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How to Access Organic Traffic Metrics in Google Analytics

Cody Schneider•

Trying to find where your organic search traffic is hiding in Google Analytics 4 can feel like a maze. You know the data is there, but the property's new layout makes it tricky to track down the exact metrics you need. This article will show you exactly how to find, analyze, and get actionable insights from your organic traffic data in GA4, step-by-step.

What is Organic Traffic and Why Does it Matter?

Organic traffic refers to visitors who land on your website after using a search engine like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo, without clicking on a paid ad. These are people who typed a question or phrase into a search bar, saw your website listed among the unpaid results, and clicked the link because it seemed relevant to their needs.

This traffic is incredibly valuable for a few key reasons:

  • High Intent: People arriving from search engines are actively looking for solutions, answers, or products. They aren't passively scrolling a social feed, they have a specific goal, which often makes them more likely to engage or convert.

  • Builds Trust: Ranking high in search results builds credibility. Users often place more trust in organic results than in advertisements, viewing them as more authentic endorsements by the search engine.

  • Cost-Effective ROI: While search engine optimization (SEO) requires an investment of time and resources, each organic click is technically free. Unlike paid ads where the traffic stops when you stop paying, a strong piece of content can drive organic traffic for months or even years.

In short, your organic traffic is a direct measure of your SEO success and your brand's visibility in a place where potential customers are actively searching for you.

How to Find Your Organic Search Traffic in GA4

Google Analytics 4's primary report for tracking traffic sources is the Traffic acquisition report. This is your home base for seeing where your visitors are coming from. Here’s how to find your organic data there.

Step 1: Navigate to the Traffic Acquisition Report

Once you're logged into your Google Analytics property, follow this path in the left-hand navigation menu:

Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition

This report will open and show you a breakdown of your traffic by what GA4 calls the "Session default channel group." This is simply GA4's way of automatically categorizing your traffic sources into familiar buckets like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, and Social.

Step 2: Identify and Analyze Organic Search Metrics

In the table below the charts, look for the row labeled Organic Search. This one line gives you a powerful overview of your SEO performance. Here are the key metrics you’ll see and what they mean:

  • Users: The total number of unique visitors who started at least one session from organic search.

  • Sessions: The total number of visits from organic search. If one user visits your site from Google three times, it will count as one user and three sessions.

  • Engaged sessions: The number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 pageviews. This is Google's replacement for "bounce rate" and measures how many organic visitors actually interacted with your site.

  • Engagement rate: The percentage of sessions that were "engaged." A higher engagement rate from organic traffic is a good sign that your content is matching user intent.

  • Conversions: If you've set up conversion events (like a form submission or a purchase), this column shows you how many of those conversions are directly attributable to organic search users.

You can click on the column headers to sort the table. For example, clicking "Sessions" will reorder the table to show which channels are driving the most traffic.

Going Deeper: How to Filter Reports for Organic Traffic Only

Seeing your overall organic numbers is just the start. The real insights come when you analyze which specific pages are drawing in that traffic and what those users are doing. To do that, we need to apply a filter.

Analyzing Your Top Organic Landing Pages

Your landing pages are the first pages visitors see when they arrive at your site. Knowing which ones perform best in organic search tells you which pieces of content are your SEO powerhouses. Here's how to find this data:

  1. Navigate to the Landing Pages report: Reports → Engagement → Landing pages.

  2. At the top of the report, click the Add filter button.

  3. A filter builder will appear on the right. Set the conditions as follows:

    • Dimension: Type and select Session default channel group.

    • Match Type: Select exactly matches.

    • Value: Select Organic Search.

  4. Click the blue Apply button.

The report will now refresh to show only traffic that came from organic search. The table will list your website's pages, ranked by traffic. You can now see exactly which blog posts, product pages, or service pages are driving the most users, sessions, and conversions from search engines. This is one of the most actionable reports you can build for shaping your content strategy.

Adding Secondary Dimensions for More Context

To get even more granular, you can add a "secondary dimension" to most reports in GA4. For example, back in the Traffic acquisition report, what if you want to see which countries your organic traffic comes from?

  1. Make sure you still have your Organic Search traffic showing in the main report table.

  2. Click the small blue + icon next to the "Session default channel group" column header.

  3. A search box will appear. Type and select Country from the "Geolocation" options.

The table will update, breaking down your Organic Search traffic by each country. You can do this with other dimensions like Device category (Desktop vs. Mobile) or Gender to understand your organic audience better.

Unlock Keyword Data by Connecting Google Search Console

A common frustration with Google Analytics is that it doesn't show you which specific keywords people used to find your site - it just shows "(not provided)." To find that data, you need to connect GA4 to another free Google tool: Google Search Console (GSC).

  • Google Analytics tells you: What users do after they arrive on your site.

  • Google Search Console tells you: What happens before they get to your site (which queries they used, your ranking, how many people saw your link, and your click-through rate).

Connecting the two brings crucial GSC data directly into your GA4 reports, giving you a complete picture of your search performance.

Steps to Link GA4 and Google Search Console

Linking accounts is straightforward, assuming you have administrative access to both.

  1. In GA4, go to the Admin section (the gear icon in the bottom-left).

  2. Under the "Property" column, find and click on Search Console Links.

  3. Click the blue Link button. A setup wizard will appear.

  4. Click Choose accounts and select the GSC property for your website. Click Confirm.

  5. Click Next. Then select the web data stream for your site and click Next again.

  6. Review your selections and click Submit.

Once linked (it can take up to 48 hours for data to appear), you'll see a new section in your GA4 reports menu. Under Acquisition, you'll find a new "Search Console" collection containing two powerful reports: Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic.

This Queries report is where you’ll find the keyword goldmine. It lists the search queries that brought users to your site, along with GSC metrics like impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and average search position.

Practical Analysis Tips

Now that you know how to find the data, here are some actionable ways to use it.

  • Spot "Content Upgrade" Opportunities: In the GSC Queries report, look for keywords where you have a high number of impressions but a low CTR. This often means you're appearing in search results, but your headline or meta description isn't compelling enough to earn the click. Improving your title tag could turn those impressions into traffic.

  • Identify Your High-Conversion Content: In your Landing Pages report (filtered for organic traffic), sort by the "Conversions" column. The pages at the top are your most valuable SEO assets. Ask yourself: how can you get even more of the right traffic to these pages?

  • Find Pages with High Traffic but Low Engagement: Still in the Landing Pages report, sort by Sessions. Look for any pages with lots of traffic but a very low engagement rate. This could be a red flag. The page might rank for a certain keyword but fails to deliver what the user expected, indicating a content-to-intent mismatch.

  • Monitor Performance Over Time: Use the date range selector at the top-right of GA4 to compare your performance month-over-month or year-over-year. Is your organic traffic growing or declining? Are certain landing pages losing momentum? Comparing dates is crucial for spotting trends.

Final Thoughts

Getting comfortable with Google Analytics data is all about knowing where to look and what questions to ask. By using the Traffic acquisition and Landing pages reports, applying filters, and connecting Google Search Console, you can move beyond simple traffic counts and start understanding how your SEO efforts drive meaningful business results.

Of course, all this filtering and report-building still involves a lot of clicking around different sections of GA4. That's actually why we built Graphed. Instead of navigating through multiple reports and manually filtering for organic traffic, I can just ask for what I need in plain English, like "Show me a dashboard of my top organic landing pages from GA4 and GSC this month." We connect a new user's data sources and create live, interactive dashboards automatically, which lets me get straight to the insights without any of the setup.