Filters, dates and comparisons

The filter bar

Reading left to right, the bar holds:

• People: All people, or one saved segment.
• Dates: a preset such as Last 30 days, or a custom range.
• Source: All sources, or one website, app or server.
• Your applied filters, shown as chips that read like sentences, for example Page contains /blog or Referrer is not set.
• Add filter, to narrow by an event property.
• At the end, the freshness control and Compare.

The first three sit together as one joined control, because together they answer “whose data, from when, from where”. Filters apply to everything on the page. On a board they apply to every tile.

Your filters travel with you. Set Last 7 days on Overview and Funnels opens with the same range. They are also kept in the page address, so a link you paste to a teammate opens with the same scope. The default is Last 30 days, All sources and All people.

Not every report shows every control. On a funnel, Add filter narrows one step rather than the whole report, and the funnels list skips it. Traces only offer dates and freshness. When a control can’t work on a report, it stays visible and says why, rather than disappearing. For example, Flows show Flows can’t compare to the previous period yet.

Dates and time zone

Click the dates chip to open the date picker. On the left are the presets:

• Today
• Yesterday
• Last 7 days
• Last 30 days
• Last 90 days
• Last 12 months
• Month to date
• Year to date
• All time

On the right is a calendar for a custom range. Click a start day, then an end day, and press Apply. Nothing changes until you apply, so you can click around freely. The footer shows the range you have painted and the time zone it is read in, for example Times in Europe/London.

Today and Month to date are still filling up. A dip at the right edge of a chart is often just the current hour or day being incomplete.

People and segments

The people chip is titled Who to count. All people means everyone who sent an event in the range. Pick a saved segment to count only its members. Each segment shows its size, a one-line summary of its conditions, and a badge:

• Live: membership is re-evaluated as people match or stop matching.
• Snapshot: a fixed list of people, frozen when it was saved.

Segments you used recently are listed first. To create or edit segments, see Segments.

Compare segments (Funnels and Retention)

Funnels and Retention also have a Compare segments button. Tick up to five saved segments and press apply, and the report splits into one row or line per segment, plus Other for everyone in none of them. Someone in two segments counts in both.

Sources

A project can have several sources, such as a marketing site, a web app and a server. All sources is the default, and it is what makes a funnel that starts on your site and ends in your app possible. Pick one source to see only its events. The list shows each source with its event count, under Sources in [your project].

Property filters

Every event carries properties: the page it happened on, the browser, the country, the UTM tags, and anything you sent yourself. Add filter builds a filter in two clicks:

1. Pick a property. Categories run down the left, from All to Suggested, Page & source, Device & location, Person and Custom. Rarely used keys are under Advanced. Point at a property to read what it is, its type and its top values on the right. Search matches the friendly name, the description and the raw key, so utm_source finds UTM source.

   

2. Tick values. The list shows real values with how many events carry each, and Select all ticks every value listed. The filter starts as is any of. On the right, Your filter reads back as a sentence, with how many events would match. You can also type a value that hasn’t been seen yet, and press Enter to add it.
3. Press Apply. Nothing reaches the report until you do, so you can tick, untick and change your mind. Apply filter reads Update filter when you are editing one, and Remove filter if you have unticked everything.

To use another operator, such as contains or greater than, pick it in the Match list on the left of the popover. is set and is not set need no value, so you can press Apply straight away. Text you type for contains is added with Enter. For a comparison, type the number or date in the box, then press Apply.

Once a value is ticked, Enter applies too. Esc or a click outside the popover cancels, and the report stays as it was. When the filter is added, the new chip takes keyboard focus.

Properties belong to events, not people. So when you filter a people-based report, each applied chip has a ⋮ menu, shown when you hover or focus the chip. Its Applies to setting chooses what the filter applies to:

• People who ever matched (the default): keep everyone who sent at least one matching event, and count all their events.
• Only matching events: count only the events that match. The chip then shows events only.

In a funnel, the builder asks which step has to match instead. Some reports also offer Break down instead, which splits the report by that property rather than filtering it.

Click a chip to edit it, or click its operator (is ▾) to open the popover on the operator list. Editing works the same way: change it, then press Update filter. The × on a chip removes it. After three chips, the rest fold into a “+n more” button. You can have one filter per property: a second filter on the same property replaces the first. Values show Direct / none for a direct visit and (not set) when an event has no value.

Operators

Which operators you see depends on the property’s type. If you set a type in Lexicon, that type wins.

• contains and does not contain ignore upper and lower case. Does not contain also keeps events that don’t have the property at all.
• between includes both ends. Dates are compared by day.
• is set means the event carries the property at all, and is not set means it doesn’t.

Referrer and UTM: the visit, not the click

Referrer and the UTM properties describe the visit. Referrer is where the session landed from, and it is empty when the visit was direct. The UTM properties hold the first UTM value the session carried. Every event in the visit carries those same values.

A visit that lands from your own site or domains continues the same person’s previous visit, if that one started within 24 hours. It takes that visit’s referrer, following earlier continued visits back to the one that started them. With no such visit, it reads Direct / none.

First referrer is per person: the referrer of their first page view in the report’s range. Page views broken down by it match the Web overview’s referrers card.

That is what you want for attribution. Say someone lands from a newsletter with utm_source=newsletter, reads three pages and then signs up. Filtering sign-ups by UTM source is newsletter finds them, even though the sign-up page’s own URL had no UTM tags.

If you need the value on one event itself, open the Advanced category and use Referrer (this event) or UTM source (this event) and its siblings.

Compare

Compare draws the previous period of the same length next to the current one. With Last 7 days selected, that is the seven days before. You can switch it from the chip or from Compare to previous period in the date picker. Headline numbers then show how much they changed, such as ↑ 12.4% vs prev 7 days. Each report’s guide says what else Compare changes there.

Freshness

New events reach reports within seconds of arriving. The tracker sends them in small batches every few seconds. An open report doesn’t redraw itself while you read it, so numbers don’t shift under you. A result counts as fresh for about a minute, and the freshness control tells you where you stand:

• Updated 2 minutes ago (or similar): when the result was computed. Hover to see the exact time.
• Newer data available: a newer answer is ready. Click to load it.
• Refreshing: a new answer is on its way.
• Couldn’t refresh: the last attempt failed and you are still looking at the previous result. Click to try again.

When you change a filter, the date range or a report’s settings, the last result stays on screen, dimmed, until the new one arrives. Insights also draw a thin progress line and say what is changing, for example Updating for Plan is Pro, Team…. You only see an empty loading state the first time a report opens.

For a live view of events as they happen, use Realtime or the Events explorer’s live tail.

On a phone

On narrow screens the bar collapses into a one-line scope summary and a Filters button with a count of active filters. Tapping either opens a sheet with the same pickers.

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