.
• Understanding Regional Product Interest: If you're an ecommerce store selling winter jackets, you'd expect to see more traffic and sales from states like Minnesota and Colorado than from Florida. State-level data validates these assumptions and can even reveal unexpected hot spots for your products.
• Informing Business Decisions: Thinking about opening a new physical store or extending your service area? Website traffic and conversion data by state gives you compelling evidence to support (or reconsider) your expansion plans. You can see real, demonstrated interest before making a significant investment.

Essentially, state-level analysis helps you make more informed decisions, spend your budget more effectively, and understand your audience with greater clarity.

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How to Find Your State-Level Data in GA4 (Standard Reports)

Let's start with the quickest way to find location-based data. It's already there in your standard reports, you just need to tell GA4 to show it to you. For this, Google Analytics uses the term "Region" to cover states, provinces, and other similar territories.

Here's the step-by-step process:

1. Navigate to the "Tech details" Report: In the left-hand navigation pane, go to Reports > Tech > Tech details.
2. Change the Primary Dimension: GA4 will likely start you on a view like "Browser." To see state-level traffic insight, click the dropdown menu for the primary dimension (the arrow next to Browser).
3. Select "Region": A search box will appear. Type in "Region" and hit enter - or scroll to Geography > Region in the menu.

And that's it. You'll now see a table showing data for your various customer regions (states) to get more insight. You can add new columns showing dimensions with site behavior metrics, including data engagement rate metrics, session engagement, events data, or even per-day trends about your web analytics with just a click!

You can then dig into the insights you see per date range, for any marketing goal you have your eye on. What does the data tell you? Does your page get lots of visitors who stick around to browse your website content and landing pages, or do you get website visitors landing just long enough to know which button to click?

What if My Report Includes Regions from a Different Country?

If you have an international audience, you may want to focus on states in North America to get the info your team needs most. To do that, from your current report:

1. Click the Add filter + bar in the top table view.
2. In the dimension dropdown menu for your secondary dimension option (your 'first time user conversion' column), select 'Country' as your next search parameter.
3. Your match conditions dropdown needs to show 'contains'. Choose "United States" (or whichever country you're reviewing) and hit "Apply."

With an applied custom filter, the report view will now only show states from within the US! Plus, you can change your existing widget on that page any time to see information via another data view or primary metric. With just a button click, you can create reports to monitor engagement per channel by page, to get helpful business-related insights.

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How to Filter Events, Website Users & Conversions per State (For Analysis)

While standard reports give you a peek at what's going viral on your page and among web users, deeper insights often come from custom explorations. You likely have several goals or important interactions on your webpage with conversions set up like an "add_to_cart" or "purchase" event -- these are great default GA4 conversions to start. Wouldn't it be great to see the conversion details on a purchase action per channel grouping, all in a single dashboard to really explore and build insight? Explorations can show us all these different metrics on our ecommerce conversion rate goals to understand how well your website visitors are moving from engaged sessions to the complete purchase mark.

A GA4 report using a 'template' to explore, or 'Explorations' as they're known in Google Analytics, provides customizable dashboard elements in the custom reporting process. While they might sound complicated, using the free-form exploration technique to view event and conversion rates in your traffic analysis is straightforward once you follow a few additional steps:

1. Open Explorations: On the left menu icon of GA4, click 'Explore' . Then, from the new reports displayed, hit blank 'Free Form'.
2. Import Your Reports Data Views: Click the Add icon (the '+') on the upper left menu view for both the 'Dimensions' view and the 'Metrics' view beneath. The options you now choose will show on-screen. Here's a typical setup per custom metric to filter by state, including page user attributes and conversion event data:
3. Drag and Set Your Dimensions: The info listed on the left side is in a sidebar. With Dimensions at the top, pull the "State" info we mentioned above and drop it in the "Rows." A page of state data rows will appear in your user session data.
4. Drag-and-Drop and Set Your Columns for Rows Per Metric Data: Below dimensions, columns for Metrics and Rows will display in the box view. Drag and drop all your metrics from 'Values' or in our Dimensions into it to save it. These metric types will display in order per column info from website user visitors.

The initial table setup provides useful reports about conversion metrics and even an updated session list to track what's new. Use a new 'session campaign' view to understand more from different marketing campaign activities you're running. Save it to find your answer again later!

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Common Problems & Troubleshooting Tips

Even with step-by-step instructions, Google search results for troubleshooting are often needed with analytics! Here's a roundup of common user reports a website needs to fix to better capture valuable data from its traffic source and audiences.

• Why Might a New Report Filter Like '(not available)' Appear? This '(not set)' text can sometimes appear because Google reports its traffic acquisition unable to determine its country or city info based on the 'IP address'.
• GA4 is Looking for Region, an Info Metric for Traffic Instead: A common metric you see on many blog instructions for website user activity uses 'State.' However, with GA4, "Region" is used for insights. A region metric gives business owners a helpful tool to identify key places for marketing campaigns. The insights from the region can help grow business traffic.
• My Business Needs to Understand Conversion Per Website in New Ways: If you have data with international traffic information, reports become less clean and actionable. Create a reports filter at the country level. Manage your report page with specific metric dimensions to provide helpful insights.

Final Thoughts

Filtering by state in Google Analytics unlocks powerful local insights your business needs. One of the most actionable business strategies is based on insights directly from your website visitors. You know what they click and what interests them. Standard traffic reports provide teams enough information to make data-driven choices.

Instead of manually exporting CSVs or rebuilding web analytics, use Google Analytics to create metric pages for insight. We built Graphed for non-technical team members to analyze entire channel performance in real-time across the data views most in need.