---
title: "What is Referral traffic in GA4? | Kodalogic"
description: "Referral traffic is the visits a website receives through links on other websites, as opposed to visits from search engines, paid ads."
url: https://kodalogic.com/glossary/referral-traffic
---

[Glossary](/glossary)/Referral traffic

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](/glossary/ga4) it is the Referral channel of the default channel grouping.

Sessions · 100%Organic58%

* 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](/glossary/data-stream) settings; until it is set, referral [sessions](/glossary/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](/glossary/looker-studio)) report referral traffic shows up on the channels page as one row next to organic, direct and paid, with sessions, [engagement rate](/glossary/engagement-rate) and [key events](/glossary/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.

Shown in these dashboards

* [![Google Analytics 4 Dashboard for Data Studio dashboard](https://kodalogic.com/cdn/templates_images/0222_0WG5IECFKCHKAUTGY4O1AIO8L0YIM9D5_0000.webp)](/template/google-analytics-4-template-for-looker-studio)  
[Google Analytics 4 Dashboard for Data Studio](/template/google-analytics-4-template-for-looker-studio)$129
[See the dashboard](/template/google-analytics-4-template-for-looker-studio)

![Referral traffic on the Channels page of the Google Analytics 4 Dashboard for Data Studio](/informes/2026-09-02/google-analytics-4-template-for-looker-studio/09.webp)

Page 9, Channels, of the [Google Analytics 4 Dashboard for Data Studio](/template/google-analytics-4-template-for-looker-studio).[Open the live demo](https://lookerstudio.google.com/embed/reporting/fb97e8f9-0817-4b2b-9b0d-16cb50407e13/page/p%5Ffo1dxij6ld) to see it with real data.

## See it in a report

[Google Analytics 4 dashboard](/template/google-analytics-4-template-for-looker-studio)[Web analytics report template](/report-templates/web-analytics-report)[GA4 fields reference](/reference/ga4-fields)

## Related terms

* [Looker Studio](/glossary/looker-studio)
* [GA4](/glossary/ga4)
* [Data stream](/glossary/data-stream)
* [Engagement rate](/glossary/engagement-rate)
* [Sessions](/glossary/sessions)
* [Key events](/glossary/key-events)

[← White label reporting](/glossary/white-label-reporting)[All 49 terms](/glossary)[Page indexing →](/glossary/page-indexing)