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Source / Medium

Source/Medium is the primary channel dimension in GA4 that combines traffic source and delivery method. 'google/organic' is Google's organic search, and 'google/cpc' shows at a glance where and how it came from, like Google advertisements, and is the basic unit of channel performance analysis.

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The source refers to the traffic source such as 'google', 'naver', and 'instagram', and the medium refers to the delivery method such as 'organic' (organic search), 'cpc' (paid click), 'referral' (referral link), and 'social' (social). The combination of the two is source/medium, and is the basis of GA4's channel group classification rules.

The dimension that marketers have checked most since the UA days is source/medium. 'google/organic' refers to Google organic search, 'google/cpc' refers to Google paid advertising, and 'naver/organic' refers to Naver organic search. If the source and medium are not directly specified with UTM parameters (utm_source, utm_medium), GA4 infers them using Referrer and automatic tagging.

GA4 Screen Path: Explore > Freeform Exploration, add 'Session source/medium' or 'First user source/medium' as a dimension to analyze. In standard reports, you can search by selecting 'source/medium' as the primary dimension.

Key takeaways

  • It is the basic level to understand the channel in detail by combining the source (source) and medium (method).
  • This is the basis for automatic classification of GA4 channel groups.
  • The value can be directly specified with the utm_source + utm_medium UTM parameter.
  • It is the most frequently used segmentation unit when comparing marketing channel performance.

References

Frequently asked questions

What does '(direct)/(none)' mean in source/medium?

This refers to inflow without both a referrer and parameters, such as direct URL input, bookmarks, and app/Kakao links without UTM tagging. If the (direct)/(none) ratio in overall traffic is excessively high, you should check for missing UTM tagging or referrer loss issues.

I put a link to my site on another page, but why is the source/medium set to a value other than (referral)?

If the link has a utm_source or utm_medium parameter, that value takes precedence. Additionally, if an internal domain is registered as a Referral Exclusion in GA4, then traffic from that domain may be counted differently. Check in GA4 Management > Data Stream > Tag Settings.

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