If you’ve noticed unfamiliar new traffic channels in your Google Analytics 4 reports, such as: cross-network, paid social, unassigned, organic social, organic video, etc. — then this article is for you. Let’s take a closer look at how to understand and analyze these new channels in GA4, which were not present in Universal Analytics.
Here’s an example of what a report with new channels of GA4 might look like:
According to the manual, these new channels were introduced to reflect current market trends and user interactions across multiple channels. The system creates these channels based on predefined rules that group traffic source data.
Let’s walk through each new GA4 channel:
- Cross-network - traffic from Google Ads campaigns that run across multiple networks, including Performance Max campaigns;
- Paid Social - paid traffic from social networks;
- Organic Social - traffic from social networks, where "organic" doesn’t necessarily mean free, but refers to all social traffic;
- Paid Search - traffic from Google Ads search campaigns;
- Organic Search - free search engine traffic;
- Paid Video - paid traffic from video platforms like YouTube;
- Organic Video - all traffic from YouTube, though "organic" here doesn’t imply free traffic;
- Organic Shopping - based on our experience, this refers to traffic from free listings in Google Shopping;
- SMS - traffic from SMS marketing campaigns;
- Mobile Push Notifications - push notifications sent to mobile devices;
- Unassigned - traffic that doesn’t fall under any set rules.
These are the main new channels, and you’ve likely seen the others before. According to the developers, GA4 channels may evolve based on market dynamics, so new ones can appear at any time.
See you next time on the pages of our blog.
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