Fast, Efficient and Creative: Using Google Analytics Custom Segments in Tableau

You've been able to bring Google Analytics data into Tableau for a while now, but you may have missed one of the most interesting and powerful features in Tableau 8.1: Custom Segment integration.

Custom Segments are a feature within Google Analytics that allow you to filter to a subset of sessions in order to gain a more specific insight into your web traffic. Think of them as a filter, but in Google Analytics. You can use them to focus on only organic search traffic, as an example. In Tableau 8.1 we released support for Custom Segments when you extract your data into Tableau. Watch the video to see why this is so exciting.

By limiting the amount of data you bring into Tableau to only those sub-sets that you are interested in working with, you decrease query times, increase the efficiency of calculations, and simplify the data that you make available to others. Custom Segments also allow you to create very detailed groups of sessions to ask questions from. For instance, you may wonder about the characteristics of organic traffic from India that stays on the website for less than ten minutes - using a custom segment you can filter to that traffic before you even start analyzing in Tableau. In short, our support for Custom Segments will help you make your web analytics fast, efficient and creative.