Introducing Analytics Advisor in Google Analytics: Platform Expertise at Your Fingertips

If you’ve ever stared at a Google Analytics dashboard wondering where to start, or wished you could just ask your data a question instead of building a custom report, your wish has just been granted.

Google has introduced Analytics Advisor in Beta, a new conversational experience powered by Google’s Gemini AI models. It sits inside your Google Analytics property and acts as an always-available analyst, helping you uncover insights, visualize trends, and troubleshoot performance issues simply by chatting.

What is Analytics Advisor?

Analytics Advisor is an “agentic” tool, meaning it doesn’t just retrieve static FAQs; it actively analyzes your specific property’s data to give you personalized answers. Accessible via a dedicated icon dedicated icon or the search bar in GA4, it allows you to use natural language to interact with your data.

Instead of navigating through five different sub-menus to find a metric, you can now just ask for it.

Why Use It? (with Examples!)

The power of Analytics Advisor lies in its versatility. It can handle everything from high-level summaries to nitty-gritty reporting questions. Here are a few scenarios where this feature shines:

1. The “Monday Morning” Health Check

When you want a quick pulse check on performance without digging into reports, Advisor is perfect for generic inquiries.

• Why use it: To get an instant executive summary before a meeting.
• Example Queries: “How is my product line doing compared to last week?” or “Is my new blog post getting much traction?”

2. Investigating Sudden Drops or Spikes

One of the hardest parts of analytics is figuring out why something happened. Analytics Advisor can perform diagnostic analysis to attribute causes to data anomalies. It can also read from system and property-specific annotations to understand timelines of changes.

• Why use it: To save hours of manual segmentation when trying to find the root cause of a revenue dip.
• Example Queries: “Why did my conversions spike on April 15?” or “Why were there no file download events recorded in the month of May?”

3. Creating Instant Visualizations

You don’t always need to build a full Looker Studio report to see a trend. Analytics Advisor can generate charts and insights on the fly for specific metrics.

• Why use it: To visualize data immediately for a quick screenshot or personal understanding.
• Example Queries: “Show me a trendline of product page views over the last 30 days” or “Show me the total purchases attributed to my Black Friday Display campaign.”

4. Learning the Platform (“How-to” Support)

GA is powerful, but it can be complex. If you haven’t got the time to learn the ins and outs of the platform or a specific feature, Analytics Advisor acts as a built-in guide.

• Why use it: To get step-by-step instructions without leaving your dashboard to search Google Support.
• Example Queries: “How do I link my property to Google Ads?” or “How do I create a Cart Abandoners audience?”

5. Strategic Optimization

Perhaps the most exciting capability is asking for advice on growth. Analytics Advisor can look at your data and suggest next steps.

• Why use it: To brainstorm actionable business strategies based on real user behavior.
• Example Query: “What is the most effective way to re-engage users who dropped off without viewing a product page?”

What Analytics Advisor Isn’t Good For (A Warning)

Before you dive in, keep in mind that this feature is currently in Beta. This means it is still experimental and actively learning. The features and interface may change as Google refines the tool. While Analytics Advisor is a powerful assistant, it is not a replacement for a data scientist or a full-scale data engineering pipeline. It is important to manage your expectations regarding its capabilities:

• Shareable Visualizations: While it may do a good job giving you an answer you can understand, it may struggle with creating content you can use to disseminate that information within your organization. The tool is not yet designed to export its outputs, so you may be limited to taking screenshots from its interface or using its responses as a starting point before creating reports for yourself.
• Answering the “Why”: The tool is designed to provide answers using the knowledge available to it. It may make inferences about root causes based only on correlations which can send you in the wrong direction. Only a trained analytics professional with a thorough understanding of your business’s context and history can accurately answer ‘why’ questions.
• False Sense of Confidence: Like with all conversational LLMs, answers provided by Analytics Advisor can instill a false sense of certainty in the answer it provides.
• Bulk Exporting & Raw Data: Do not use Advisor if you need to export large datasets or access raw event-level data. It is designed for conversational summaries and visual snapshots, not for pulling 10,000 rows of data into a spreadsheet. For that, you should still rely on standard reports, the Data API, or BigQuery exports.
• Direct Actionability: Currently, Analytics Advisor primarily functions as a guide rather than an executor. If you ask it to “create an audience,” it will likely provide you with step-by-step instructions, rather than instantly building and saving the audience for you. It teaches you how to fish; it doesn’t necessarily catch the fish for you.

Note: As with all AI tools, results can occasionally be inaccurate (“hallucinations”). Always verify critical insights with your standard GA4 reports before making major budget or strategy changes.

How to Try It

If your property is eligible (currently available for English-language properties), you can access Analytics Advisor by clicking the Advisor icon in the top right corner of your Google Analytics interface, or by typing “Ask Analytics Advisor” in the search bar.

As this is a Beta feature, Google is actively looking for feedback—so don’t hesitate to use the thumbs-up/thumbs-down buttons to train the model to be even better!