GA4 User Acquisition vs. Traffic Acquisition: What’s the Difference?
Experienced marketers know it pays to get granular. When Google Analytics 4 launched in 2020, it offered two ways to view site interactions. The user acquisition and traffic acquisition reports provide useful insights into user behaviors, events, and where your most valuable traffic comes from. This information is incredibly valuable in shaping future content creation, page templates, and more!
Traffic Acquisition vs. User Acquisition
The key difference between the user and traffic acquisition reports is in how they measure traffic. The user report focuses on users, while the traffic report focuses on sessions. The overview report combines user and traffic data, while the cohort report distills the user acquisition report into groups of users that share a behavioral pattern.
For context:
- Users are the unique people who interact with your website. Google uses cookies to recognize individual internet users for periods as short as 24 hours (that’s a _gid) or 2 years (_ga, but this clears when you clear your browser history and cookies).
- Sessions measure the number of visits a user makes to your website. A single user can have multiple sessions or visits; if I go to Nike.com to look at new running shoes three times today, I’ve registered for three sessions, but I’m only one.
Many brands and marketers rely on these default reports to explain how users access their site and use them as the basis for their reporting and analytics.
The Traffic Acquisition Report in GA4
The traffic acquisition report measures how new and returning users arrive at your site based on individual sessions. Based on the most recent session, this report attributes a session to a channel, like organic search or paid search. This creates a tally of total traffic, counting multiple touchpoints as repeat visits.
The traffic acquisition report focuses on key metrics, including:
- Sessions
- Engaged sessions
- Average engagement time per session
- Events per session
- Event count
- Key events (conversions)
The User Acquisition Report in GA4
User acquisition measures the number of individual users who access your site, how many are visiting for the first time, and more.
The user report displays the following metrics:
- Total users
- New users
- Returning users
- Active engagement time per active user
- Engaged sessions per active user
- Event count
- Key events (conversions)
Which Is Better for Measuring Traffic in Google Analytics?
Traffic and user acquisition reporting complement each other by providing overlapping insight into your audience and content. The right report is situational and depends on what you want to learn.
Users = Customers
It’s helpful to think of users as your customer base. The higher your user count, the more customers you’re reaching. If brand awareness is a marketing priority, use new users as a KPI. If recurring revenue is a priority, you might consider returning users a benchmark of success.
Sessions = Foot Traffic
The traffic acquisition report reflects total volume, which makes it valuable for measuring the immediate impact of specific campaigns and overall performance. It helps evaluate things like time to conversion and which marketing channels drive the most sessions over time.
How to Use Traffic and User Acquisition Reports in GA4
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