The experiences in Google Analytics 4 will be complicated. Take, for instance, acquisition experiences — the channels sending visitors to your website — at Stories > Acquisition. The part lists two varieties of acquisition: person and visitors (i.e., classes).

I’ll deal with these experiences on this submit.

Site visitors Sources in GA4

“Consumer  acquisition” vs. “Site visitors acquisition”

These two experiences within the Acquisition part disclose the place every customer got here from. Consumer acquisition represents the preliminary supply that introduced the individual to your website. Site visitors acquisition is the latest.

Say a first-time customer got here to your website from clicking an natural search itemizing. GA4 will group that preliminary go to within the “Natural search” channel for each experiences. But when she leaves and returns just a few days later from a Fb advert, GA4 will record the second go to within the “Paid social” channel within the “Site visitors acquisition” report and “Natural search” in “Consumer acquisition.”

In different phrases, the “Site visitors acquisition” report doesn’t differentiate between new and returning customers. It exhibits the full classes and the place every originated. The “Consumer acquisition” report exhibits the full customers and their preliminary (first-time) supply.

Channels

Each experiences present “default channel teams” — traffic-source classes — together with:

• “Direct.” Guests who typed your URL of their browser’s search bar.
• “Natural Search.” Guests who clicked an natural itemizing on Google, Bing. or one other search engine.
• “Natural Social.” Guests who clicked an natural submit on a social media website.
• “E-mail.”
• “Paid Search.”
• “Paid Social.”
• “Referral.” Guests who clicked non-ad hyperlinks on third-party websites.
• “Natural Video.” Guests who clicked non-ad hyperlinks on websites similar to YouTube, TikTok, and Vimeo.

For particulars on every channel, click on the drop-down menus on every report. In “Consumer Acquisition,” click on the “First person default channel group” menu and choose “First person supply” for the record of originating domains.

For detailed sources of customers, click on the “First person default channel group” menu and choose “First person supply.” Click on picture to enlarge.

Within the “Site visitors Acquisition” report, click on “Session default channel group” and choose “Session supply.”

For detailed sources of classes, click on the “Session default channel group” menu and choose “Session supply.” Click on picture to enlarge.

The numbers could also be completely different owing to new versus returning visits.

You may restrict each experiences to a single web page by way of the “Add filter” possibility on the high.

• Choose “Add filter.”
• Click on “Choose dimensions.”
• Choose “Touchdown web page + question string”
• Choose “accommodates” under “Match kind.”
• Paste your web page’s URL slug (the half after the “/”) or any phrase (similar to “smaller”) from that URL.

The visitors and person acquisition experiences will now present knowledge for that URL.

Restrict the acquisition experiences to a single web page, similar to this instance for a URL containing “smaller.” Click on picture to enlarge.

In lots of circumstances, the person and visitors acquisition experiences are interchangeable. The variations, once more, end result from returning guests. Regardless, the experiences present the sources of visitors — channels that introduce your model and drive return visits.