Why Google Analytics 4 Acquisition Doesn’t Match Universal Analytics

See why GA4 User visits to your site in the Acquisition Overview don’t jive with the total visits you’re seeing in UA.

Quick Video Explanation

Here’s a quick video explanation showing specific metrics in GA4.

A more detailed written explanation is below the video.

How Google Analytics 4 Measures

GA4 is not inaccurate.

It measures Users, or visitors to your site differently than UA does.

And, it’s measuring different things.

Acquisition Overview Report Example

One of the Cards shows New Users by First user Default Channel Group.

Well, what the heck is all that?

Not understanding these terms is why most folks don’t realize the reason their GA4 data doesn’t match their UA data.

First User is only folks who have visited your site for the first time.

It’s not all Users, like you see in Universal Analytics.

Default Channel Group is a lump of traffic sources, like:

• Organic Search, which includes Google, Bing, etc.
• Organic Social, which includes Pinterest, Facebook, etc.

Change the Dimension

In the Acquisition Overview report, you can change the Dimensions from First User Default Channel Group to First user source.

This would show you the individual Channels that are sending you traffic.

Unfortunately, they are still only using the First User Metric. And you can’t change that.

Create Custom Explore Reports

GA4 makes it super easy to create your own custom reports via the Explore Reports.

You can make an Acquisition report that shows the channel by either group or individual source.

And then you can use any User Metric you want, like:

• Total User
• New User
• Returning User

This way you’ll get the same analytics that your are seeing in Universal Analytics.

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