New Custom Channel Groups in GA4

They are finally available in all accounts! What? The Custom Channel Groups!

On Pi-day, Google has decided to release this feature so much expected by us all.

What are Custom Channel Groups

GA4’s Custom Channel Groups are nothing more than traffic groupings based on site visit sources. The difference with the Default Channel Groups is that now GA4 increases the flexibility of creating these groups according to the rules that are set.

Custom Channel Groups can be used as both primary and secondary dimensions and are available in reports, explorations, and audience creation.

Limitations of Custom Channel Groups

There are currently the following limitations in the GA4 Custom Channel Groups:

Obviously the Default Channel Groups are excluded from this count.

How to configure Custom Channel Groups

The Custom Channel Groups are located in the Admin > Property > Data Settings section, as shown in the screenshot below:

By clicking on “Create new channel group” it will be possible to:

• create new channels
• edit groups
• edit channels in a group
• add new channels to a group
• remove channels
• rearrange the channels
• remove groups

In the screenshot above:

1. you can give the new group a name
2. it is possible to modify, rearrange or remove a channel among those proposed.

Add a new channel group

To create a new channel group you can select one or more conditions based on Default Channel Groups, Medium, Source, Source Platform, Campaign ID and Campaign Name. The selected conditions can be concatenated in AND or OR.

New: possible to select matching both in partial regex and in full regex!

Once created, in spite of Universal, the Custom Channel Groups are RETROACTIVE, this means that they are usable immediately!