Build charts in Amplitude: Modify a user segment

The segment you created in the Add user segments article is perfectly functional. Depending on the breadth of your analysis, it may be all you need. But many Amplitude users prefer to drill down more and create user segments based on specific combinations of properties. The Segmentation Module gives you all the tools you need to define user segments with a high level of precision.

Add a filter

When adding properties to a segment definition, remember that you're specifying the property values at the time of each event.
For example, imagine you add the filter where City = Amsterdam to your segment. If a user triggers an event where City = Amsterdam, but more recently triggered an event where Country = United Kingdom, only the event that matches your filter will be included in the chart. If you need to query an event based on the user property, make sure the user property is set prior to the moment when the user logs that event. More information can be found here.

Also, if you segment by Device ID, Event ID, Latitude, Longitude, Server Upload Time, Session ID, User ID, or ID, you will need to specify the exact values you're looking for. You will not be able to group by the user properties Event ID, Latitude, Longitude, Server Upload Time, or ID. 

To apply a filter to your user segment, follow these steps:

1. Click + Filter by under your user segment. Be sure you do not click on + Filter by underneath your event.
2. From the Select property... menu, select the user property or behavioral cohort you want to add to the filter.
3. Select the value of the user property you want to include (or specifically exclude).
4. Then, select the operator that will define how this property is used in your filter: is, is not, contains, does not contain, less/greater than (or equal to), set is, set is not, set contains, set does not contain, and glob match. 

• "is" or "is not”: Use the is or is not operators to include or exclude exact property values in your segment definition.

• "contains" or "does not contain": Use the contains or does not contain operators to include or exclude property values with a specific substring in your segment definition. This operator is not case sensitive.

• "starts with" or "does not start with": Use the starts with or does not start with operators to include or exclude property values with a specific prefix string in your segment definition. This operator is not case sensitive.

• "set is" or "set is not": Use the set is or set is not operators to include or exclude specific array sets.

• For example, you could define a segment that includes users with an array set of Movies and Music as Interests {=} Movies, Music. This means that the user's array set must exactly include Movies and Music. So, if the user only has Movies, then they would not meet the definition. Likewise, if the user has Sports in addition to Movies and Music, they would not meet the definition.

• "set contains" or "set does not contain": These operators match list values containing all the selected values, or list values that do not contain all the selected values, respectively. This is useful to see, for example, people who belong to multiple A/B test groups. 

  • If you are trying to exclude certain values from a property array, use "set does not contain."
  • If multiple values are selected, these operators apply an AND statement on the values e.g. if the condition is set as "set does not contain" group A and group B, a user needs to be NOT in group A AND group B to be excluded. If you want to apply an OR statement, multiple "set does not contain" filters need be applied.

• "glob match" or "glob does not match": Amplitude has a simple version of regular expressions that allows you to match or exclude strings like "/org/*/chart/*" where * is a wildcard. You can also enter strings like "*[0-9]" or "[!a-z]*" to match values that end in a digit or start with a non-letter. Here is more information on glob matching.

  • The asterisk only matches non-"/" characters. To search for strings that contain "/", use two asterisks instead. For example, if your URL format is www.example.com/blogs/blog_id, and you would like to filter all URLs that contain the word “blog," use glob match and enter **blogs**.

For more information, see our Help Center article on how array operators work in Amplitude.

You can also change the name of your segment by hovering over its current name and clicking it. Note that this will also change the segment’s name in any charts already using it.

Using an OR clause

To filter on multiple values of the same property, simply add more values in the Select value(s)... box. This creates an OR clause in the segment’s definition. In the screenshot below, the segment now includes users who fired an event in the United States OR the United Kingdom OR Japan .

Using an AND Clause

Adding another filter creates an AND clause to your segment definition. To add additional filters, click + Filter by. In the screenshot below, the segment definition now includes users who fired an event in the United States AND using German.