How to View Organic Traffic in Google Analytics 4

Knowing where your website traffic comes from is fundamental, and for many, organic search is the most important channel of all. Google Analytics 4 is the place to find this data, but its interface can feel less intuitive than what many were used to with Universal Analytics. This tutorial will walk you through exactly where to find your organic traffic data in GA4, how to build custom reports for deeper analysis, and how to analyze your top-performing content.

What is Organic Traffic and Why Should You Care?

First, a quick refresher. Organic traffic refers to visitors who land on your website from an unpaid search engine result. Someone googled a question, your site appeared in the results, they clicked, and now they're a visitor. It’s distinct from paid search traffic (from ads), direct traffic (typing your URL directly), or social traffic (coming from a platform like LinkedIn or Twitter).

Tracking organic traffic is essential because it is a direct indicator of your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and content marketing health. A steady increase in organic traffic generally means:

• Your content is ranking well for relevant keywords.
• You are building authority and trust with search engines.
• You're attracting an audience that is actively looking for the solutions you provide.

In short, it's one of the most powerful and sustainable ways to grow your audience and your business. Now, let's find that data in GA4.

How to Quickly Find Organic Traffic in Standard GA4 Reports

For a quick, high-level overview, GA4’s built-in acquisition reports are the fastest place to look. This is perfect for a quick Monday morning check-in to see how things are trending.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Navigate to the Reports Tab: Log in to your GA4 property. In the left-hand navigation menu, click on the Reports icon (it looks like a little bar chart).
2. Open the Acquisition Reports: Under the Life cycle section, expand the Acquisition menu. Click on Traffic acquisition.
3. Find Your Channel Groupings: The report will load with "Session default channel group" as the primary dimension. This dimension automatically categorizes your traffic into channels like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, Referral, etc.

You will see a table with "Organic Search" as one of the rows. Here, you'll find key metrics associated with that channel for your selected date range:

• Users: The total number of unique users who started at least one session from organic search.
• Sessions: The total number of visits from organic search. One user can have multiple sessions.
• Engaged sessions: The number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least two pageviews. This is GA4's replacement for an inverted "Bounce Rate." A higher number is better.
• Engagement rate: The percentage of sessions that were engaged sessions.
• Conversions: The number of times users from organic search completed an action you've defined as a conversion (like a purchase, a form submission, or a trial signup).

This standard report gives you a solid snapshot. But to get truly actionable insights, you'll often need to dig a little deeper by building a custom report.

Creating a Custom Organic Traffic Report for Deeper Insights

What if you want to see which specific pages are driving that organic traffic? Or which countries your organic visitors are coming from? For this, the "Explore" section of GA4 is your best friend. It can seem intimidating at first, but it offers far more flexibility.

Let's build a simple custom report showing your top organic landing pages.

Step 1: Create a New Exploration

In the left-hand navigation, click the Explore icon (it looks like a small magnifying glass over some lines). Select the Free form template from the gallery.

Step 2: Add Your Dimensions

Dimensions are the "what" of your data - the categories you use to describe it. In the "Variables" column on the left, you'll see a "Dimensions" section. Click the plus sign (+).

Search for and select the following dimensions. Check the box for each one and then click the blue "Import" button:

• Landing page + query string: This shows the first page a user landed on during their session.
• Session default channel group: We need this to filter just for organic traffic.
• Device category: To see traffic breakdown by Desktop, Mobile, and Tablet.
• Country: To understand the geographic breakdown of your audience.

Step 3: Add Your Metrics

Metrics are the "how much" - the numbers and quantities you are measuring. In the "Variables" column, click the plus sign (+) in the "Metrics" section.

Search for and select these metrics, then click "Import":

• Sessions: The total number of visits.
• Engaged sessions: To gauge how engaging the content is.
• Conversions: The ultimate measure of success for many pages.
• Total users: To track audience size.

Step 4: Build Your Report Canvas

Now, you just drag and drop your imported variables into the "Tab Settings" column.

• Rows: Drag Landing page + query string from the Dimensions list into the "Rows" box. You could also drag Device category or Country here if you wanted a different breakdown.
• Values: Drag Sessions, Engaged sessions, and Conversions from the Metrics list into the "Values" box.

As you do this, you'll see a table populate on the right side of the screen. Right now, it's showing data for all traffic sources.

Step 5: Filter for Organic Traffic Only

This is the most important step for this report. In the "Tab Settings" column, find the "Filters" section and click on "Drop or select dimension or metric."

1. Select Session default channel group.
2. In the configuration box that pops up, select the match type "exactly matches."
3. In the expression field, start typing "Organic Search" and select it from the list.
4. Click the blue Apply button.

Your table on the right will now update to show only the data for your organic search traffic, broken down by landing page. You now have a reusable, custom report that tells you which specific pieces of content are driving your SEO results!

How to Compare Organic Traffic Performance Over Time

One of the most common analytical tasks is comparing performance between different time periods. Are your SEO efforts this month paying off compared to last month? How does this year's holiday season stack up against last year's?

GA4 makes this comparison process straightforward in any report, whether it’s the standard "Traffic acquisition" report or a custom Exploration you built.

1. Locate the Date Range: In the top right corner of your report, you'll see a date range filter. Click on it.
2. Toggle the Compare Switch: In the bottom left corner of the pop-up calendar, you'll see a toggle switch labeled "Compare." Turn it on.
3. Set Your Time Periods: You'll now have selectors for two distinct periods.
4. Apply: Click "Apply."

Your report will now update, showing data for both periods along with a percentage change for each metric. This makes it incredibly easy to spot trends, celebrate wins (e.g., "Organic sessions are up 20% MoM!"), or identify potential issues that need investigation.

Final Thoughts

Wading through GA4 can take some getting used to, but mastering just a few key reports makes all the difference. By using standard reports for quick checks and the Explore section for custom analysis, you can get a clear, detailed picture of how your content and SEO strategies are performing and where your best opportunities lie.

Ultimately, the goal is to spend less time wrangling data and more time acting on it. The reports we just built are powerful, but that manual configuration can be tedious. This is exactly why we built Graphed. Instead of navigating menus and dragging and dropping variables, we let you create the same reports just by describing what you want to see. You can ask "show me my top 10 organic landing pages by sessions last month" or "create a dashboard comparing organic vs paid search traffic for this quarter," and the reports are built for you in seconds, with live data from your connected sources.