Previously included in the Hacking GA4 post about search bar filtering, this bit now has its own video so it's getting a post too.

GA4 Tip: Search Bar Filtering
Using the search bar in reports as a nested filtering tool for quicker data dives.

How To Find Source / Medium Data in GA4

GA4 features two levels of data aggregation: User & Session.

When it comes to acquisition metrics, user is the first-touch data. This will be imperfect due to cross-device usage, ad blockers, privacy considerations, yada yada, so on, & etc. But the first user [level of detail] metrics tell you how users got to your site the first time.

Session level is what you're used to from UA. What channel does each session originate from. This is where you'll spend most of your time analyzing ad performance.

And, if you're like me, you'll want to know which campaigns, ad groups/sets, and ads are driving what type on traffic and engagement. Which means looking at source / medium and other UTM-parameter based data.

Here's how you find it in the default acquisition report (I recommend building Explorations for anything you'll want to dive into on a regular basis):

An annotated screenshot from GA4 showing you first click into Acquisition reports, then Traffic acquisition, then change the dropdown above the table to Session source / medium

🚨🚨🚨

As reported on the linkblog:

Starting on (roughly) November 30, some UTM data has stopped populating in GA4.
I can’t see anything more granular than campaign level data from my UTM tags. A friend reports the same issue.
It appears the Google team is working on a fix.

UPDATE: Starting on 12/6 or so we began to see this data populating again. There was rumor of Google trying to restore the missing data but I still don't see any for the "dark period."


Stay curious.