Referral Traffic In GA4

July 19, 2025

Let’s be honest, finding your way around Google Analytics 4 can sometimes feel like you’ve been given a map where half the street names are missing.

You know the data is in there somewhere, but simple tasks from the old Universal Analytics days, like drilling down into specific referral traffic, now seem to take a few extra clicks.

This guide will walk you through two clear, actionable methods to isolate and analyse the referral traffic that matters most to your marketing campaigns.

We’ll cover the quick-and-dirty way using standard reports and the more powerful, flexible approach using GA4’s ‘Explore’ section.

404 Report in Explore Section of GA4

Table of Contents

Reports Section

For most day-to-day checks, the standard reports will get you where you need to go. It’s all about knowing how to apply the right filters.

The great thing about this section is that it can be customisable. Something I would recommend you do, especially creating an SEO report.

Step 1: Head to the Traffic Acquisition Report

First things first. In the left-hand menu of GA4, navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

By default, you’ll be looking at a table with Session default channel group as the primary dimension. Let’s change that to Session source / medium for a more granular view, just as you would have in Universal Analytics.

Step 2: Filter for Referral Traffic

This is where the magic happens. At the top of the report, click the ‘Add filter’ button. This opens up a condition builder on the right-hand side. Now, build your filter like this:

  • Dimension: Session default channel group

  • Match Type: exactly matches

  • Value: Referral

Click ‘Apply’. Just like that, the report will now only show you traffic that GA4 has classified as coming from a referral.

Referral Traffic

Step 3: Add Another Layer to Get Specific

But what if you want to see referral traffic that landed on a specific page? Easy. You can add up to five conditions to any filter.

Let’s click ‘Add filter’ again. We’ll set the first condition for Referral as we did before, and then click ‘+ Add new condition’. Now you can get really specific. For example:

  • AND

  • Dimension: Landing page + query string

  • Match Type: contains

  • Value: your-target-page-slug (e.g., /services/digital-pr)

Click ‘Apply’. The report now shows you only referral traffic that landed on that specific page. You could use the same logic to isolate traffic from a particular source, like Session source / medium contains linkedin.com.

Starting with Landing Pages

What if your primary question is “Which of my blog posts are getting the most referral traffic?” You can flip the whole process on its head.
  1. Navigate to Reports > Engagement > Landing page.
  2. Add the same filter we used before: Session default channel group exactly matches Referral.Although using the filter option at the top of the page works too
  3. Now you have a list of all your landing pages that have received referral traffic. To see where it came from, click the blue ‘+’ icon next to the ‘Landing page’ column header.
  4. Search for and select Traffic source > Session source / medium.
You now have a powerful, two-column view showing which referrers are sending traffic to your most popular landing pages.
Landing Page

When you need to slice and dice your data in ways that standard reports don’t allow, it’s time to use an ‘Exploration’. This is where you can build custom reports from the ground up.

The quickest way to get started is to take a report you’ve already filtered and bring it into Explore.

In your filtered Traffic acquisition report, look for the icon at the top that says ‘Explore’ when you hover over it (it looks like a small bar chart with a magnifying glass). Clicking this will automatically create a new Exploration using the exact data and filters you’ve already built. It’s a fantastic time-saver.

Explore Quick Button in reports

Once in the ‘Explore’ interface, you have complete control.

  • On the left, you can add more Dimensions (e.g., Country, Device category) and Metrics (e.g., Engaged sessions, Conversions).

  • In the middle ‘Tab Settings’ column, you can drag and drop these into the ‘Rows’, ‘Columns’, and ‘Values’ fields.

  • Most importantly, at the bottom of this column, you have the ‘Filters’ section where you can replicate the same logic as before (e.g., filter for Session source / medium exactly matches forbes.com / referral).

This allows you to build a highly specific, shareable report that answers a very particular question, like “Show me all the landing pages that received traffic from our recent PR campaign.”

Excluding Unwanted Referrals

 

Now that you’re a dab hand at finding referral traffic, you might notice some sources you’d rather not see.

The classic example is a payment gateway like PayPal or Stripe.

When a user pays and is redirected back to your ‘thank you’ page, GA4 can mistakenly credit the sale to PayPal, not the original marketing channel that brought the customer in.

Here’s how to tell GA4 to ignore these domains.

  1. Navigate to Admin (the cog icon in the bottom-left).

  2. In the ‘Property’ column, click on Data Streams and select your website’s data stream.

  3. Scroll down and click Configure tag settings.

  4. On the next screen, under the Settings heading, click Show all.

  5. Select List unwanted referrals.

  6. You can now set up your exclusion rules. For excluding a payment gateway, you would set:

    • Match type: Referral domain contains

    • Domain: paypal.com

  7. Click Add condition to add more domains (like stripe.com or other third-party services) and click Save when you’re done.

Crucially, this setting is not retroactive. It will only apply to traffic from the moment you save the change, so it’s a good thing to set up as soon as possible to ensure your future data is clean.

Excluding Unwanted Referrals

So, What’s the Takeaway?

Finding and managing referral traffic in GA4 isn’t difficult, but it requires a slightly different mindset.

  • For quick, daily analysis, use the Reports section with the powerful ‘Add filter’ function.

  • For deeper, more custom analysis, build a bespoke report in the Explore section.

  • For better data accuracy, use the List unwanted referrals setting in your Admin panel to exclude traffic from payment gateways and other third-party tools.

By mastering these pathways, you can move beyond surface-level metrics and gain a real, accurate understanding of which external sources are driving meaningful traffic to your website.

Ready to put this into practice? For a deeper look at getting the most out of GA4, check out our complete guide on Key Events.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: How do I see basic referral traffic in GA4?

The simplest way is to go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Click ‘Add filter’, set the dimension to Session default channel group, the match type to exactly matches, and the value to Referral. Click ‘Apply’.

Q2: Why is some of my referral traffic showing as ‘Direct’? 

This often happens when the referring website has a security policy (like rel="noreferrer") that prevents the browser from passing referrer information to the next site. In these cases, GA4 has no referral data to work with and defaults to classifying the session as ‘Direct’. There are of course other reasons. This excellent blog post might help.

Q3: How do I stop PayPal from showing as a referrer in my reports? Go to Admin > Data Streams > [Your Web Stream] > Configure tag settings > Show all > List unwanted referrals. Add a condition where Referral domain contains paypal.com and save. This will prevent PayPal from being credited as a traffic source in the future.

Kyle

Author

Hello, I'm Kyle Rushton McGregor!

I’m an experienced GA4 Specialist with a demonstrated history of working with Google Tag Manager and Looker Studio. I’m an international speaker who has trained 1000s of people on all things analytics.

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