How to See Referral Traffic in Google Analytics 4

Looking for your referral traffic sources in Google Analytics 4 can feel like a departure from the universal, straightforward reports you were used to. The good news is that all the data is still there, you just need to know where to find it. This guide will show you exactly how to locate the standard referral report, filter your data, create custom explorations for deeper insights, and clean up your data by excluding unwanted referral spam.

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What Exactly Is Referral Traffic?

Referral traffic represents the visitors who land on your website by clicking a link from another website, rather than coming directly or through a search engine. Think of it as a digital word-of-mouth recommendation. If a popular blog writes about your product and includes a link to your store, every visitor who clicks that link is counted as referral traffic.

Tracking this metric is vital for several reasons:

• Evaluating Partnerships: If you're paying for a product review or collaborating with an affiliate, the referral report shows you the actual traffic they are sending your way. It’s clear proof of ROI.
• Measuring SEO & PR Efforts: Referral traffic directly measures the impact of your link-building and digital PR campaigns. Seeing traffic from a high-authority site that recently featured you confirms your strategy is working.
• Discovering New Opportunities: You might find unexpected websites sending you quality traffic. These are prime candidates for forming new partnerships or collaborations.
• Identifying Spam: Unfortunately, not all referrals are genuine. Spam bots can hit your site, polluting your data with fake referral sources. Identifying them is the first step to cleaning up your analytics.

How to Find Your Referral Traffic Report in GA4

Finding the main referral report in GA4 is simple once you know a few clicks. The primary report you'll want to use is the Traffic acquisition report.

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Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property.
2. On the left-hand navigation menu, click on Reports (the icon that looks like a bar chart).
3. Under the Life cycle collection, click on the Acquisition dropdown tab.
4. Finally, click on Traffic acquisition.

You’ll now see a table showing data grouped by the Session default channel group. This is a high-level view that groups traffic into categories like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, and Referral.

To see the specific websites that are sending you traffic, you need to change the primary dimension:

1. In the top-left of the table, click the dropdown arrow next to Session default channel group.
2. In the search box that appears, type "source" and select Session source from the list.

The report will now refresh and show you a list of individual sources, such as 'google', 'bing', or the names of referring websites like 'forbes.com' or 'facebook.com'. However, this shows all sources, not just referrals.

To filter this list to only show referral traffic, you can add a filter:

1. Above the report's title ("Traffic acquisition"), click on Add filter.
2. A builder will slide out from the right. For the Dimension, select Session default channel group.
3. For the Match Type, choose exactly matches.
4. For the Value, select Referral from the dropdown menu.
5. Click the blue Apply button at the bottom.

Your table will now display only the traffic coming from referral sources, listing each referring website along with key metrics like users, sessions, engaged sessions, and conversions.

Creating a Deeper Dive with a Custom Exploration Report

Standard reports are great for a quick overview, but the real power of GA4 lies in the Explore section. Here, you can build completely custom reports to slice and dice your data any way you see fit. Let’s build a referral report from scratch for a more detailed analysis.

Step 1: Go to the Explore Hub

Navigate to the Explore tab (the icon with branching paths) in the left-hand menu.

Step 2: Create a Blank Exploration

Click on the card that says Blank + to start a new exploration report from scratch. Name your exploration something memorable, like "Detailed Referral Report."

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Step 3: Import Your Dimensions and Metrics

The middle column is where you'll choose the building blocks for your report. You need to import any dimensions or metrics you want to use.

• For Dimensions:
• For Metrics:

Step 4: Build and Filter Your Report

Now, simply drag and drop your imported variables into the "Tab Settings" column to build your report.

1. Drag Session source and Landing page + query string into the Rows box.
2. Drag Sessions, Engaged sessions, Engagement rate, and Conversions into the Values box.
3. Next, find the Filters box at the bottom. This is a crucial step! Drag Session default channel group over to it.

Your report table on the right will instantly populate with an expandable table. You can now see each referral source, and by clicking the small arrow next to it, you can expand it to see which specific landing pages are receiving traffic from that source. This level of detail is fantastic for understanding not just who is sending traffic, but what content they find most valuable.

How to Exclude Unwanted Referral Domains (Spam Traffic)

Your data is only as good as its quality. Over time, you might notice junk domains sending you "ghost" traffic. These aren't real visitors, and they can skew your data. GA4 has a built-in feature to exclude them moving forward.

Note: Excluding a referral domain will not clean up your past data, it will only prevent that domain from showing up in your reports from the moment you set the rule.

1. Click the Admin icon (the gear in the bottom-left corner).
2. In the Property column, click on Data Streams, then select your Web data stream.
3. Under the Google tag section, click on Configure tag settings.
4. Once the settings page loads, click Show all to expand the options, and then choose List unwanted referrals.
5. In the Match type dropdown, choose your rule. 'Contains' is often the most flexible choice.
6. In the domain field, enter the spam domain you want to exclude (e.g., traffic-sharing-bot.xyz).
7. Click Add condition to add more domains if needed, and make sure to Save your changes at the top right.

It's good practice to review your referral sources once a month to check for any new spam you can add to your exclusion list. This helps maintain the integrity of your data and ensures that your strategic business decisions are based on accurate information about real website and user behavior.

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Final Thoughts

Finding and analyzing your referral traffic in GA4 isn't difficult once you are familiar with a few key reports and features. By combining the standard Traffic acquisition report with custom explorations, you can get a clear and actionable view of which external sites are pushing valuable readers, customers, and leads in your direction. Taking a few moments to exclude spam traffic further ensures your data stays clean and trustworthy.

Once you get the hang of pulling reports, the biggest challenge often becomes the time it takes to do it consistently. At Graphed , we automate this entire process. Instead of clicking through menus and rebuilding explorations, we let you create live dashboards using simple conversational language. You can ask precisely what you want to see - like “What were my top 10 referring domains last month by conversions?” - and instantly get an auto-updating dashboard. It’s like having a data analyst on your team to handle the reporting grind, freeing you up to focus on strategy.