Google Analytics 4 · Dimension
What is Referral traffic?
Referral traffic is the visits a website receives through links on other websites, as opposed to visits from search engines, paid ads, social networks or a typed URL. In Google Analytics 4 it is the Referral channel of the default channel grouping.
- Organic58%
- Direct21%
- Paid11%
- Referral6%
- Email4%
Visits that arrived through a link on another site.
- Data source
- Google Analytics 4
- Type
- Dimension
Why it matters
It is the channel that tells you who is sending you people: a partner, a directory, a press mention, a forum thread. Because each referring domain is a decision someone else made, the list is a map of your reputation outside search.
How to read it
The classic reading error is inflated referrals from your own payment gateway or a subdomain: the visitor leaves to pay and comes back as a "referral". GA4 fixes this with the unwanted referrals list in the data stream settings; until it is set, referral sessions and their conversions are overstated. Also note that GA4 classifies traffic by source and medium, so a link that carries UTM tags stops being a referral and becomes whatever the tags say.
In a Data Studio report
In a Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) report referral traffic shows up on the channels page as one row next to organic, direct and paid, with sessions, engagement rate and key events, and in a table of referring domains sorted by sessions. The useful version adds conversions per referrer, because five sites can send the same traffic and only one of them sends buyers.
Where to find it in Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4: Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, with Session default channel group set to Referral; the referring sites under Session source.
