Reports

[GA4] User acquisition report

Next: [GA4] User acquisition report vs. Traffic acquisition report

The User acquisition report is a pre-made detail report that you can use to get insights into how new users find your website or app for the first time. The report differs from the Traffic acquisition report, which focuses on where new sessions came from, regardless of whether the user is new or returning.

How to find where your users are coming from using Acquisition Reports in Google Analytics 4

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View the report

Sign in to Google Analytics.
From the left menu, select Reports .
On the left, select Acquisition > User acquisition.

Note: If you can't find the report, it may have been removed or isn't in your default view. Editors (and above) can add it back to the left navigation. Learn more about how to add the report.

Where the data comes from

To see attribution data for your marketing campaigns, complete one or more of the following:

Connect an active, spending Google Ads, Search Ads 360, or Display and Video 360 account
Add UTM parameters to your destination URLs
Import cost data through Data Import

Dimensions in the report

You will notice that each dimension includes the text "First user". "First user" indicates that the dimension describes how you initially acquired the user. Learn more about scopes

The report includes the following dimensions. If you are an Editor or Administrator, you can add or remove dimensions in the report.

Dimension	What it is	How it's populated
First user campaign	Campaign is the name of a promotion or marketing campaign that led to a key event.	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.
First user default channel group	Channel groupings are rule-based definitions of your traffic sources. Default channel groups include 'Direct', 'Organic Search', 'Paid Social', 'Organic Social', 'Email', 'Affiliates', 'Referral', 'Paid Search', 'Video', and 'Display'.	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.
First user Google Ads ad group name	The ad group name in Google Ads of the ad that led to a key event.	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.
First user Google Ads ad network type	The location where your ad was shown (google.com, search partners, display network) that led to a key event.	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.
First user medium	The method for acquiring users to your website or application. Examples include: 'affiliate': users who click a link through an affiliate program 'cpc': (short for cost-per-click) users who click a paid advertisement 'email': users who click a link in an email marketing campaign 'organic': users who click a link from a search engine 'referral': users who click a link on a website (e.g., a link in a video description) '(none)': direct traffic	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.
First user source	A representation of the publisher or inventory source from which traffic originated. For example, users who return to your website from Google Search show as "google" in the Session source dimension. Examples include “google”, “youtube”, and “gmail”.	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.
First user source platform	The platform where you manage buying activity (such as where budgets, targeting criteria, and so on are set). Examples include: 'DV360' (traffic from Display & Video 360 marketing activity) 'Google Ads' (traffic from Google Ads marketing activity) 'Manual' (traffic that isn't from Google media marketing activity) 'SA360' (traffic from Search Ads 360 marketing activity) 'SFMC' (traffic from Salesforce Marketing Cloud marketing activity) 'Shopping Free Listings' (traffic from Google Merchant Center marketing activity)	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.
First user source / medium	The source and medium that led a user to arrive on your website or application.	To learn how to populate this dimension, see Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging.

Metrics in the report

The report includes the following metrics. If you are an Editor or Administrator, you can add or remove metrics in the report.

Metric	What it is	How it's populated
Average engagement time	The average time that your website was in focus in a user's browser or an app was in the foreground of a user's device. The amount of time a user maintains interaction and active engagement on your website or application. Average engagement time = total user engagement durations / number of active users	This metric is populated automatically.
Key events	The number of times users triggered a key event. You can choose a key event to narrow your analysis.	Populate this metric by marking an event as a key event.
Engaged sessions per active user	The average number of engaged sessions per active user. The quality of users driven to your website or application. The duration of active engagement per active user. Engaged sessions is the number of sessions that lasted 10 seconds or longer, or had 1 or more key events or 2 or more page or screen views.	This metric is populated automatically.
Event count	The number of times users triggered an event.	This metric is populated automatically.
New users	The number of new unique user IDs that logged the `first_open` or `first_visit` event. The metric allows you to measure the number of users who interacted with your site or launched your app for the first time.	This metric is populated automatically.
Returning users	The number of users who have initiated at least one previous session, regardless of whether or not the previous sessions were engaged sessions.	This metric is populated automatically.
Total users	The number of unique user IDs that triggered any events. The metric allows you to measure the number of unique users who logged an event.	This metric is populated automatically.
User key event rate	The percentage of users who triggered a key event. This metric is calculated as the number of users who performed a key event action divided by the total number of users.	This metric is populated automatically.

Troubleshooting

I only see direct traffic. What is direct traffic in Google Analytics?

Direct traffic is from people who enter your website by directly entering the URL to your website into their browser address bar.

For example, someone might send the user a link to your website that they copy and paste into their browser or the user might have directly accessed your website through a saved bookmark. Other examples include traffic from social media, traffic from offline documents, and traffic from HTTPS to HTTP versions of your site.

If you only see direct traffic in the report, try linking your advertisement accounts or tagging your destination URLs to see more useful information in the report.

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