Do you want to see where your visitors are coming from on your website? With the Google Analytics 4 traffic source/medium reports, you’ll be able to see how your visitors are finding your site.
When you know where your visitors are coming from, you can better understand your audience and make better decisions that’ll grow your business.
In this article, we’ll show you how to see traffic source and medium in Google Analytics 4.
Note: Using self-hosted WordPress? There’s an easier way to get your reports! Jump to our WordPress instructions.
How to Find Traffic Source in Google Analytics
Want to find your traffic source and medium in Google Analytics? We’ve written a tutorial to help you do just that.
We’ll guide you every step of the way, so you won’t get lost in the vast world of Analytics and the information you need to make decisions.
In Google Analytics 4…
There are a few different ways and places to view your traffic source/medium in Google Analytics 4, but we’ll go over one that’s the easiest to find and understand.
First, sign into Google Analytics and navigate to Reports » Acquisition » Traffic Acquisition. Here, you’ll see an overview report about how your traffic came to your site:
Scroll down to the table to see more specifics and metrics for each channel:
In this table, for each channel, you’ll see:
- Users – the number of users who came to your site via that channel
- Sessions – the number of sessions that occurred via that channel
- Engaged sessions – the number of sessions that occurred via that channel that lasted 10 seconds or longer, had a conversion event, or had 2 or more pageviews
- Average engagement time per session – how long on average sessions via that channel lasted
- Engaged sessions per user – the number of engaged sessions on average per user
- Events per session – the average number of events that occurred per session for that channel
- Engagement rate – the percentage of engaged sessions
- Event count – the number of events that occurred for that channel
- Conversions – the number of conversions that occurred for that channel (requires conversions to be set up)
- Total revenue – the amount of revenue that was recorded for that channel (if you have eCommerce tracking set up)
Using all of these metrics (or just the ones that make sense for your site), you can track how each channel is doing and make improvements to your site that work towards growing your business.
Now, to get even more granular data, let’s add Medium to our table. To do that, click the blue plus sign:
Next, in the dropdown box that appears, click on the Session Acquisition category, then choose Session source/medium.
Now, you have a complete source/medium report in Google Analytics 4. You can see more here than you could with just the source report! For instance, now you can see things like whether different search engines contributed to your organic search total, and see how traffic via each search engine behaved:
In Universal Analytics…
To start, navigate to Acquisition » All Traffic » Channels. Here you can see different channels that send traffic to your website. So, you can look at whether you’re getting most visitors from Organic Search or Direct traffic, for instance.
Next, if you click Source/Medium, then you’ll get more details. So, along with the channel, you’ll also see the source that’s contributing to your site’s traffic. For instance, for referrals, you can see the website that’s sending traffic your way.
And if you want to see traffic sources for a specific page, then you can go to Behavior » Site Content » Landing Pages and then select a page. From there, click on the Secondary dimension and search for Source/Medium.
This will narrow down the traffic sources for your post. It helps you optimize your marketing efforts. For example, you can see that one of the top traffic sources is google / organic. So, you can use different SEO tools to find keywords the post is ranking on and optimize for more search terms to increase traffic from search engines.
An Easier Way to See Traffic Sources
WordPress users, there’s an easier way to see your traffic sources! Meet ExactMetrics.
ExactMetrics is the best premium WordPress Analytics plugin and makes it super simple to use Google Analytics. You don’t have to worry about coding or hiring an expert to set up tracking (even eCommerce!). And using its clean and easy to read reports, you’ll get all your important data inside your WordPress dashboard.
After installing the plugin and successfully adding Google Analytics to your WordPress site, let’s dive into the reports you can use to check your traffic sources.
Overview Report
Start by navigating to ExactMetrics » Reports. The first report tab you’ll see will be the Overview report.
In it, you can look at the Device Breakdown report. It shows which devices your visitors are using to view your website. So, you can make sure your site is working properly on different devices.
Next, scroll down and view the Top 10 Countries your visitors come from. Using the data from this Google Analytics traffic source, you can see which countries your audience is from and then create marketing campaigns for each region to get more conversions.
Right next to the top countries report is the Top 10 Referrals report. So, if another website has a link to your site and a user clicks on it, then they’re counted under referral traffic. This report shows you which websites are your top referral sources.
Publishers Report
In the Publishers report, you get more insights about your visitors. You’ll need an ExactMetrics Plus or higher license to view this report.
The first metric you can track in the Publishers report is your Top Landing Pages. These are pages that are driving a lot of web traffic. For each landing page, you can see the total number of visits, average duration, and bounce rate.
Other metrics that you can view are:
- Top Exit Pages – See which pages your visitors leave your website from
- Top Outbound Links – Find out which external or outbound link people click the most
- Top Affiliate Links – Identify your more popular affiliate
- Top Download Links – If you’re offering downloadable content on your site, then see which file gets the most downloads
- Age and Gender – You can get demographic data about your visitors and find out their average age and gender
- Interests – Find out which categories your visitors are interested in
eCommerce Report
Now, if you have an eCommerce store, you can look at which referral sources send highly converting visitors to your website. You’ll need an ExactMetrics Pro license to view this report.
To start, go to ExactMetrics » Reports » eCommerce and navigate to Top Conversion Sources report. By looking at referrals where your most converting traffic is coming from, you can find more sources to promote your website.
Or you can boost your conversions by partnering with these traffic sources and offer discounts and incentives to visitors from them.
Search Console Report
The next ExactMetrics report you can look at is the Search Console Report. It shows which keywords people are using to find and visit your website on Google. You’ll need an ExactMetrics Plus or higher license to view this report.
These search terms show how your organic visitors are finding your website. So, using the data from the report, you can improve the rankings of keywords on the 2nd page on Google and try to bring them up to the top 10 results. And you can find more keyword ideas by looking at content that’s already ranking at the top.
Real-Time Report
another report you can see to find traffic sources is your Real-Time report. As the name suggests, it shows where your visitors are coming from in real-time.
You can look at your Top Referral Traffic Sources in real-time. It also shows which campaigns are driving traffic and how many people are active right now.
And if you scroll down, you can see Top Countries and Top Cities report in real-time. It breaks down which countries and cities your visitors are most active in. You can use the data to see when the right time is to push content to the audience from different locations.
For more on real-time reports, check out A Complete Guide to Google Analytics Real-Time Reports.
That’s not all! Depending on which ExactMetrics license you’re using, you’ll also Forms reports, Dimensions reports, and Site Speed.
Benefits of Tracking Google Analytics Traffic Source/Medium
When you track where your traffic is coming to your website from, you’ll get insights that will help you grow your site’s traffic and conversions. A few of the benefits are:
- Identify New Topics for Your Blog – Look at which content people from different sources prefer, then find similar topics to cover on your site
- Invest in the Right Traffic Sources – At times, it can be difficult to focus on all marketing channels at once, so find out which traffic source brings in the most visitors and invest in that channel to get quicker results
- Create Targeted Marketing Messages – You can set up targeted promotional and marketing messages for visitors from different regions and boost your conversions
- Improve Performance of Marketing Channels – While it’s good to find the right channel to invest in, you should also identify opportunities to boost the performance of other traffic sources
We hope you liked our article on how to see traffic sources in Google Analytics. You might also like to learn campaigns with our How-To Guide to Google Analytics Campaign Tracking.
Not using ExactMetrics yet? What are you waiting for?
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