How to See Referring Domains in Google Analytics 4

Trying to figure out which websites are sending you traffic is one of the most fundamental parts of marketing analysis. In Universal Analytics, a simple click on the "Referrals" report showed you every domain. Google Analytics 4 handles it a bit differently, but all the data you need is still there. This guide will show you exactly how to find your referring domains in GA4, build custom reports, and solve common issues along the way.

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Why Referring Domains Are So Important

Before we get into the step-by-step, let's quickly cover why you should even care about this report. Your referral traffic isn't just a list of links, it’s a source of valuable business intelligence that can help you:

• Discover Partnership Opportunities: When a blog or niche site sends you quality traffic, it’s a clear signal for a potential collaboration. You might discover an unexpected source of passionate fans or customers you never knew you had.
• Measure PR and Content Marketing ROI: Did that guest post you wrote or the podcast you appeared on actually work? The referral report tells you if those efforts are translating into real visitors, and by connecting it to conversion goals, you can see if they're driving revenue.
• Identify What Resonates: Seeing which sites link to you helps you understand your brand's perception in the wild. If a group of tech blogs are all linking to a specific feature page on your site, that’s powerful feedback about what’s catching people’s attention.
• Spot Technical Issues and Spam: Sometimes, you’ll find weird, irrelevant domains sending you traffic. This is known as referral spam and it can skew your data. Identifying it is the first step to filtering it out. You can also spot mistagged internal campaigns that are showing up as referrals instead of being properly attributed.

How to Find Referring Domains in GA4: The Standard Report

The quickest way to find your referral data is through the built-in traffic acquisition reports. It takes a few more clicks than it did in the old version of Analytics, but once you know where to look, it's straightforward.

Step 1: Navigate to the Traffic Acquisition Report

In the left-hand GA4 navigation menu, follow this path:

Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition

This report opens up showing your traffic grouped by the Session default channel group. You’ll see broad categories like Organic Search, Direct, Unassigned, and of course, Referral. This is a good overview, but we want to see the specific domains behind that "Referral" category.

Step 2: Change the Primary Dimension to "Source / Medium"

To see the actual websites sending you traffic, you need to change the primary dimension of the report. Click the small downward arrow next to "Session default channel group" at the top of the table.

A dropdown menu will appear. You can either scroll down and find Session source / medium or just start typing "source" into the search bar, and it will pop up. Select it.

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Step 3: Filter for Only Referral Traffic

Now your report shows every source of traffic - Google, Bing, direct traffic, and referrals - all mixed together. To zoom in on only the referral sources, we need to add a filter.

1. Click the Add filter button located just below the report title.
2. A panel will appear on the right side. You’ll be building a condition here.
3. For the Dimension, search for and select Session default channel group.
4. For the Match Type, choose exactly matches.
5. For the Value, select Referral from the list.
6. Click the blue Apply button.

Success! The table will now only display traffic from sources that GA4 has categorized as a referral. You'll see a clean list of the domains sending you traffic, along with metrics like Users, Sessions, Engaged Sessions, and Conversions for each one.

Pro Tip: Save This as a Custom Report

Instead of repeating these steps every time, you can save this filtered view for one-click access in the future. In the top right corner of the report (next to the date range), click the pencil icon to 'Customize report'. Then click the blue 'Save' button and choose 'Save as new report'. Give it a clear name like "Referral Sources Report" and you're all set.

Going Deeper: Building a Custom Referral Report in Explorations

The standard reports are great for a quick look, but what if you want to analyze your referral traffic in more detail? For example, maybe you want to see which landing pages are most popular for visitors from a specific referring domain. That’s where the Explore section comes in handy.

Explorations let you drag and drop different dimensions and metrics to build a custom report from scratch. It's more flexible than the standard reports.

Step 1: Create a New Blank Exploration

On the left-hand navigation, click Explore and then choose Blank exploration.

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Step 2: Import Your Dimensions and Metrics

An exploration is made up of 'Dimensions' (the "what," like the source or landing page) and 'Metrics' (the "how many," like sessions or conversions).

• In the Dimensions column on the left, click the '+' button. Search for and import the following: Session source / medium, Landing page + query string, and Device category. Click the blue 'Import' button.
• In the Metrics column, click the '+' button. Search for and import: Sessions, Total users, Engagement rate, and Conversions. Click the blue 'Import' button.

Step 3: Build the Report and Add a Filter

Now you just need to drag and drop your imported variables into the report builder on the right.

• Drag Session source / medium from the Dimensions list into the Rows section. You can also drag Landing page + query string under it to see a breakdown for each source.
• Drag Sessions, Engagement Rate, and Conversions from the Metrics list into the Values section.
• Finally, just like in the standard report, you need to filter for referral traffic. Drag Session default channel group from the Dimensions list into the Filters section. Configure it to ‘exactly matches’ ‘Referral’.

You now have a powerful, custom report that shows you not only where your referral traffic is coming from, but which specific pages they are landing on. This is incredibly useful for seeing that, for instance, traffic from forbes.com on mobile devices lands on your homepage and converts at 2%, giving you insight you just can't get from the standard reports.

Troubleshooting: Common Referral Traffic Issues in GA4

Sometimes you’ll look at your report and things won't look quite right. Here are a few common problems and how to fix them.

1. "(direct) / (none)" Traffic

If you see a lot of traffic listed as "(direct) / (none)," it means GA4 doesn't know where it came from. This can happen when someone types your URL directly into their browser, uses a bookmark, or clicks an untagged link in an offline document. Often, though, it's because digital marketing campaigns (like in emails or on social media) are missing UTM parameters. Appending UTMs to your URLs helps GA4 correctly categorize traffic instead of dumping it into the 'direct' bucket.

2. Bogus Referrals or Self-Referrals

You might see your own domain (e.g., your shop's payment portal) listed as a referrer. This happens if a user navigates away to a third-party site (like a payment processor) and then returns. To fix this, you need to tell GA4 to ignore these domains.

Go to your GA4 Admin Panel > Data Streams > [Your Web Stream] > Configure tag settings > Show more > List unwanted referrals. Here, you can add domains like paypal.com or your own subdomain so GA4 won't count them as a new referral-based session.

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3. Data Thresholding is Hiding Rows

If you have a low traffic volume from certain sources, GA4 might hide some rows and show a warning about 'data thresholding'. This is a privacy feature to prevent you from identifying individual users. A quick way to get around this for a less precise (but more complete) view is to go to Admin > Reporting Identity and select the "Device-based" option.

Final Thoughts

Finding your referring domains in Google Analytics 4 is a critical skill for understanding where your audience comes from and which marketing efforts are paying off. Whether you use the simple filtered Traffic Acquisition report or build a detailed custom analysis in the Explore section, this data is your key to unlocking new partnerships and refining your strategy. It takes an extra couple of steps compared to the old days, but the insights are well worth it.

As you've seen, getting the full story often means pulling data from multiple places. What if a referring domain drove a ton of traffic that ultimately converted into a lead in Salesforce or a sale in Shopify? Manually piecing all that together is a huge time sink. We built Graphed to solve exactly this problem. Instead of clicking through menus and piecing together reports, we allow you to connect all your sources in one place and simply ask questions in plain English, like, "Show me my top 5 referring domains by revenue from Shopify last month." We then instantly build a live dashboard for you, so you can spend your time acting on insights, not just chasing them down.