How to See Source Medium in Google Analytics 4

One of the most fundamental questions in marketing analytics is, "Where are my website visitors coming from?" In Google Analytics 4, answering this question starts with the Source/Medium report. GA4 structures this report a bit differently than its predecessor, Universal Analytics, but finding your traffic data is straightforward once you know where to look. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to find and interpret the Source/Medium report in GA4, understand the key differences in how GA4 attributes traffic, and customize your view to get the insights you need.

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What Does Source and Medium Mean in GA4?

Before we dive into the "how-to," let's quickly clarify these two essential dimensions. Breaking them down helps you understand your traffic with much more precision.

• Source: This is the where. It tells you the specific origin of your traffic, like a search engine or another domain. Common examples include google, bing, facebook.com, or the name of a newsletter sending you traffic.
• Medium: This is the how. It describes the general category of the source. Common examples include organic (unpaid search traffic), cpc (cost-per-click, or paid traffic), referral (traffic from a link on another website), and email.

When combined, they form a clear picture: google / organic means the visitor came from a Google search they didn't pay to click on. facebook / cpc means the visitor clicked a paid Facebook ad. Understanding this distinction is the first step toward effective marketing attribution.

Finding the Primary Source/Medium Report in GA4

Your main destination for traffic analysis in GA4 is the Traffic acquisition report. This report is geared toward session-level data, meaning it tells you where each individual visit to your site came from. Here is how you can find and modify the view to show you a recognizable Source/Medium report:

Here’s the step-by-step path:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property.
2. On the left-hand navigation menu, click on Reports.
3. Under the Life cycle collection, expand the Acquisition section.
4. Click on Traffic acquisition.

By default, this report is often grouped by the Session default channel grouping. To change it to the format you’re likely more familiar with (Source / Medium), simply click the small downward-facing arrow above the first column of the data table and select Session source / medium from the dropdown list. That's it! You're now a few clicks away from viewing precisely where each session came from, along with key metrics like Sessions, Engaged sessions, and Conversions.

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Session vs. First User Source/Medium: A Key GA4 Difference

One of the biggest shifts in GA4 is its focus on the user journey, which introduced a new way to attribute traffic. You'll notice there are two separate acquisition reports: Traffic acquisition and User acquisition. Each answers a different but equally important question.

Traffic acquisition (Session source / medium)

As we've covered, this report focuses on the session. It answers the question, "What brought visitors to my site for this specific session?" It's your go-to for understanding day-to-day channel performance and the effectiveness of current campaigns.

Example: A user sees your Facebook ad and clicks through to your site. This session is attributed to facebook.com / cpc in the Traffic acquisition report.

User acquisition (First user source / medium)

This report attributes all of a user's activity (including all their future sessions, conversions, and revenue) to how they first discovered your site. To find it, navigate to Reports > Acquisition > User acquisition.

It answers the question, "Which channels are best at acquiring new, long-term users?" This is incredibly valuable for measuring top-of-funnel marketing efforts and understanding the true lifetime value driven by different channels.

Example: That same user from the above example first found your site a month ago via a Google search. While their latest visit from a Facebook ad is credited in the Traffic acquisition report, the User acquisition report attributes all of that user's activity back to their first touchpoint: google / organic.

Understanding which report to use is crucial. For analyzing paid campaign performance this week, stick to Traffic acquisition. For strategic planning on where to invest your marketing budget for long-term growth, rely on the insights from User acquisition.

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Customizing Your Report for Deeper Insights

Once you've changed the primary dimension to "Session source / medium," you are ready to dig a bit deeper. GA4’s reporting interface offers several easy ways to customize your view and find the exact information that you're looking for.

1. Adding a Secondary Dimension

Adding a second layer of detail to your report is simple. Click the blue '+' icon next to the primary dimension dropdown. A menu will appear with a wide range of options you can add as a second column. For great Source / Medium analysis, try one of these:

• Landing Page and Screen Name: See which specific pages receive the most traffic from each source. This is great for an SEO who might want to know which blog post is bringing in the most organic traffic from Google.
• Device: Segment users by desktop, mobile, or tablet to optimize user experiences across different traffic sources.

2. Filtering Your Report

Need to focus on a single medium or source? Filters allow you to narrow down your data instantly. At the top of the report, click Add filter. You can then build a filter based on specific criteria.

Example: To see only your paid search traffic, create a filter where the Session medium "exactly matches" "cpc." This isolates traffic from your Google Ads, Bing Ads, and other paid search campaigns so you can see them all in one place.

3. Changing the Date Range

This is a fundamental feature, but don't overlook its power for campaign analysis. In the top-right corner of the interface, you can select custom date ranges. Even better is the Compare toggle, which lets you analyze performance across two different periods (e.g., this month vs. last month), helping you spot trends instantly.

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Pro Tip: Building a Custom Report with Explorations

For even greater control and flexibility, you can recreate — and greatly expand upon — the Source/Medium report in GA4’s Explorations tool. While it may seem daunting at first, it's easier than it looks and gives you more customizability than GA4's reports section. Here is how you can get started:

1. Navigate to Explore on the left-hand menu.
2. Click on Blank report to start fresh.
3. In the Variables panel on the left, click the '+' sign next to Dimensions.
4. Search for and import Session source / medium and any other dimensions you wish to include (such as Landing page) to create custom reports.
5. Next, click the '+' sign next to Metrics and import the data points you need for analysis. Good starting points could be Sessions, Conversions, and Total revenue.
6. Now, drag Session source / medium from Variables over to the Rows section.
7. Finally, drag your chosen Metrics to the Values section.

As you add the dimensions and metrics, GA4 will build a completely custom table based on your specifications. You can then use the built-in chart types to create bar charts, line charts, or even scatter plots to better visualize your data. Even better, once you build it once, you can just save and reference the Exploration anytime you need it again without starting over from scratch.

Final Thoughts

Finding your source and medium data in Google Analytics 4 is all about knowing which acquisition report to start with. The Traffic acquisition report gives you the session-by-session story, while the User acquisition report reveals which channels kickstart your customer relationships. By customizing these reports with secondary dimensions and filters, you can move from broad overviews to sharp, actionable insights about your marketing performance.

Of course, even with this knowledge, pulling reports and connecting dots between GA4, your ad platforms, and your CRM can be a huge time sink. We’ve designed Graphed to solve this by transforming reporting into a conversation. Instead of clicking through menus and rebuilding reports, you can simply ask questions in plain English like, “Show me a chart of my top 10 traffic sources by conversion rate last month” and get a live, automated dashboard in seconds. This allows us to get straight to the insights and spend more time acting on data instead of just hunting for it.