Google Analytics 4 Traffic Channel Groups: A Comprehensive Guide

Even experienced specialists can struggle to understand traffic sources in Google Analytics 4 due to the new channel grouping system, revised report structure, and different metric logic. However, these changes have opened up new opportunities for in-depth analysis. Once you understand these tools, you can more accurately determine which channels are delivering results and which are simply taking up your budget without providing returns.

In this article, I will discuss how channel groups are organized in GA4, how to create your own traffic classification system, and which metrics to rely on when analyzing each channel.

1. What are traffic channel groups?
2. What types of traffic channel groups exist?
3. Groups in Universal Analytics
4. New groups in Google Analytics 4
5. Custom channel groups in Google Analytics 4
6. Channel group rules
7. Metrics for analyzing data from groups
8. How GA4 processes UTM tags

What are traffic channel groups?

They are necessary for evaluating the effectiveness of marketing channels and making informed decisions about further website development.

Google Analytics 4 offers several default group types that allow you to analyze traffic based on user interaction context.

• The default channel group refers to the main channels through which users access the site or app and perform key actions.
• The session default channel group focuses on the channels that are used when a user begins a new session.
• The first user default channel group focuses on the channels a user initially uses to discover your site or app.

Traffic channel groups

The set of channels may vary in different versions of Google Analytics. Below is a list of the default groups used in Universal Analytics.

Groups in Universal Analytics

These allow us to better understand where traffic is coming from.

1. Organic search: visits from search engines such as Google, Bing, etc.
2. Direct: visits where users arrive at the site directly by entering the URL in the browser address bar, clicking on bookmarks, or coming from offline sources.
3. Paid search: clicks on ads from paid search advertising campaigns.
4. Referral: visits from external links on other websites.
5. Email: clicks on links from email newsletters.
6. Social: traffic from social networks.
7. Display: clicks on banners, graphic ads, and other display ad formats.
8. Other: traffic that does not fall into any of the above categories and is not automatically classified by the system. 

New groups in Google Analytics 4

GA4 provides more detailed traffic channel data that provides a deeper understanding of user behavior on the website. It has retained the main channels from Universal Analytics and added new categories.

Reports are now divided into two categories: user acquisition and traffic acquisition.

User acquisition  

The user acquisition report focuses on analysis and metrics related to attracting new users.

The report displays the following:

• Sources and channels that brought new users
• Number of new users
• Number of new sessions
• Effectiveness of channels in attracting new audiences

Traffic acquisition 

This report focuses on all traffic, including both new and existing users. The report includes:

• Sources and channels of all traffic
• Total sessions
• User engagement
• Interaction and behavior on the site and source.

User acquisition channel group

User acquisition channel group

List of new groups in Google Analytics 4

The new traffic channel groups in GA4 categorize sources more accurately and allow for a deeper analysis of communication effectiveness.

Here is a list of the new channel groups:

1. Cross-network. This includes traffic from advertising campaigns that cover multiple platforms at once, such as Performance Max or Smart Shopping. It allows you to evaluate the contribution of complex placements to overall user acquisition.
2. Organic social. This includes traffic from free social media content. It helps you understand which platforms generate organic interest in your website.
3. Paid social. This includes traffic from advertising campaigns on social media. It allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of paid promotion.
4. Paid Video. It covers transitions from paid video campaigns on platforms such as YouTube.
5. Organic Video. This group contains traffic from unpaid video content. It shows which video platforms bring organic visitors.
6. Organic Shopping. This group includes transitions from organic search and product views in online stores.
7. SMS. Visits via links from SMS newsletters or individual messages.
8. Mobile Push Notifications. Traffic received from push notifications in mobile apps.
9. Unassigned. Visits that could not be automatically classified, such as traffic from unknown or non-standard sources.

In GA4, traffic can be grouped using the Primary Channel Group option, which simplifies the analysis of visit sources to your site or app.

You can use it for the following tasks:

• Simplify traffic source analysis.
• Compare the effectiveness of different channels.
• Automatically distribute data.
• Improve attribution and marketing analytics.

GA4 custom channel groups

With Google Analytics 4, you can create custom channel groups to classify and customize traffic according to your goals. This allows you to analyze sources more accurately, track channel effectiveness, and understand how different channels impact your business goals.

Advantages of using custom channel groups

Creating your own channel groups allows for more flexible analytics configuration and a better understanding of user behavior. Here are the main advantages of this approach:

1. Accurate identification of traffic sources. You can highlight non-standard sources that aren't included in standard groups. For instance, you can create a separate category for traffic from specific partner sites or specific pages on social media.
2. Detailed analysis and optimization. With custom groups, you can evaluate the effectiveness of each source in greater detail and find growth opportunities more quickly.
3. Personalized approach. Customization makes reports more relevant for your business and convenient for decision-making.

Here is an example of when you might need to combine Google traffic into a single channel using custom channel groups. For instance, let's say your website receives traffic from various Google services. GA4 distributes it as follows:

• Google/referral: 300 sessions (referrals from Google News and Google Discover).
• Google.com/referral: 150 sessions (from various Google subdomains).
• Google/organic: 1,560 sessions (organic searches).
• Googleapis.com/referral: 50 sessions (referrals via Google API services).

To find out how many visitors come from Google, you need to combine the data using custom channel groups.

1. Open Google Analytics 4 and click Admin.

2. Go to Data Display and select Channel Groups.

3. Click Create New Channel Group.

Then, create your own rules to classify traffic.

Channel group rules

Channel groups are formed based on predefined marketing traffic classification rules. These rules are applied in a specific order. As soon as a traffic source matches one of the conditions, it is assigned the corresponding label and further verification stops.

Follow these steps to find channel group rules.

1. Open GA4 and select the desired property.

2. Click Admin in the lower left corner.

3. In the Data Display column, select Channel Groups.

A list of channel groups will open, including the Default Channel Group.

4. Click on it to view the rules for distributing traffic across channels.

For example, the direct channel comes first in the list of rules. This means that GA4 will first check if the traffic belongs to this channel before moving on to the next rule.

Metrics for analyzing data from groups

When using Google Analytics 4 to analyze groups of traffic channels, you can use various metrics to measure channel effectiveness.

Let's take a closer look at each metric.

1. New users is the number of unique new users who visited the website or app during the selected period.
2. Engaged sessions refers to the number of sessions in which users interacted with the website or app.
3. Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions in which user interaction was tracked.
4. Engaged sessions per user is the average number of engaged sessions per user.
5. Average engagement time is the average amount of time that a user actively interacts with the website or app during a single session.
6. Event count is the total number of events recorded on a website or in an application. Each click, view, scroll, and other interaction is counted as a separate event.
7. Conversions refer to the number of completed target actions.
8. Total revenue is the amount generated by the website or app during the selected period.
9. Users refer to the total number of unique users. This metric counts each user only once, regardless of the number of visits.
10. Sessions refer to the total number of sessions completed by users during a specific period.

How does GA4 handle UTM tags?

Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 handle UTM tags differently, particularly with regard to case sensitivity and formatting requirements.

Let's look at an example.

In Universal Analytics, UTM tags were case sensitive.

• utm_source=Facebook and utm_source=facebook were considered different sources.
• utm_medium=Email and utm_medium=email were displayed as two separate channels.

In GA4, however, UTM tags are not case sensitive.

• utm_source=Facebook and utm_source=facebook are considered the same.
• The system automatically converts tag values to lowercase.

Correct UTM tagging is important in GA4. It determines how traffic is classified and which channel group it is assigned to.

An additional advantage of GA4 is the ability to create custom channel groups. These groups allow you to apply classification rules to both new and historical data. You can then correct previous UTM tagging errors and adjust analytics retrospectively without any loss.

Conclusions

1. GA4 channel groups are logically classified categories of traffic based on specific rules. The system offers standard groups and the ability to create custom ones.
2. GA4 generates more detailed traffic channel data and offers a deeper understanding of user behavior on the site.
3. In GA4, traffic can be grouped using the Primary Channel Group, which is a type of grouping that simplifies the analysis of visit sources for websites or applications.
4. Channel-specific metrics provide a deeper understanding of user behavior and marketing effectiveness.
5. Custom channel groups allow you to tailor your reporting to specific business goals, provided that the classification rules are set up correctly.
6. In GA4, UTM tagging plays a key role in how traffic is classified and the channel group it falls into.