How to Find Referral Traffic in Google Analytics

Tracking down your referral traffic in Google Analytics tells you exactly which other corners of the internet are sending people your way. This isn't just a vanity metric, it's a road map showing you which partnerships, backlinks, and content are a hit with a new audience. This tutorial will walk you through exactly where to find and how to analyze your referral traffic report in Google Analytics 4.

What is Referral Traffic, and Why Is It Worth Your Time?

Referral traffic is composed of visitors who arrive on your website by clicking a link from another site, rather than coming directly or from a search engine. Think of it as a digital word-of-mouth recommendation. If a popular blog links to your latest article, anyone who clicks that link and lands on your page is counted as referral traffic.

Tracking this metric is incredibly valuable for a few key reasons:

• It reveals your best promotional partners. You get a clear list of the websites, blogs, and directories that see value in what you do. This isn't just good for SEO, it shows you who is championing your brand.
• It validates your PR and outreach efforts. Did that guest post you wrote or that review site you were featured on actually work? Your referral traffic report has the answer. It helps you distinguish between activities that just feel productive and those that actually drive traffic.
• High-quality traffic is the goal. Visitors who arrive from a trusted source are often more engaged and more likely to convert. They've been "pre-qualified" by the referring site, so they typically know what to expect and are interested in your offerings.
• It tells you where your audience hangs out. If you notice a spike in traffic from a specific forum or online community you didn't know about, that’s a new audience pocket you can explore for promotional opportunities.

In short, analyzing referral traffic helps you understand your digital footprint, identify valuable relationships, and make smarter decisions about where to spend your marketing efforts.

How to Find Your Referral Report in Google Analytics 4

For those familiar with the old Universal Analytics, finding reports in Google Analytics 4 can feel a bit like learning a new language. The data is still there, but getting to it requires a few different steps. Here’s the straightforward path to uncovering your referral sources in GA4.

Step-by-Step Guide to the Traffic Acquisition Report

Your referral data lives inside the "Traffic acquisition" report. Just follow these steps to access and filter it:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property.
2. On the left-hand navigation menu, click on the chart icon labeled Reports.
3. From the Reports menu, look for the "Life cycle" section and click on Acquisition.
4. In the Acquisition dropdown, select Traffic acquisition.

You’ll now be looking at a report that shows a chart and a table. By default, this table groups your traffic sources into broad categories under the dimension called Session default channel group. You will see things like "Organic Search," "Direct," "Paid Search," and — if you have it — "Referral."

Drilling Down to See Specific Referring Websites

Seeing that "Referral" is one of your top channels is great, but it doesn't tell you which websites are sending that traffic. To see the specific domains, you just need to change the primary dimension in your table.

From the main Traffic acquisition report, here's how to see the details:

• Look at the table at the bottom of the page. Find the dropdown menu at the top-left of the table, which likely says "Session default channel group."
• Click this dropdown menu. A search box will appear.
• Type "Source" into the search box and select Session source from the menu.

Voilà! The table will now reload and display a list of the exact websites that are sending traffic to you. You'll see domains like youtube.com, facebook.com, t.co (Twitter's link shortener), or any specific blogs or sites that have linked back to you.

Many marketers prefer looking at the "Session source / medium" dimension, as this gives more context. For example, you might see blog.hubspot.com / referral or linkedin.com / referral in one neat view, helping you distinguish referral traffic from other types of traffic from the same source.

Analyzing Your Referral Traffic for Smart Insights

Simply finding the report is only half the battle. The real value comes from interpreting the data to make better marketing decisions. Once you have the list of your Session sources, start asking questions to uncover actionable insights.

Three Questions to Ask About Your Referral Data

1. Which websites send the most traffic?

Glance at the "Users" and "Sessions" columns. Sorting this list from highest to lowest highlights your top referrers by volume. These are websites where you have high visibility. They might be great candidates for a larger partnership, a sponsored content piece, or more collaborative efforts in the future. Their audience clearly resonates with your content.

2. Which referrals send the best traffic?

Traffic volume doesn't always equal traffic quality. Use the other metrics in the report to find your most valuable sources. Pay close attention to:

• Engagement rate: This is the percentage of sessions that were engaged. A high engagement rate indicates visitors didn't just land on your page and leave, they scrolled, clicked, or stayed for a significant amount of time.
• Average engagement time: This metric tells you how long, on average, your site held the attention of visitors from a specific referrer. A longer time often suggests a more qualified, interested audience.
• Conversions (or Events): If you have conversion tracking set up, this is the jackpot. A referral source sending just a handful of visitors who all convert (e.g., make a purchase, fill out a form) is far more valuable than one sending thousands of visitors who do nothing. You want to double down on what’s working with these audiences.

3. Are some of my referrals suspicious?

Sometimes you might notice strange or irrelevant domains in your referrals list. This could be spam. "Referrer spam" aims to get you to visit a scammy URL out of curiosity or to inflate their own site metrics. While GA4 is much better at filtering this out automatically than its predecessor, some spam can still slip through. If you see a source with a 100% bounce rate (or a near-0% engagement rate) and 1-second session times, it's a good idea to just ignore it. Don't waste your energy on these - focus on the legitimate sources driving real engagement.

Handling Common Referral Traffic Problems

As you analyze your data, you might encounter a couple of common issues: self-referrals and payment gateway referrals. Here’s how to handle these issues.

Problem 1: Self-Referral Traffic (yourdomain.com)

Do you see your own website’s domain (e.g., yourwebsite.com) listed as a top referrer? This is known as a self-referral and it can skew your data. It typically happens when a user's session is incorrectly broken and then restarted, and GA4 mistakenly credits your own site as the source of the new session. This is often caused by missing tracking code on a page, unnecessarily complex cross-subdomain settings, or certain third-party integrations.

To fix this in GA4, you need to add your domain to the list of "unwanted referrals."

1. Navigate to Admin (the gear icon at the bottom-left).
2. In the "Property" column, click on Data Streams and select your web stream.
3. Under "Google tag," click on Configure tag settings.
4. Click Show all, and then select List unwanted referrals.
5. Under "Match type," select "Referral domain contains," then enter your domain (e.g., yourwebsite.com). Click Save.

This tells GA4 to never treat traffic from your own domain as a referral, ensuring your data remains clean.

Problem 2: Payment Gateway Referrals (e.g., paypal.com, stripe.com)

If you run an ecommerce store, you might see payment gateways in your referral traffic report. This happens when a customer is sent to a third-party site (e.g., PayPal) to complete their purchase and is then redirected back to your site’s "thank you" page. When they return, GA4 sometimes mistakenly logs the payment gateway as the original traffic source instead of, say, the Facebook ad that brought them there in the first place.

You can fix this exactly the same way you fix self-referrals. Simply add the domains of your payment processors (e.g., paypal.com, checkout.stripe.com) to the list of unwanted referrals in your Google Tag settings.

Final Thoughts

Understanding where your best visitors come from is essential for growing your business. By regularly checking your referral traffic report in Google Analytics, you can identify strong partnerships, validate your marketing efforts, and discover new communities that love what you're doing. Use this data not just as a report card, but as a guide for your future strategy.

While GA4 holds the raw data, connecting the dots between referral traffic and actual sales or marketing funnel performance can be time-consuming. We built Graphed to remove that friction. After connecting your analytics and sales platforms, you can instantly ask questions in plain English like, "Show me a dashboard of top referral sources by revenue last month" or "Which backlinks are driving the most lead form submissions?” Graphed pulls the live data for you, turning hours of analysis into a 30-second task.