GA4 Reporting Basics: How to Use the Traffic Acquisition Report

Learn GA4 reporting basics with a simple workflow. Master the Traffic Acquisition report to analyze dimensions, metrics, and insights across Google Analytics 4.

Chris Wright

Associate Director, Training and Development

GA4 can feel overwhelming. The interface offers a long list of reports, hundreds of metrics and dimensions, and massive data tables that can stretch on for pages. For many users, this leads to hesitation. Where should you start? What should you look at first?

Why GA4 Feels Overwhelming at First

The best approach is not to learn everything at once. You can become a capable GA4 user by mastering one workflow and applying it anywhere in the tool. This article will walk you through that workflow using a single report: Traffic Acquisition. Once you can work confidently in this report, you can use the same method across GA4.

The GA4 Reporting Workflow (Date Range → Dimensions → Filters → Highlights)

The Traffic Acquisition report contains far more information than you need to answer a single question. The goal is to narrow it down so you are only looking at what matters to you for the insight you are looking for. This process is the same in almost every GA4 report.

Choosing Dimensions and Metrics

Set the date range in the top-right corner to match your analysis period. Turn on comparison mode if you want to measure change over time.

Select the primary dimension from the dropdown above the first column. This controls how the table is grouped, such as by channel, source/medium, or campaign.

Adding Secondary Dimensions and Filters

(Optional) Add a secondary dimension if you are looking for greater granularity using the plus sign next to the primary dimension label to break the data into a more detailed view, such as traffic channel by device category.

(Optional) Search within the table to filter for a specific value, like a campaign name or keyword.

Plot rows to highlight and compare selected entries in the chart and see how variants of your primary (and secondary) dimension compare over time in the time series graph.

This simple sequence (date range, dimensions, filter, highlight) turns an overwhelming table into a clear view you can act on.

What metrics should I look at first in the Traffic Acquisition Report

Begin with the primary dimension set to session default channel group. This shows broad traffic categories such as organic search, direct, referral, and paid search.

Focus on three metrics together:

Engagement rate – Are visitors interacting beyond a single pageview/conversion action/less than 10 seconds?
Key event rate – Are they completing important actions?
Sessions – Do you have enough volume to trust the rates?

Add device category as a secondary dimension to see how desktop, mobile, and tablet users perform within each traffic channel. Use the plot rows feature to chart and compare these differences over time.

Always interpret results in context. A high engagement rate from 200 sessions is not equivalent to a lower engagement rate from 20,000 sessions.

Checking for Sampling and Thresholding

Note: Make sure to check for sampling or thresholding using the icon beside the report title. A green checkmark means everything is good, an orange exclamation mark in a triangle warns of sampling. These symbols indicate the level of data completeness and should guide how you interpret results.

How to Apply This Workflow to Other GA4 Reports?

Once you can work with Traffic Acquisition, you already know how to work with every other standard report in GA4. The interface is consistent. The workflow you just used, setting the date range, choosing dimensions, filtering, plotting, and checking data completeness, applies everywhere. The only difference is the set of dimensions and metrics available in each report.

If you are unsure what a dimension or metric means, hover over its name in the table. GA4 will display a definition. This works in every report and is the fastest way to learn unfamiliar terms as you go. No one knows the definition of every metric/dimension, don’t feel shy about checking. It’s how you learn them.

Here’s what the other report categories can offer:

Engagement – Shows what users do once they arrive, such as which pages they view or which events they trigger.
Monetization – Focuses on e-commerce activity, including product performance, checkout funnels, and promotions.
User – Provides demographic and interest data to help you understand who your visitors are.
Tech – Gives device, browser, and operating system details that can inform technical or UX decisions.

Once you are comfortable with the workflow, you can step into any of these reports with confidence and use the same approach to gain new perspectives on your data.

Bringing It All Together: Confidence Across GA4

GA4 can look complex from the outside. What you learn quickly is that it is the same report 20 times, the only thing that changes is the primary dimension and metrics. But once you know how to strip a report down to just the dimensions and metrics that matter, it becomes a clear, reliable decision-making tool. The Traffic Acquisition report is your proving ground. If you can work through it using the workflow in this article, you can do the same in any other report GA4 offers.

Open GA4, go to Traffic Acquisition, and start cutting away what you don’t need. Change the dimensions, add a filter, plot rows, and see what stories the data is telling you. The more you repeat this process, the more confident and capable you will feel.

The volume of data will always be there. Your job is to make it smaller, more focused, and more useful. That starts with one report and one workflow.

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