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
View the report
- Open the Google Analytics mobile app.
- From the top left, tap
.
- In the Reports section, tap Acquisition.
- Open the User acquisition tab.
Note: If you don't see the report and you are an Editor or Administrator, you can add the report using a desktop device.
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:
|
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:
|
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 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.