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Traffic Acquisition

Traffic Acquisition is a report in GA4 that analyzes the intake channel for each session. Since it also includes the recent visit path of returning users, it is suitable for understanding the short-term session performance of campaigns and channels.

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The Traffic Acquisition report is one of the most critical reports for monitoring channel performance in GA4. While user acquisition looks at the channel of the original visit, traffic acquisition shows where each session came from, and thus reflects how returning users arrived on this visit.

For example, if the same user visits three times, and the first visit was a Google ad, the second was a organic search, and the third was a direct visit, user acquisition counts one person based on the Google ad, but traffic acquisition counts one Google ad, one organic search, and one direct visit for each session.

GA4 screen path: Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition report. The basic dimension is 'Session default channel group', and can be subdivided into session source, session medium, and session campaign.

Key takeaways

  • The number of sessions by channel is counted, including all sessions of new and returning users.
  • The basic dimension is 'Session default channel group', and can be subdivided into session source, medium, and campaign.
  • This is the most frequently used report when assessing campaign and advertising performance on a short-term basis.
  • When compared to user acquisition, you can see the difference between new and returning channel patterns.

References

Frequently asked questions

How do I check if Organic Search sessions suddenly decrease in GA4 Traffic Acquisition?

In GA4 traffic acquisition, we first check for changes by date by applying date comparison, and compare it to the number of clicks in Search Console to distinguish whether it is a problem on the GA4 side or an actual decrease in search exposure. If clicks have decreased in Search Console, check for ranking changes, Core Web Vitals issues, or Google algorithm updates.

What should I suspect if the Direct ratio in traffic acquisition is too high?

Inflows from channels with missing UTM tagging (email, Kakao, SNS sharing, etc.) are often counted as Direct. This can also be caused by utm parameters being attached to internal links or parameters being lost in the redirection chain. Track the cause with UTM tagging checks and GA4 DebugView.

Related terms