How to Find Backlinks in Google Analytics
Knowing which websites are sending traffic your way helps you understand what's working with your PR and partnership efforts. Google Analytics tracks this - you just have to know where to look. This article will show you exactly how to find your backlink and referral traffic data inside Google Analytics 4.
What Exactly is Referral Traffic?
Referral traffic represents the visitors who land on your website by clicking a link from another site. It's distinct from other traffic sources:
Organic Search: Visitors who find you through a search engine like Google or Bing.
Paid Search: Visitors who click on one of your paid ads in search results.
Direct: Visitors who type your URL directly into their browser or use a bookmark.
Social: Visitors from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
In essence, a backlink on a third-party site generates referral traffic. If a blogger includes a link to your product in their review post, anyone who clicks that link is counted as referral traffic. This metric is more than just a number, it’s a powerful indicator of your brand's reach and authority across the web.
Why You Should Care About Referral Traffic
Keeping an eye on your referral traffic isn't just a vanity exercise. It provides actionable insights that can help you grow your business:
Measure Your Outreach: It provides concrete proof of whether your link-building, guest posting, or digital PR campaigns are actually driving visitors.
Discover Hidden Opportunities: You might discover websites mentioning you that you weren't even aware of. This is a perfect opening to build new relationships or partnerships.
Understand Your Audience: The types of sites that link to you say a lot about your audience's interests and browsing habits.
Double Down on What Works: When you see one or two sources sending you highly engaged, high-converting traffic, you know exactly where to focus your partnership efforts.
How to Find Referring Websites in Google Analytics 4
Prior to GA4, Universal Analytics had a straightforward "Referrals" report. In Google Analytics 4, the process is slightly different, but it offers more flexibility for analysis. Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your report.
Step 1: Navigate to the Traffic Acquisition Report
First, log in to your Google Analytics 4 account.
On the left-hand navigation menu, click on Reports (it looks like a small chart icon).
Under the Life cycle dropdown, click on Acquisition.
From the Acquisition submenu, select Traffic acquisition.
This report gives you a broad overview of how people are discovering your website, bucketed by channel groupings like Organic Search, Direct, and, of course, Referral.
Step 2: Change the Primary Dimension to "Source"
By default, the report shows you the "Session default channel group." This is helpful for a high-level view, but we want to see the specific websites. To do this, you need to change the primary dimension.
Click the small downward arrow next to "Session default channel group" at the top of the table. A search box and list will appear. Type “Session source” into the search box and select it from the list.
The table will now reload and show the specific domains (e.g., google.com, bing.com, someblog.com) that are sending you traffic, instead of the broad channel groups.
Step 3: Filter for Only Referral Traffic
The report now shows all sources, but we only want to see the backlinks. We can do this easily by adding a filter.
At the top of the report, you'll see a button that says Add filter +. Click it.
A builder will slide out from the right. Set up your filter with the following conditions:
Dimension: Find and select Session default channel group.
Match Type: Select exactly matches.
Value: Select or type Referral.
Click the blue Apply button at the bottom right.
Voilà! The report is now filtered to show only referral traffic. You're now looking at a clean list of every domain that has sent at least one visitor to your website in the selected date range. This list is your starting point for deeper analysis.
Analyzing Your Referral Traffic for Actionable Insights
Finding the report is just the first step. The real value comes from interpreting the data to make better marketing decisions.
Identify Your Champions
Sort the table by Sessions or Users to instantly see which websites are your top referrers. These are your strongest performing "champion" sites. If a particular blog review or industry mention is sending you hundreds of visitors, consider reaching out to the author to build a stronger relationship, collaborate on more content, or discuss sponsored opportunities.
Look at Engagement Quality, Not Just Quantity
High traffic numbers are great, but are those visitors actually interested in your content? Pay close attention to the Engagement rate and Average engagement time columns.
A referring site with a high bounce rate (low engagement rate) might be sending you irrelevant traffic. For example, maybe the link on their site misrepresents what your page is about. Conversely, a referrer with high engagement is a great sign - it means their audience is a perfect match for your content.
Track the Money Back to the Source
The most important column is often Conversions. If you have conversion events set up (like purchase, sign_up, or generate_lead), you can see which backlinks are contributing directly to your business goals. A site that sends you only 20 visitors but generated 3 sales might be far more valuable than a site that sent 500 visitors who all left immediately. Use this insight to prioritize your relationship-building efforts.
Digging Deeper: How to Find the Exact Referring Page
One common frustration is that the "Session source" report shows you the domain (e.g., forbes.com) but not the specific article that contains the link (e.g., forbes.com/business/top-tools-2024). Knowing the exact page can give you incredible context about why someone is linking to you.
Luckily, it only takes one more click to find this.
In your filtered referral traffic report, click the blue + icon next to the primary dimension header ("Session source").
A search box will appear. Type "Page referrer" into the box and select it.
The table will now reload with a second column showing the exact URL from which the traffic came. This instantly tells you whether you were mentioned in a listicle, a featured review, or a simple blog comment, allowing you to tailor your follow-up approach appropriately.
Cleaning Up Your Data: Dealing with Referral Spam
Sometimes, your referral reports can get cluttered with traffic from spam bots and shady domains. These aren't real visitors and can skew your data. A sudden, unexplained spike in traffic from a strange-looking domain is often a sign of referral spam.
GA4 offers a tool to exclude these domains from your reports going forward.
Navigate to the Admin section (the gear icon at the bottom left).
Under the Property column, click on Data Streams and select your website's stream.
Select Configure tag settings.
Click the Show all button to expand the options, then choose List unwanted referrals.
Here, you can add domains one by one that you want Google Analytics to ignore completely. This won't remove past data, but it will keep your reports cleaner in the future.
Regularly reviewing your referral list for spam helps ensure you’re making decisions based on real human behavior, not junk data from bots.
Final Thoughts
Diving into your referral traffic report is one of the quickest ways to measure the off-site reputation your brand is building. By using the Traffic Acquisition report in Google Analytics and filtering it for referrals, you can quickly uncover valuable partners, assess the ROI of your outreach efforts, and find new opportunities to grow your audience.
Figuring out which buttons to click in Google Analytics is step one, but the real challenge is combining that information with data from your other platforms, like your ad spend from Facebook Ads or your revenue from Shopify. At Graphed , we remove the friction of manual reporting. Instead of digging through reports and filters, you can just ask questions in plain English, like "Show me my top referral sources by conversion value last month" or "create a dashboard comparing my referral traffic to organic traffic and ad spend." We make it easy to connect your platforms and get the full story of your performance in seconds, not hours.