How to See Search Queries in Google Analytics 4

If you've recently moved from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, you've probably noticed that finding the old organic keyword report feels nearly impossible. Frustratingly, that familiar report showing every search term users typed to find your site is gone, replaced entirely by a line item that simply says "(not provided)." You’re not doing anything wrong - this is part of GA4's design, but there is a clear, definitive way to get that valuable search query data back into your analytics. This article will show you exactly how to connect GA4 to Google Search Console to bring that critical search performance data directly into your GA4 reports.

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Why Can't You See Search Queries in GA4 Natively?

First, let's address why this change happened. It all comes down to user privacy. For years, Google has been encrypting more and more search queries to protect user information. Universal Analytics started showing "(not provided)" for some keywords years ago, and GA4 simply made this the default for all organic traffic for privacy reasons. It means Google Analytics, by itself, no longer receives detailed information about the specific search terms users typed into Google to find your website.

But don't worry, that data isn't gone forever. Google still provides this information for website owners through another free tool: Google Search Console (GSC). The intended workflow now is to connect GA4 and GSC so you can view impression, click, and position data directly within your GA4 interface. This integration gives you the best of both worlds: robust on-site behavioral analytics from GA4 and powerful off-site search performance data from GSC, all in one place.

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Step 1: Connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics 4

To see your site's search queries, you first need to establish a link between GA4 and GSC. This is a one-time setup that unlocks all the search data you’ve been looking for. The process is simple and only takes a few minutes.

Before you start: Make sure you have "Editor" permissions for your Google Analytics 4 property and that you're a verified owner of the Google Search Console property you want to link. Typically, you'll have these if you're the one who set up analytics for your website.

Follow these steps to link the two properties:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics 4 account.
2. Click the Admin gear icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
3. In the Property column, scroll down to the Product Links section and click on Search Console Links.
4. On the next screen, click the blue Link button. You'll see a setup wizard appear.
5. Here, you'll choose the Search Console property you want to connect. Click Choose accounts and select the property that matches your website. Check the box and click Confirm.
6. Click Next. Now you need to link it to your GA4 web data stream. Select Choose web stream and pick the data stream for your website.
7. Click Next once more to review your selections. If everything looks correct — the right Search Console property linked to the right web data stream — click Submit.

That's it! You've successfully linked GSC and GA4. It might take up to 24-48 hours for data to start flowing into your GA4 reports, so don't be alarmed if you don't see it immediately a minute after hitting submit. Come back the next day and check.

What if I haven't set up Search Console?

Search Console is a free, essential tool for anyone with a website. It monitors your site's performance in Google search results, alerts you to technical issues, and provides the search query data we're after. If you haven't set it up, go to the Google Search Console homepage and add your website as a property. Verification is usually straightforward if you already have Google Analytics installed on your site.

Step 2: Access the Search Query Reports in GA4

Once you’ve linked the accounts and waited for data to populate, you might expect the reports to just appear. In most cases, you have to manually add them to your left-hand navigation menu. This is a one-time step.

1. In your GA4 property, navigate to the Reports section (the chart icon on the left sidebar).
2. At the very bottom of the report collections menu, click on Library.
3. Inside the Library, you'll see different Collections of reports. You should see a card for Search Console that is currently "Unpublished".
4. Click the three vertical dots (kebab menu) on the Search Console card and select Publish.

As soon as you publish it, a new "Search Console" section will instantly appear in your left-hand menu under Reports. This is where your query data lives. Now, let’s explore what’s inside.

Within this new collection, you get two extremely useful reports:

• The Queries report
• The Google Organic Search Traffic report

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The "Queries" Report

This is it - the report you’ve been looking for. The Queries report shows you the actual search terms people typed into Google to discover your website. It breaks down performance for each query with four key metrics directly from Search Console:

• Google Organic Search Clicks: The number of times people clicked your site's link for that query.
• Google Organic Search Impressions: The number of times your site appeared in search results for that query.
• Google Organic Search Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click (Clicks / Impressions).
• Google Organic Search Average Position: Your average ranking in Google's search results for that query.

This report is the goldmine. You can use it to:

• Discover Unforeseen Keywords: Find out what terms you're ranking for that you didn't even know about. These can become great ideas for new content.
• Find "Low-Hanging Fruit": Sort your queries by impressions. Look for queries with high impressions but a low CTR or a position between 11-20. These are topics you’re almost on page one for, and a little on-page SEO or an update to the title tag could push them over the edge and significantly increase your traffic.
• Measure SEO Performance: Track whether your average position and clicks are improving for the keywords you are actively targeting.

The "Google Organic Search Traffic" Report

The second report in the Search Console collection focuses on landing pages instead of queries. It shows you the same four metrics (clicks, impressions, CTR, average position), but grouped by the page that a user landed on from Google Search.

This report helps you answer questions like:

• Which of my pages gets the most organic traffic?
• Which are my highest-performing blog posts or service pages in Google search results?
• Do any of my seemingly unimportant pages get a surprisingly high number of impressions?

Getting More from Your Query Reports

The default reports are fantastic, but you can dig even deeper. At the top of either Search Console report, select the plus sign (+) next to the primary dimension (e.g., "Google organic search query") to add a secondary dimension. For example:

• In the Queries report, add Landing Page as a secondary dimension. This will show you exactly which page is ranking for each specific query. This is incredibly helpful for understanding user intent and ensuring you're serving the right content.
• In the same report, add Country as a secondary dimension to see where your search traffic is coming from for different keywords.

You can also use the filter bar at the top to narrow down your results. For instance, you could filter for queries containing a specific word like "tutorial" or "review" to analyze a specific content cluster on your blog.

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Understanding the Limitations

While this integration is powerful, it’s important to understand one key limitation: you cannot directly connect query data to on-site behavior like sessions, engagement rate, or conversions.

Why? Because of the same privacy-first approach. Search Console data is about pre-click performance (in the search results), while GA4 data is about post-click behavior (on your website). They are intentionally kept separate at the query level. So, you can't build a report in GA4 that shows you the conversion rate for the specific query "buy red shoes."

But you can get around this by thinking directionally. Here's a quick workflow:

1. In the GA4 Queries report, identify a key query driving lots of clicks, like "how to cold brew coffee."
2. Add Landing Page as a secondary dimension and find which page is ranking - let's say it's /blog/how-to-make-cold-brew.
3. Now, navigate to the general GA4 report under Engagement > Pages and screens.
4. Find that exact landing page (e.g., /blog/how-to-make-cold-brew) in this report. Here, you can analyze its engagement rate, average engagement time, conversions, and more.

While not a direct 1-to-1 connection, this approach lets you reasonably infer how users from specific top queries are behaving once they land on your site, which is often all you need to make smart optimization decisions.

Final Thoughts

Finding search queries in Google Analytics 4 is no longer about finding a hidden report but about enabling the correct integration. By linking GA4 with Google Search Console, you unlock all the keyword and organic search performance data you need right within your analytics interface, allowing for a more complete view of your site's performance.

Integrating different data sources like we just did is foundational to getting the full picture. That’s why we built Graphed. After connecting Google Analytics and Search Console, you may have more tools — Facebook Ads, Shopify, your CRM — that also need to be viewed together. We make it easy to connect all your data sources in one place. You can then ask questions in simple, natural language like, "Show me traffic by channel alongside ad spend from Facebook for the last quarter," and instantly get real-time dashboards that do just that, allowing you to spend time on insights, not on manual reporting.