Traffic Acquisition Report in Google Analytics
There are generally six types of reports in GA4, but among them, the Traffic Acquisition report is the most commonly used, especially by SEOs and digital marketers.
Traffic acquisition in GA4 shows how users arrive at your website or app, such as through organic search, paid ads, social media, or referrals. It helps you understand which marketing channels drive traffic and which perform best.
6 Reports to Understand Your Audience in GA4:
1. Traffic Acquisition Report
Shows where your users come from, such as organic search, paid ads, social media, or referrals. This report helps you evaluate which channels drive the most traffic and conversions.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the Traffic Acquisition report.
2. Engagement Reports
Includes Events, Conversions (Key Events), Pages & screens, and Landing pages. These reports show how users interact with your site, what content performs best, and where users start their journey.
Engagement Reports' sub categories:
2.1 Events – Displays all events collected by GA4, including automatically collected events (such as page views, session starts, and first visits), enhanced measurement events, and custom events. This report provides insight into user interactions at an event level.
2.2 Conversions (Key Events) – Shows events that have been marked as conversions, representing important actions such as purchases, add-to-cart events, form submissions, or other business-critical interactions.
2.3 Pages and screens – Offers page-level and screen-level performance metrics, including views, users, views per user, average engagement time, event count, conversions, and total revenue, helping identify which pages generate the most engagement and value.
2.4 Landing page – Focuses on the first page users see when they start a session, allowing you to compare engagement and performance across different landing pages.
3. Monetization Report
Monetization reports provide a financial breakdown of your audience’s activity. They highlight metrics such as total purchasers, first-time purchasers, revenue, and average revenue per user, making them essential for ecommerce analysis.
4. Retention Report
Retention reports show how often users return to your site over time. This helps you identify engagement trends and measure user loyalty and long-term value.
5. User Attributes Report
User attributes reports describe who your users are, including demographics (age, gender, interests) and geographic location. These insights help you tailor content and marketing to your audience.
If you’re investing in ads or multi-location SEO, you need location-specific insights to understand where to increase or scale back your marketing efforts. You can use the Demographic details report for this.
6. Tech Report
The Tech report shows how users access your site, including device type, browser, operating system, and platform. This is useful for optimizing user experience and identifying technical issues.
Website Traffic Sources
Web traffic sources tell you where your traffic comes from, helping you understand which channels to focus on and improve.
Here are some common traffic source types you can find in GA4 (default channel group, also known as the session primary channel group) and what they mean:
Organic Search
Traffic from unpaid search engine results (e.g., Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, DuckDuckGo). Users arrive after clicking a non-advertising search result.
Example: A user searches “white-label exchange software” on Google and clicks your website.
Direct
Traffic from visitors who enter your URL directly into the browser’s address bar, use bookmarks, or click untagged links, where GA4 cannot identify a source or medium.
Example: A user types yourdomain.com directly into the browser.
Referral
Traffic from links on other websites (or domains) that are not search engines or social platforms.
Example: A crypto news site links to your article, and users click through.
Organic Social
Traffic from unpaid (non-boosted) social media posts.
Example: A user clicks a link from your company’s organic Twitter post.
Organic Video
Traffic from unpaid video content.
Example: A link clicked from a YouTube video description (or Vimeo) without paid promotion.
Organic Shopping
Traffic from free product listings on online shopping platforms.
Example: A user clicks a free Google Shopping listing.
Traffic from email campaigns, usually identified via UTM tagging.
Example: A newsletter link clicked from a product update email marketing.
Note:
Email is part of GA4’s default channel grouping, but GA4 will only classify traffic as Email if the session’s source and medium match its channel rules.
Typically, this requires using utm_medium=email in your tracking parameters.
When you use UTM parameters for email marketing campaigns, setting utm_medium=email ensures that email-driven visits are grouped under the Email channel.
Untagged email links often appear as Direct traffic, while non-standard mediums utm_medium=newsletter2026 may be classified as Unassigned.
GA4 does not automatically detect email traffic without proper UTM tagging.
SMS
Traffic from links clicked within text messages. These visits are typically identified using UTM parameters.
Example: A user clicks a promotional link sent via SMS.
Email and SMS are both owned channels that require UTMs for proper attribution; without them, GA4 cannot reliably identify the source. If the links are untagged, visits will usually be classified as Direct, just like Email traffic.
Mobile Push Notifications
Traffic from links clicked in push notifications sent by mobile apps or browsers. These notifications require proper UTM tagging to be classified correctly.
Example: A user taps a push notification alert from your mobile app and lands on your website.
Unassigned
Traffic GA4 cannot be classified into any default channel due to missing or incorrect tagging.
Example: Email or any Campaign links without UTMs or improperly configured source/medium values.
Further Reading: How to fix Unassigned in Google Analytics 4
Note:
Unassigned traffic means GA4 could not match the session to its standard channel rules. Common causes include:
Missing UTM parameters: Links from emails or ads that lack
utm_sourceorutm_mediumtags.Incorrect UTM values or spelling: Using non-standard values (for example,
utm_medium=social-mediainstead ofsocial).Measurement Protocol issues: Sending events via the Measurement Protocol without the required session or traffic source parameters.
Paid Search
Traffic from paid ads on search engines, such as Google Ads search campaigns.
Example: A user clicks a Google search ad targeting “CRM Software”.
Display
Traffic from visual ads shown on websites or apps, typically via display ad networks.
Example: A banner ad on a finance blog brings users to your landing page.
Paid Social
Traffic from paid advertisements on social media platforms.
Example: A sponsored LinkedIn post promoting CRM Software
Paid Video
Traffic from paid video ads on platforms like YouTube (Google Ads Video Campaign).
Example: A user clicks a YouTube pre-roll ad promoting your service.
Cross-network
Traffic from ads that run across multiple Google networks (e.g. Search, Display, YouTube) in a single campaign.
Example: Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads.
Paid Other
Paid traffic that does not match GA4’s predefined paid channels.
Example: A paid campaign using custom UTMs that don’t map to search, social, or display.
Paid Shopping
Traffic from paid product listing ads on shopping platforms, such as Google Shopping ads. Users arrive by clicking sponsored product listings.
Example: A user clicks a sponsored Google Shopping result for a crypto hardware wallet.
Audio
Traffic from audio-based ads played on streaming platforms or podcasts. Users arrive after clicking or tapping an audio advertisement.
Example: A listener clicks a Spotify audio ad promoting your service.
Affiliates
Traffic from affiliate partners who promote your site and earn a commission for referrals. These visits are usually tracked via affiliate links and UTMs.
Example: A blogger reviews your product and links to your site using an affiliate URL.
GA4 Tracking Best Practices
If multiple team members are handling performance marketing, you should establish clear and standardized guidelines for UTM parameters.
Inconsistent tagging creates fragmented data, making channel analysis unnecessarily complicated. Analyzing campaign performance with unstructured UTMs is one of the frustrating experiences in Google Analytics — and entirely avoidable with proper governance.
Keep in mind that UTM implementation varies by advertising platform. For example:
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Some platforms require you to manually append UTM parameters to destination URLs.
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Google Ads, on the other hand, should use auto-tagging (gclid), which integrates seamlessly with GA4 and avoids manual tagging errors.
Standardization ensures accurate attribution and cleaner reporting.
Avoid Parameterized URL Clutter
Another common issue occurs when UTM parameters are not handled properly in reporting.
If you analyze the wrong dimension — for example, a page URL that includes query parameters — your reports may display the same landing page multiple times with different parameter variations. This splits your metrics across several rows, leading to fragmented and misleading insights.
To prevent this:
Use the Landing page dimension (which excludes query parameters), not the full Page location.
Maintain strict UTM naming conventions.
Avoid unnecessary custom parameters in URLs.
Clean tracking architecture leads to clean analysis.
What is clean data?
Clean data in GA means your tracking is consistent, standardized, and free from duplication or fragmentation.
It ensures that events, UTM parameters, and page URLs follow clear naming conventions so your reports reflect accurate and reliable insights.
Without clean data, even advanced analysis can lead to misleading conclusions.
How GA4 classifies traffic sources?
Google Analytics classifies traffic in multiple ways to provide different layers of analysis. These classifications are known as traffic source dimensions.
There are 5 main traffic source dimensions in GA4:
1. Session source
Identifies the specific origin of the traffic (the what), such as Google, Bing, or Facebook.
2. Session medium
Describes the type of traffic (the how), for example, organic, cpc, referral, or email.
3. Session source / medium
A combined view of the source and medium, offering more detailed attribution context.
4. Session campaign
Indicates the marketing campaign responsible for the traffic, typically populated via UTM parameters.
Note:
You can use the campaign dimension to associate your traffic with specific marketing or advertising campaigns.
Except for Google Ads traffic (where campaign names are automatically imported), Google Analytics does not report campaign data by default. To track campaigns from other channels, you must use UTM parameters to properly classify marketing campaign data.
5. Session default channel group
Groups traffic into predefined channels* using rule-based logic, such as Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, or Email.
Why traffic acquisition uses session-scoped dimensions?
The Traffic acquisition report uses session-scoped dimensions because its goal is to show how each user session started.
By attributing traffic sources at the session level, GA4 ensures that every visit is credited to the source, medium, or campaign that initiated the session, even if users navigate across multiple pages afterward.
What should you do after analyzing Traffic Acquisition data?
Improve content effectiveness: Identify which pages drive the most traffic. By understanding which content attracts the most organic traffic, you can refine your content marketing strategy, focus on high-performing topics, and optimize underperforming pages.
Traffic Acquisition FAQs
What is the Urchin Tracking Model (UTM)?
The Urchin Tracking Model (UTM) is a system of URL parameters used to track where website traffic comes from. By adding UTM parameters to links, you can identify traffic from specific marketing campaigns, sources, and channels in GA4.
Direct, Unassigned, and Paid Other: what’s the difference?
Direct traffic occurs when GA4 cannot identify a referring source, such as when users type your URL directly, use bookmarks, or click untagged links from apps like WhatsApp or Slack.
Example: A user types yourdomain.com into the browser or clicks an untagged link shared in a private chat.
Unassigned traffic appears when GA4 receives source or medium values but cannot map them to any default channel due to incorrect or non-standard tagging.
Example: A campaign tagged with utm_medium=promo_link that does not match GA4’s channel rules.
Paid Other includes paid traffic that does not fit GA4’s standard paid channels because of custom or misconfigured UTMs.
Example: A paid campaign using utm_medium=paid_campaign instead of cpc or paid_social.
How Direct traffic inflated in GA4?
Direct traffic is often inflated because GA4 assigns sessions to Direct when it cannot identify a source or medium. This commonly happens with untagged links from emails, messaging apps (like WhatsApp or Slack), missing UTM parameters, or tracking limitations across devices and browsers.
User acquisition vs traffic acquisition: What's the differences?
User acquisition shows how new users first discovered your website, focusing on the traffic source that brought them to your site for the first time.
Traffic acquisition shows the source of all sessions, including both new and returning visitors, reflecting how each visit started.
What are link shim referrals (e.g. m.facebook.com / referral)?
Link shim referrals are intermediary redirect URLs used by platforms like Facebook when users click outbound links.
They are mainly used for security and privacy reasons, such as malware scanning and protecting user data, which is why traffic may appear as m.facebook.com / referral in GA4.
You can clean this up by adding proper UTM parameters to your links or adjusting GA4 channel rules to classify link shim referrals as Social traffic.
What does (none) and (no set) mean in the Medium column?
(none) means the medium value was not provided for the session, most commonly associated with Direct traffic.
(not set) appears when GA4 expected a value but could not populate it due to configuration issues, missing parameters, or data processing limitations.
What is First user medium?
First user medium shows the traffic medium (such as organic, referral, or cpc) that brought a user to your site for the very first time. It remains fixed for that user and is used in User acquisition reports to understand how new users were originally acquired.
How does GA4 classify traffic from QR codes, PDFs, or Office files?
Traffic from QR codes or clickable links inside non-web documents (such as PDFs, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files) is usually classified as Direct if no UTM parameters are used.
To correctly attribute this traffic, you can add UTM parameters, so GA4 can identify the source, medium, and campaign.
What happens when referral information is blocked or hidden in GA4 ?
(e.g. <noreferrer> or privacy settings)?
When a referring website blocks referral data using a <noreferrer> tag, or when a user has privacy features enabled (such as Do Not Track or strict browser settings), GA4 cannot see the referral source.
As a result, the session is typically classified as Direct traffic because the referral information is missing.
Example: If a user clicks a link from a forum that blocks referral data, GA4 will record the visit as Direct, even though the user came from that forum.
What happens when a domain is added to the Referral Exclusion list in GA4?
When a domain is added to the Referral Exclusion list, GA4 ignores it as a referral source. If no other source information is available for the session, the traffic is typically classified as Direct in the acquisition reports.
Note:
The Referral Exclusion List is a setting in Google Analytics 4 that prevents specified domains from being counted as referral traffic. It is commonly used to avoid self-referrals or third-party payment gateways from overwriting the original traffic source.
How does GA4 classify traffic from mobile apps and desktop software?
Traffic from mobile apps or desktop software (such as messaging apps, email clients, or social media apps) often does not pass referral information. When no source or medium is available, GA4 typically classifies this traffic as Direct.
Do link shorteners affect GA4 tracking?
Yes, link shorteners like Bitly can strip or obscure tracking information if not configured properly. If you use a link shortener, make sure it preserves or allows UTM parameters so GA4 can correctly attribute the traffic source.
What is GA4 attribution? (who should be credited)
Attribution in Google Analytics 4 determines which traffic source gets credit for a conversion.
How does Last-click differ from Data-driven attribution?
Last-click attribution assigns all credit to the final interaction before conversion, while data-driven attribution uses machine learning to distribute credit across multiple touchpoints based on their actual contribution.
What is cross-domain tracking?
Cross-domain tracking allows GA4 to track a single user session across multiple related domains. It helps prevent self-referrals and ensures user interactions are attributed to one continuous session instead of being split across sites.
Where Does GA4 Get Its User Interest Data From?
GA4’s User Attributes (Interests) reports are powered primarily by Google Signals data.
When users are signed into their Google accounts and have Ads Personalization enabled, Google can aggregate behavioral data (such as browsing activity and ad interactions across Google properties) to infer demographic and interest categories.
This data is anonymized and modeled before appearing in GA4 reports.
If Google Signals is not enabled — or if there isn’t enough eligible traffic — those interest reports may show limited or no data, since GA4 does not directly collect interest categories from your website itself.