What are Views in Google Analytics 4?

If you've recently migrated from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, one of the first things you'll notice is the absence of "Views." For years, Views were a fundamental part of the GA setup, so their disappearance can be jarring. This article explains what happened to Views, how GA4 replaces their functionality, and provides step-by-step instructions for replicating your old setup.

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What Exactly Happened to Views?

In Universal Analytics (UA), the structure was simple and hierarchical: Account → Property → View. The View was where you saw your reports. Most businesses would have at least three Views for each Property:

• An unfiltered View with the raw, original data.
• A primary or master View where you'd apply filters (like excluding internal IP addresses or traffic from staging sites). This was for daily reporting.
• A testing View to try out new filters and goals before applying them to your main View.

In GA4, this structure no longer exists. The “View” level has been completely removed. GA4 uses a more streamlined structure: Account → Property.

The core reason for this change is GA4’s foundation in a completely different data model. While UA was built around sessions and pageviews, GA4 is built around events and users. This new event-driven model is more flexible and better equipped to track user journeys across both websites and apps, which led Google to rethink its organizational structure.

GA4’s Data Structure: Properties and Data Streams

Since Views are gone, it's important to understand how GA4 is organized. Your data now flows into a Property via one or more Data Streams.

• Property: This is the container for all the reports about your website and/or app. It’s where your analysis happens. In GA4, a single property is designed to house data from both your web and app platforms to give you a unified view of the customer journey.
• Data Stream: This is the source of the data flowing into your Property. You'll create a different Data Stream for each platform. For example, you’ll typically have one for your website, one for your iOS app, and one for your Android app, all sending data to the same GA4 Property.

Think of it this way: Data Streams are how information gets into your GA4 property, but they don't function like Views for filtering or segmenting that data for reporting.

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How to Replicate Your Old Views in GA4

So, how do you accomplish the tasks you used Views for, like filtering traffic or creating specific report sets? GA4 offers a few different tools to achieve the same outcomes: Data Filters, Comparisons, and Audiences.

1. For Unfiltered vs. Master Views: Use Data Filters

The most common use for a "Master View" was excluding internal traffic from your company, agencies, or developers. In GA4, this is handled with Data Filters at the Property level.

Step-by-Step: How to Exclude Internal IP Addresses

1. Navigate to your GA4 Admin panel (the gear icon <i class="fa fa-cog" aria-hidden="true"></i> in the bottom-left).
2. Under the "Property" column, select Data Streams and click on your web data stream.
3. Scroll down and click Configure tag settings.
4. Under "Settings", click Show all, then select Define internal traffic.
5. Click Create and give your rule a name (e.g., "Office IP Addresses"). Leave the default traffic_type value as "internal".
6. Under "IP addresses", choose a Match type (e.g., “IP address equals”) and enter the IP address you want to exclude. You can add more IP addresses by clicking "Add condition." Click Create.

Now that you’ve defined what internal traffic is, you need to tell GA4 to filter it out.

1. Go back to the main Admin panel.
2. Under the "Property" column, select Data Settings > Data Filters.
3. GA4 automatically creates an "Internal Traffic" filter for you in "Testing" mode. Click on it.
4. To activate it permanently, change the "Filter state" from "Testing" to "Active" and click "Save".

Once active, this filter will permanently exclude data from the IPs you defined. Unlike UA, this is not retroactive - it will only apply to data collected from that point forward. There's no separate "unfiltered view," so if you need raw data, you would simply deactivate the filter. That’s why many recommend keeping a second GA4 property as a completely raw backup.

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2. For Subdomain or Country-Specific Views: Use Comparisons and Audiences

If you used Views to see data only from a specific subdomain (e.g., blog.website.com) or from a particular country, you now have two primary options: temporary Comparisons for quick analysis or permanent Audiences for ongoing segmentation.

Using Comparisons for Quick Filtering

Comparisons are a quick, on-the-fly way to filter standard reports. This is perfect for when your boss asks for a quick look at traffic from the UK without wanting a permanent report.

Step-by-Step: Adding a Comparison to a Report

1. Open any standard report, like the "Traffic acquisition" report.
2. At the top of the report, click the + Add comparison button.
3. Set your condition. For example, to see data only from Canada:
4. Click Apply. The report will now update to show you the data for Canadian users alongside "All Users." You can close out the "All Users" comparison to see only the Canada segment.

This comparison stays active as you navigate between different standard reports but will be gone the next time you log in. It’s temporary and doesn't change your underlying data.

Using Audiences for Permanent Segments

Audiences are powerful segments of users you define based on their behavior, demographics, or other attributes. Once created, they can be used for reporting in custom Exploration reports and can also be sent to platforms like Google Ads for ad campaign targeting.

Step-by-Step: Creating an Audience for Blog Readers

1. Navigate to the GA4 Admin panel.
2. Under the "Property" column, go to Audiences.
3. Click New audience, then Create a custom audience.
4. Name your audience (e.g., "Blog Readers").
5. Set the "Include users when" condition. For a blog hosted at blog.yourwebsite.com, you could set the condition as:
6. Set the Membership duration. For example, 30 days means anyone who visits the blog will be part of this audience for the next 30 days.
7. Click Save.

Now, you can select this "Blog Readers" audience as a segment when building reports in the Explore section.

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3. For Testing Views: Use a Separate "Staging" Property

What about UA’s practice of a “Testing View” to safely experiment with new filters and goals without corrupting your main reporting data? The recommended best practice in GA4 is to create a separate GA4 Property for this purpose.

You can set up one GA4 property for your live website (e.g., "YourBrand Live") and a second property for your development or staging site (e.g., "YourBrand Dev/Test"). This keeps the data completely isolated, ensuring that test data never mixes with live user data. While it requires a bit more initial setup than creating a new View, it’s a much cleaner and safer approach.

Choosing the Right GA4 Alternative to Views: A Quick Guide

With several new tools at your disposal, here’s a common-sense breakdown of which to use for different situations:

• When you need to permanently exclude data (like your internal company traffic): Use Data Filters. This is a set-and-forget solution that alters the data collected into your property.
• When you need to quickly slice a standard report (e.g., "just show me mobile traffic"): Use Comparisons. They're temporary, easy to apply, and perfect for quick analysis without creating permanent segments.
• When you need to reuse a group of users for ongoing analysis or ad targeting (e.g., "users from the US who converted"): Create an Audience. It’s more permanent than a comparison and far more functional as it can be used in specialized Exploration reports and in services like Google Ads.
• When you need to keep staging or test environment data completely separate: Set up a separate GA4 Property. This is the cleanest and most reliable method for isolating test data.

Final Thoughts

While the elimination of Views in GA4 can feel daunting at first, it's a change that reflects a more modern approach to analytics. The new tools - Data Filters, Comparisons, and Audiences - replace the functionality of Views while providing significantly more flexibility to analyze your data in sophisticated ways.

Manually creating all these audiences and tinkering with GA4 reports can turn a quick question into a time-consuming project. At Graphed, we connect directly to your GA4 data to make this an effortless experience. Instead of building a new audience and applying it to a report, you can simply ask in plain English, "Show me last month's conversion rate for users from our blog," and get the chart instantly. We make it easy to get immediate answers, so you can spend less time navigating GA4 and more time acting on insights.