GA4 guide
How to see GA4 traffic by channel
Direct answer
GA4 traffic by channel is the Traffic acquisition report: sessions grouped by default channel group, such as Organic Search, Direct, Referral and AI Assistant. Open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, pick a date range, and read engagement rate and key events beside sessions. Then check which channel has the most sessions and which engages least. Rankgaroo can pull the same table in a chat.
Updated
On this page
Do it by handAsk your AI insteadWorked exampleLimits to knowQuestionsRelated guidesYou opened GA4 to answer a plain question: where do my visitors come from? The home screen shows a small channel card, but sessions, engagement and key events sit in a different report.
Channel counts also hide quirks, like a Direct share that is not really direct. Here is an example site over 28 days.
Do it by hand in GA4
- Open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition.
- Check that the first column is Session default channel group. Change it with the dropdown if it shows something else.
- Set the date range at the top right and turn on the comparison to see the previous period next to it.
- Read Sessions, Engaged sessions, Engagement rate, Average engagement time per session and Key events for each row.
- Click the plus next to the first column and add a secondary dimension such as Session source / medium to split any channel into its parts.
The report is easy for one period, but channel by country, device and landing page in one view means more reports and more clicking.
Ask your AI instead
With Rankgaroo connected to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, paste a question like this:
Using my GA4 property for example.com, show traffic by default channel group for 2026-09-25 to 2026-10-22 with sessions, users, engagement rate, average session duration and key events. Work out each channel's share of sessions and tell me which channel looks unusual and why it might be worth a closer look.
What the AI calls
ga4_run_report(dimensions: ["sessionDefaultChannelGroup"], metrics: ["sessions", "totalUsers", "engagementRate", "averageSessionDuration", "keyEvents"], startDate: "2026-09-25", endDate: "2026-10-22")The AI adds up the rows for total sessions, works out each channel's share, and flags rows where engagement or duration is far from the rest.
Worked example
| Channel | Sessions | Share | Engagement rate | Avg session (s) | Key events |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic Search | 13,480 | 63.0% | 64.2% | 152.4 | 402 |
| Direct | 4,280 | 20.0% | 41.5% | 71.8 | 151 |
| Referral | 1,500 | 7.0% | 58.3% | 138.6 | 63 |
| Organic Social | 860 | 4.0% | 37.9% | 54.3 | 12 |
| AI Assistant | 640 | 3.0% | 71.4% | 201.7 | 38 |
| 430 | 2.0% | 66.0% | 173.2 | 29 | |
| Unassigned | 210 | 1.0% | 22.9% | 31.5 | 3 |
What the answer says
Organic Search is 13,480 of 21,400 sessions (63.0%) and brings 402 key events. Direct is second with 4,280 sessions, but only 41.5% engage and the average session lasts 72 seconds, so it is worth checking what sits behind it. AI Assistant is small at 640 sessions but engages best, with a 71.4% rate and 202 seconds per session.
Limits to know
- Channels follow GA4's default grouping rules, so mis-tagged UTM links can end up in Unassigned or Direct. Unassigned held 210 sessions in the example.
- Key events are counted as events, not people or sessions, so one visitor can add several.
- averageSessionDuration from the API is not the same measure as Average engagement time per session in the report screen, so the two will differ.
- ga4_run_report returns up to 1,000 rows per call. A channel table is small, but adding landing pages or sources can hit that cap.
Questions
What are the default channel groups in GA4?
GA4's default channel groups are rules that sort each session by its source and medium into buckets such as Organic Search, Direct, Referral, Paid Search, Organic Social, Email and Display. A session lands in the first rule it matches. Since May 2026 there is also an AI Assistant channel for visits from apps like ChatGPT and Gemini.
Why is Direct traffic so high in GA4?
Direct is high in GA4 when sessions arrive with no referrer and no UTM tags. Typed URLs and bookmarks count, but so do links from apps, some browsers and AI tools. In the example above Direct was 20.0% of sessions with a 41.5% engagement rate.
What is the difference between a channel and source / medium in GA4?
A channel is a bucket made from rules, while source / medium is the raw pair GA4 recorded, like google / organic. Start with channels for the big picture, then open source / medium to see what is inside one.
Why does GA4 show Unassigned traffic?
Unassigned means GA4 could not match the session to any channel rule, often because of unusual or missing UTM values. It was 210 sessions in the example, with a 22.9% engagement rate.