Guide 54 · Reports · GA4 + Tag Manager
Read the Traffic acquisition report: where each session came from, and why it disagrees with User acquisition
Traffic acquisition counts sessions, not people. Read it by session default channel group, and never compare its numbers with User acquisition as if the scopes matched.
After step 5, you can name the top channel by sessions, its engagement rate, and its key event rate — and explain why those numbers differ from the same channel in User acquisition.
Download the report reference: the Traffic acquisition reference (JSON) (1612 bytes, MD5 6da6ba8b105c6074bbc6d81ca8484e39). It holds the report or exploration definition and the worked example with the recomputed figures shown on this page.
What you need
- Viewer access or above on the property.
- The report path: Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. The report is a pre-made detail report.
- One date range, fixed before you start. The report defaults to the last 28 days; change it first if you need another range.
The trace
- Open the report. Sign in, click Reports on the left, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. The table lists rows by Session default channel group, which groups each session by the channel that started it.
- Read the scope before the numbers. This report is session-scoped: it shows where new and returning users come from, session by session. A returning user who arrives from email after first arriving from search counts under email here. That is the design, not an error.
- Read sessions, engaged sessions, and key events as three separate answers. Sessions is volume. Engaged sessions — sessions lasting 10 seconds or longer, or with one or more key events, or two or more page or screen views — is quality. Key events is outcome. A channel can lead on volume and trail on all three at once.
- Search for one source before you change the dimension. Use the search bar above the table to find one traffic source, for example one campaign name. The search filters the rows in place; changing the primary dimension first re-sorts the whole report and loses your place.
- Compare with User acquisition only to explain the gap. Open Reports, then Acquisition, then User acquisition, and read the same channel. User acquisition is user-scoped and groups each person by the channel of their first visit, so its numbers for a channel will differ. Google's own guidance is not to compare metric values across the two reports as if they shared one scope.
Dead ends
DEAD END — COMPARING THE TWO ACQUISITION REPORTS AS IF THEY MATCHED. Traffic acquisition counts sessions; User acquisition counts people by first visit. The same channel showing different numbers in each report is expected. Treating the difference as a tracking fault wastes a day.
DEAD END — READING (DIRECT) / (NONE) AS A CHANNEL. Direct traffic with no clear referral source is grouped as (direct) / (none). It is not a marketing channel you can improve; it is the bucket for visits with no referral information.
DEAD END — JUDGING A CHANNEL ON SESSIONS ALONE. A channel that brings many sessions and few engaged sessions is not performing. Read engagement rate and key event rate beside sessions before you call a channel good or bad.
End state
Traffic acquisition answers one question: where did each session start. The worked example below recomputes the engagement and key event rates for three channels, so you can see how the ranking changes when you move from volume to quality.
Worked example — stated inputs, recomputed results. The channels below are stated inputs for the example. Every rate in the table was recomputed from them.
| Row | Sessions | Engaged sessions | Engagement rate | Key events | Key event rate | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic Search | 2,410 | 1,502 | 62.3% | 118 | 4.9% | $1,875.00 |
| 486 | 351 | 72.2% | 74 | 15.2% | $1,210.40 | |
| Paid Social | 1,123 | 402 | 35.8% | 29 | 2.6% | $315.60 |
| Total | 4,019 | 2,255 | 56.1% | 221 | 5.5% | $3,401.00 |
Revenue per session is $3,401.00 ÷ 4,019 sessions = $0.85. Engagement rate is 2,255 ÷ 4,019 = 56.1%.
Sources
- Analytics Help — [GA4] Traffic acquisition report — Traffic acquisition is a pre-made detail report showing where new and returning users come from; it differs from User acquisition
- Analytics Help — Confirm that you are collecting data — many reports and explorations can take 24 to 48 hours to process data
Checked 11 November 2026. The click paths above are the ones in Google's help pages, opened or read 11 November 2026 (the Explorations and detail-report pages were opened in full; the report, library, navigation and thresholds pages were read from Google's help results the same day, after the browser hit a rate limit). No step in this guide was run inside a live Analytics property, because that needs a Google sign-in and this site does not sign in as anyone. The worked-example figures on this page were recomputed in Python with decimal arithmetic, and the downloadable JSON file carries the same recomputed figures. Google moves menu items without warning; if a path on this page no longer matches, the linked help page is the current map.