Where Can You Use Free Forms Within Google Analytics 4?

GA4's custom "Explorations" can feel like a labyrinth, but hidden inside is one of the most powerful, flexible reporting tools available for free: the Free-form exploration. It lets you go beyond standard reports to answer the specific, nuanced questions you have about your business. This guide will walk you through exactly what Free-form explorations are, how to build them step-by-step, and provide practical examples you can use to find impactful insights today.

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What Exactly is a Free-form Exploration in GA4?

Think of a Free-form exploration as a powerful pivot table built directly into Google Analytics. It's a blank canvas where you can mix and match different data points to build a completely custom report - something that wasn't easily possible in Universal Analytics without third-party tools.

To use them effectively, you just need to understand three core components:

• Variables: These are the building blocks of your report. They live in the far-left panel and are broken down into Dimensions and Metrics.
• Tab Settings: This is the control panel for your report canvas. After adding variables, you drag and drop them here to build your report. You can place dimensions into Rows or Columns and metrics into Values. This section also includes options for filtering, changing a chart's appearance, and creating segments.
• Canvas: The large area on the right where your report comes to life. As you configure your Tab Settings, the table or chart automatically appears here.

The beauty of free-form reports is that they unlock countless combinations, allowing you to move beyond canned reports and analyze performance in a way that truly matters to your unique goals.

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How to Build Your First Free-form Report: A Step-by-Step Guide

Let's build a simple, foundational report to see it in action. Our goal: discover which traffic channels bring the most users and conversions to our website.

Step 1: Navigate to Explorations

From any screen in GA4, look at the left-hand navigation menu. Click on the Explore tab. This will take you to your exploration hub, where you can start from scratch or use a template.

Step 2: Start a New Free-form Exploration

In the exploration hub, you'll see a gallery of templates. Click on the one labeled Free form to open a blank exploration canvas. It will be pre-populated with some default data, which we will change.

Step 3: Add Your Dimensions and Metrics

Now we need to add the specific building blocks for our channels report. Look at the Variables panel on the left.

• To add Dimensions: Click the plus sign (+) next to the DIMENSIONS heading. A menu will appear where you can search for and select the dimensions you need. For our example, search for and check the box next to "Session primary channel group". Click the blue Import button in the top right.
• To add Metrics: Click the plus sign (+) next to the METRICS heading. In the menu, search for and select "Sessions", "Total users", and "Conversions". Click Import.

Your chosen dimensions and metrics will now appear in the Variables panel, ready to be used.

Step 4: Build the Report on the Canvas

This is where the magic happens. Look at the Tab Settings panel. Simply drag and drop your variables from the left panel into the correct slots:

• Drag Session primary channel group from Dimensions and drop it onto the Rows dropbox.
• Drag Sessions, Total users, and Conversions from Metrics and drop them onto the Values dropbox.

Instantly, the canvas on the right will update to show a clean table with your primary traffic channels listed as rows and your chosen metrics populating the columns. That's it! You've built your first custom report.

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5 Practical Examples of Free-form Reports You Can Build Today

Now that you know the basic mechanics, let's explore some high-impact reports that can help you make better marketing and business decisions.

1. Top Performing Landing Pages by Channel

This report helps you discover which pages are the most effective at attracting visitors from different sources, like organic search or social media.

• Business Question: Which of our landing pages generates the most conversions from Google search vs. Facebook ads?
• Dimensions: Landing page + query string, Session primary channel group
• Metrics: Sessions, Engaged sessions, Conversions
• Setup: Drag Landing page + query string to Rows, Session primary channel group to Columns, and the metrics to Values.
• What It Tells You: This reveals the content resonating most with specific audiences. If a blog post gets tons of traffic from Organic Search but low engagement, you might need to improve the content. If a different page drives high conversions from Paid Social, that's a signal to invest more budget there.

2. Device Performance and Conversion Breakdown

Understanding how users experience your site on different devices is critical for optimizing user experience and conversion funnels.

• Business Question: Are we generating sales effectively from mobile traffic, or is there a checkout problem?
• Dimensions: Device category
• Metrics: Total users, Average engagement time, Conversions, Total revenue (for e-commerce sites)
• Setup: Drag Device category to Rows and your metrics to Values.
• What It Tells You: If you see a lot of mobile users but a very low conversion rate compared to desktop, it might indicate a clumsy mobile navigation menu, a slow-loading page, or a difficult checkout process on smaller screens. This report flags critical technical issues impacting your bottom line.

3. Content Popularity by Geographic Location

Find out where your most engaged audience lives and tailor your content strategy accordingly.

• Business Question: Which of our blog post categories are most popular in the United States vs. the United Kingdom?
• Dimensions: Page path and screen class, Country
• Metrics: Views, Average engagement time, Conversions
• Setup: Drag Page path to Rows. Then, in the Tab Settings under FILTERS, add a filter for Country exactly matches "United States". To compare, duplicate this tab and change the filter to "United Kingdom".
• What It Tells You: You might discover a huge, untapped audience in a country you weren't targeting. This insight can influence everything from your ad targeting strategy to the kind of region-specific content you decide to create next.

4. Campaign Performance Analysis with UTMs

If you're using UTM parameters to track your marketing campaigns (and you should be), this report shows you exactly which ones are driving results.

• Business Question: How did our "Summer Sale" email campaign perform compared to our "Summer Sale" social media campaign?
• Dimensions: Session campaign name (your utm_campaign), Session source / medium (your utm_source and utm_medium)
• Metrics: Sessions, Conversions, Session conversion rate
• Setup: Put Session campaign name into Rows and the metrics into Values. For an even deeper look, use Session source / medium as your row dimension and Session campaign name as a column.
• What It Tells You: This is a crystal-clear way to measure marketing ROI. At a glance, you can see which specific campaigns are meeting their goals and which are falling short, allowing you to reallocate your budget and effort intelligently.

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5. First-Time vs. Returning User Behavior

Understanding the difference between these two groups is key to improving both user acquisition and customer retention.

• Business Question: Do our returning users convert at a higher rate and spend more time on the site than new users?
• Dimension: Drag the default New / established user segment from the Segments section in variables and put it into Segment Comparisons just above Rows.
• Metrics: Total users, Sessions per user, Average engagement time, Conversions, Total revenue
• Setup: With the segment comparison in place, any dimension (like Device Category) you add to Rows and metrics you add to Values will now automatically be broken down into "new" and "established" user columns.
• What It Tells You: This demonstrates the stickiness of your website or app. Ideally, you want to see established users showing high engagement and conversion rates - it proves your brand is creating loyalty. If these numbers are low, it might be time to think about a newsletter, a loyalty program, or improving user re-engagement campaigns.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Free-form Explorations

As you get more comfortable, keep these best practices in mind to speed up your analysis.

• Start with a Question: The limitless options can be overwhelming. Before you start, always define a clear business question you want to answer. Are you trying to diagnose a drop in traffic? Or prove the ROI of a new campaign? Having a clear goal will keep your analysis focused and productive.
• Use Visualizations: Tables are great, but sometimes a chart tells a better story. In the Tab Settings panel, you can instantly change the visualization from a Table to a Donut chart, Line chart, Bar chart, and more to help you spot trends faster.
• Don't Forget to Name and Save: Unlike standard reports, explorations won’t save automatically. Be sure to give your exploration a descriptive name in the top left corner (e.g., "Monthly Content & Channels Report"). Your work is saved automatically after that.
• Apply Filters to Drill Down: Use the Filters option in the Tab Settings to isolate your data. For example, you can filter a report to show only mobile traffic, or only data from a specific campaign, to get an even clearer picture.

Final Thoughts

Mastering GA4's free-form explorations transforms analytics from a passive reporting system into an active discovery tool. By learning to combine the right dimensions and metrics, you can create custom reports that answer the most important questions for your business and move past generic, pre-configured charts to find genuinely useful insights.

While building your own reports in GA4 is powerful, sometimes you need immediate answers without getting lost in dimensions and metrics. We created Graphed because getting insights from your data shouldn't require a manual reporting exercise. Connect your sources like Google Analytics, and just ask questions in plain English, like "which campaign drove the most revenue last month?" Graphed instantly builds the dashboards and finds the answers you need in seconds, not hours.