New Users in GA4│GA4 Users│New User Metric

Users in Google Analytics 4

Users are a key part of understanding how GA4 works. A user is considered new in Google Analytics 4 if they have never visited your website or app before. To identify different users, GA4 needs a unique identifier known as a user ID.

In Google Analytics 4, there are three User metrics:

Total Users (Total number of unique users who logged an event)
Active Users (Number of distinct users who have an engaged session)
New Users (Number of users who interacted with your site or app for the first time)

What are New Users in GA4

If you are completely new to Google Analytics 4, New Users is an essential metric that you will see in both standard and custom reports.

This metric, as the name indicates, counts the number of new users who have visited your website or app for the first time.

You can find New Users within the User Acquisition report by going to your Acquisition data within the GA4 standard reports.

Here, the New users dimension is located in the first column of the User Acquisition report from the Google Merch Shop GA4 property, as seen below. It is hidden in the image, but there were 50,902 New Users on the website.

👀 You should be aware that Unique Visitors and New Users are two different things. Unique Visitors was a metric in an older version of Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) which measures the number of sessions from new users.

🔔 In Google Analytics 4, New Users only include a user's first visit, regardless of how many sessions they had.

How are GA4 New Users Calculated?

Google Analytics 4 calculates New Users using the total number of new unique user IDs that logged the first_open or first_visit event over a certain time period.

When a user first visits your website or app, a new user ID deletes is created and saved in the system.

While both websites and Android applications report the first_visit event, iOS apps only record the first_open event.

✅ If a user deletes their cookies or uses a different device, it will be counted as a New User on subsequent visits.

❎ If the same user ID is logged again in the same time interval, it doesn't count as a new user.

It's crucial to monitor new users and their activities because they explore your website for longer than returning visitors. Ultimately, you need to attract more new users and drive growth.

Useful Links

The first_visit and first_open events are both automatically collected in GA4. We also recommend that you read our article on the first_visit event .

You might notice that in the report above, there is a channel group called Unassigned. If you're interested, you can review our documentation on Unassigned Traffic in GA4 here .