User Acquisition vs Traffic Acquisition in GA4. What’s the difference?

After browsing Acquisition reports in GA4 for a bit, you might wonder what the difference is between User Acquisition and Traffic Acquisition reports. The answer is that they attribute conversions to different parts of a user journey. That does not sound very clear, does it?

But don’t worry. In today’s quick blog post, I will explain the difference between User Acquisition vs Traffic Acquisition reports in GA4.

Different attribution

User acquisition report focuses on the first traffic source that led a visitor to your website (even though technically, the documentation says that it’s last-click too. But let’s not get into the weeds now).

Traffic acquisition report focuses on the most recent traffic source that led a visitor to your website.

If you are familiar with attribution modeling at least a bit, the user acquisition report uses first-click attribution, while traffic acquisition uses last-click.

That is why if you look at the dimension names in those reports, you will notice that the User acquisition report’s dimensions start with First user… and Traffic Acquisition’s start with Session…

Let me explain the difference between these two reports visually.

Imagine that we have a visitor who first landed on our website from Google Search, subscribed to a newsletter, and then came back the next day from an email campaign.

In total, we have two sessions of the same user. However, the two reports will show different data.

• The user acquisition report will attribute both sessions to google/organic (because that’s the first source/medium the user came from).
• Session acquisition will attribute 1st session to google/organic, and the 2nd session will be attributed to email/newsletter (because the Traffic acquisition report cares about the traffic sources of each session individually).

Based on what I have seen, marketers use Google Analytics, they usually look at the Traffic Acquisition reports.

Learn more about Traffic Acquisition reports in GA4

I have a more in-depth article here. And if you want to learn even more (with various practical examples), look at my Google Analytics 4 course.

Which report should you use?

Here are some common scenarios, and which report would be most appropriate:

Scenario 1: You’re launching a new product and want to see which of your introductory campaigns (e.g., social media ads, influencer outreach) brought the very first wave of new visitors to your website.

In this case, you could use the User Acquisition Report. Why? You’re interested in the first touchpoint that introduced these new users to your brand.

Scenario 2: You ran a week-long promotional email campaign to your existing subscriber list and want to measure how many visits it generated.

In this case, you could use the Traffic Acquisition Report. Why? These are likely returning users. You want to see the source of these specific sessions during the campaign period, regardless of how they first found you.

User Acquisition vs Traffic Acquisition: Final Words

In a nutshell, these reports show two different parts of the user journey. User Acquisition shows marketing channels that acquired your visitors and later attributes all events/conversions to that initial traffic source. On the other hand, Traffic Acquisition shows all the most recent traffic sources.