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How to Make a Comparison Chart in Google Analytics with AI

Cody Schneider•

Comparing your marketing channels in Google Analytics is a fundamental part of figuring out what’s actually working. Is Organic Search driving more conversions than Paid Search? How does traffic from the US compare to traffic from Canada? Answering these questions requires a good comparison chart, but building one in Google Analytics 4 can feel like a chore. This guide will walk you through how to do it efficiently and introduce how AI is making the entire process remarkably simple.

Why Comparison Charts are Essential for Analytics

Before jumping into the "how," it's worth remembering why we bother with comparisons in the first place. Raw numbers like "10,000 sessions" are meaningless without context. Context comes from comparison. It's the difference between seeing a number and finding an insight.

Here are a few reasons why comparison analysis is so powerful:

  • Performance Benchmarking: See how your campaigns, channels, or landing pages stack up against each other. Identifying your top performers lets you know where to double down, while spotting laggards shows you where to optimize or cut budgets.

  • Trend Spotting: Comparing data over time (e.g., this month vs. last month, or this quarter vs. last year) helps you see the bigger picture. Are you growing? Is there a seasonal dip you should plan for next year? A line chart comparing two time periods makes trends obvious.

  • Audience Understanding: By comparing user segments - like mobile vs. desktop users, or visitors from different countries - you can uncover valuable insights about their behavior. Maybe your mobile users browse a lot but don't convert, signaling an issue with your mobile checkout process.

  • Better Budget Allocation: The clearest use case is for marketing spend. A chart comparing ad spend to revenue for each campaign instantly shows you which ones are delivering positive ROI and which are just burning cash.

In short, comparisons turn your data from a simple list of facts into a strategic tool for making smarter business decisions.

The Standard Way: Creating Comparisons in Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 has a built-in feature to compare data segments side-by-side. While powerful, it can feel a bit clunky and unintuitive if you’re new to the interface. Let’s walk through a common example: comparing Organic Search traffic to Paid Search traffic.

These instructions will help you get it done, but you’ll quickly see why it’s not the most efficient process.

Step 1: Navigate to a Relevant Report

First, log into your GA4 property. A good place to start for channel comparisons is the Traffic acquisition report. You can find this by going to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

By default, this report shows you data for all your traffic channels grouped together.

Step 2: Add Your First Comparison

Near the top of the report, you'll see a button that says "Add comparison +". Click on it.

This opens a panel on the right side of your screen where you’ll build your data segment. Here, you need to tell GA4 exactly what you want to filter for.

  • Dimension: For our example, the dimension we want to use is the Session default channel group. Search for and select it.

  • Match Type: Leave this as "exactly matches."

  • Value: Select "Organic Search" from the dropdown list.

Click Apply.

GA4 will now reload the report. You’ll see two versions of your data: the original "All Users" segment and your new "Organic Search" segment. You can identify them by the orange and blue colors at the top.

Step 3: Add Your Second Comparison

Now, let's add the data for Paid Search so we can compare the two directly. Click the "Add comparison +" button again.

Repeat the same process as before, but this time select "Paid Search" as the value for the Session default channel group dimension.

  • Dimension: Session default channel group

  • Match Type: "exactly matches"

  • Value: "Paid Search"

Click Apply.

Step 4: Analyze Your Comparison Chart (and Remove 'All Users')

You should now see three data sets visualized in your report: All Users, Organic Search, and Paid Search. For a cleaner side-by-side view, you can remove the "All Users" segment by hovering over it at the top of the report and clicking the "x".

Now, your chart and table will only show a direct comparison between Organic Search and Paid Search traffic, displaying metrics like Users, Sessions, Engaged Sessions, and Conversions for each.

The Limitations of the Manual Method

While this process works, it has some obvious drawbacks:

  • It’s Slow: Building each segment requires multiple clicks and searching through menus. Comparing five or six different channels can become tedious very quickly.

  • It’s Forgettable: If you don't use GA4 every day, it's easy to forget where the settings are or which dimension to choose ("Was it Session source / medium or Session default channel group?").

  • It’s Not Conversational: The interface requires you to think like a machine, specifying exact dimensions and values. You can't just ask a simple question.

  • Customization is Limited: Changing the chart type or adding more complex comparisons involves navigating through even more settings and menus.

A Quicker Way: Using Google's "Ask Analytics Intelligence"

GA4 does have a basic AI feature that can speed things up for simple queries. You may have noticed the search bar at the top of your property that says, "Ask Analytics Intelligence."

You can type natural language questions directly into this bar. For example, you can ask:

  • "Compare traffic from last week vs the week before"

  • "Organic search traffic vs paid search traffic last 30 days"

  • "Users from United States vs Canada"

The AI will process your request and return an "insight card" with a quick answer. This is an improvement and is great for getting a single data point fast. However, it usually just gives you a number or a very basic visualization. You can’t use it to build a full, interactive dashboard or add the result to a report. It's an AI-powered answer engine, not a report builder.

The Modern Method: Using AI for Instant Chart Creation

This is where modern AI analytics tools genuinely change the game. Instead of you clicking through menus to manually build a comparison, these tools allow you to simply describe the chart you want in plain English. The AI handles all the tedious setup work for you.

The workflow is elegantly simple:

  1. Connect Your Data Source: First, you connect your Google Analytics account to an AI analytics platform. This is usually a one-time, one-click process that syncs your data.

  2. Describe the Chart You Want: Next, you use a chat interface to tell the AI what to build. You don't need a single ounce of technical expertise.

  3. Get Your Chart in Seconds: The AI interprets your request, pulls the correct data from GA4, and generates an interactive chart on a dashboard for you instantly.

This approach moves you from being a "data puller" to a "question asker." You can stay focused on the business question you're trying to answer, not the technical steps required to get there.

Here are a few examples of prompts you could use:

  • "Create a line chart that compares sessions from Organic Search, Paid search, and Direct traffic over the last 90 days."

  • "Make a bar chart showing conversion rates by landing page for our top 10 pages."

  • "Show me a pie chart of my traffic breakdown by device category."

  • "Build a table comparing revenue, transactions, and conversion rate for U.S. vs. Canadian users."

The key benefit is that the AI already understands the structure of Google Analytics data. When you say "traffic" or "sessions," it knows which metrics and dimensions to use. This eliminates the guesswork and the steep learning curve of GA4's native reporting interface.

Actionable Comparison Charts You Should Be Building

Now that you know the methods, what should you actually compare? Here are four practical examples that every marketing and sales team can benefit from.

1. Channel Performance Comparison (The Classic)

This is the most common and arguably one of the most important comparisons you can make.

  • Prompt Example: "Create a bar chart comparing Sessions, Engaged Sessions, and Conversions across all my channels for this quarter."

  • Why it Matters: This gives you a high-level overview of which channels drive traffic and which ones drive actual results (conversions). You might discover that Social media brings a lot of visitors, but Organic Search brings visitors who actually buy something.

2. Time-Over-Time Performance

Looking at performance over time is crucial for understanding growth and seasonality.

  • Prompt Example: "Display my website sessions this month vs. last month in a line chart."

  • Why it Matters: A month-over-month (MoM) or year-over-year (YoY) comparison immediately tells you if your performance is trending up or down. A sudden drop could signal a technical problem on your site, while steady growth confirms your marketing efforts are paying off.

3. Device Category Comparison

Your website visitors experience your site very differently on a phone versus a desktop computer. Comparing their behavior is essential.

  • Prompt Example: "Show me a comparison of sessions, bounce rate, and conversion rate for desktop vs. mobile traffic."

  • Why it Matters: A high bounce rate or low conversion rate on mobile could indicate a poor user experience. Insights from this chart can guide your web design and prioritize optimizations for the devices your audience actually uses.

4. Campaign Effectiveness Comparison (When GA is Connected to Ads)

If you're running ads, comparing campaigns against each other is vital for managing your budget.

  • Prompt Example: "Build a report table showing clicks, cost per click (CPC), and conversions for my top 5 Google Ads campaigns this month."

  • Why it Matters: This comparison makes it incredibly easy to spot over- and under-performing campaigns. You can reallocate your budget from campaigns with a high CPC and low conversions to the ones that are efficiently driving results.

Final Thoughts

Understanding how your marketing efforts stack up against each other is not just a nice-to-have, it's essential for smart decision-making. While Google Analytics 4 provides the tools to build these comparisons manually, the process can be slow and non-intuitive, creating a barrier between your data and your insights. AI-powered tools completely change this dynamic by allowing you to simply ask for the chart you need in plain English.

At Graphed, we’ve made this process as simple as having a conversation. You can connect your Google Analytics account in seconds, and instead of clicking through menus, you just ask our AI questions like, "Show me a chart comparing Organic vs. Paid traffic performance," and instantly get a live, interactive dashboard. By automating the grunt work of report building, we help you get from data to decision in a fraction of the time, allowing you to focus on growing your business instead of wrestling with reports.