Organic Social in GA4

What is Organic Social?

Organic social is a part of organic traffic in GA4. Organic traffic comes from any unpaid session on your website, and it's divided into organic search and organic social.

While organic search refers to traffic from search engines (Google, Bing, etc.), organic social traffic also comes from unpaid content on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

GA4's default channel groups help to classify website traffic. It can be organic search, paid search, paid social, organic shopping, referrals, and others including organic social.

Organic Social Traffic in Google Anaytics 4

How to Find Organic Social in GA4

Let's start with where you can find your organic social traffic in Google Analytics 4. Default channel groups including organic social can be found in acquisition reports (user and traffic acquisition).

However, we'll focus on the traffic acquisition here. If you're not sure which report will give you the details you need, check out this blog post about GA4's traffic sources .

Please follow these steps to view organic social data:

Step 1

Go to Reports

Go to Reports section in the left-side menu in your GA4 account.

Step 2

Navigate to Traffic Acquisition

Once you access acquisition report, type organic social in the search bar. Since organic social is one of the default channel groups in GA4, you'll see listed.

Let's dig into the details.

Step 3

Add secondary dimension

Click on the + button and type source.

Step 4

Choose Session source/medium

From the dropdown menu, select Session source/medium.

Step 5

Here's your organic social data

Now, you're able to see your organic social traffic with specific data points like medium source.

While the session source  shows you which social platforms bring you traffic, the medium  indicates the type of traffic, such as referrals.

Traffic-Source Dimensions for Organic Social

To see more data broken down by platform or channel, you might consider adding different dimensions.

Traffic-source dimensions tell you:

• where your traffic comes from ( source : google, bing etc.),
• how people get to your website or app ( medium : organic, cpc, etc.),
• what particular strategies you use to drive that traffic ( campaign , keywords, etc.).

In acquisition report, you can choose two dimensions for a single report.

For example, in the report above, we added Session primary default channel group and Session source/medium. When you type Organic Social in the search bar right above the table, the default channel group will only show you organic social data in traffic acquisition.

Moreover, you can see how much traffic the organic social platforms have brought along with many metrics such as engaged sessions , event count, total revenue, active users etc.

These are the most important dimensions you need to know to use in your organic social analysis:

• Session default channel group : Rule-based definitions of traffic channels (ex: organic social)
• Session source : The specific source that directs traffic to the website. (ex: facebook, instagram etc.)
• Session medium : The type of traffic.
• Session source/medium : The combination of source and medium.
• Session campaign : Marketing campaigns to drive traffic

Let's see how you should track organic social traffic based on Google's definitions.

Rules & Descriptions

Here's how rules are applied for Organic Social:

( Source : GA4 Default Channel Groups )

You can download the complete list of social sites and platforms that Analytics considers as default traffic sources here. It might help you to create effective campaigns.

Please refer to this document for all traffic sources  sorting into default channel groups.

Organic Social Channel Example

For example, Pinterest has been added to the SOURCE_CATEGORY_SOCIAL list . Let's assume the medium is social. Then, this channel will then be called Organic Social if the medium is social.

Track Organic Social Traffic in GA4: 3 Reports

Now let's look at and analyze different traffic data by customizing the traffic acquisition report. We'll answer the following questions by using relevant Analytics reports.

First, follow these steps to learn how you can customize standard GA4 reports. There are several ways to customize reports in Google Analytics, but the most flexible method is using explorations. Thus, we'll create reports in explore section here.

Step 1

Go to Traffic Acquisition

In your GA4 property, go to Reports section and access Traffic Acquisition.

Step 2

Edit comparisons > Explore

Select Edit comparisons icon on the top-right, and click on Explore. Now, your traffic acquisition report will be open in explorations.

You can now add or remove the metrics and dimensions you want here. By clicking the + button, you can see the available options and use them by clicking import. The important thing is to move the selected values to the rows and values section to make them visible in the report.

Now, let's look at which values would be beneficial for you to use in response to specific questions about organic social traffic.

🔍 How much organic traffic are we getting from social media?

The number of active users here shows how many users came from organic social within the selected date range. The engagement rate shows how engaged these users were while browsing your site.

🔍 How likely are users to take action on your site? 

Conversion rate is another metric that can be useful. Google has made a change, and now conversions within Google Analytics 4 are called key events.

Therefore, you will see them as key events in reports. For more information on this topic, you can read our article on Key Events in GA4 .

The session key event rate will tell you the following: How likely are users to take action on your site? This action will change depending on the types and objectives of companies but usually covers important events like purchases.

Compared to other traffic sources, social media visitors have lower conversion rates. Visitors from social media typically have less intent than those from search or direct.