Summary
The User Acquisition Report is the standard report designed to identify the original marketing channels that brought first-time visitors to the site. It is built on first user dimensions and the New users metric, so every person is credited to the channel that introduced them. Traffic acquisition, by contrast, reports session level sources and includes repeat visits.
Nitin Batra is a Google Analytics 4 certified professional who configures GA4 properties and works with acquisition, attribution and channel grouping reports for client accounts on a daily basis.
Last updated: August 16, 2026
To see which channels and campaigns brought people to the site for the very first time, use the User Acquisition Report in GA4, which is built on first user dimensions such as First user primary channel group.
- The User Acquisition Report
- The Engagement Overview Report
- The Monetization Report
- The Traffic Acquisition Report
The correct answer is: The User Acquisition Report
Key Takeaways
- – The User Acquisition Report is the standard GA4 report designed to show the original marketing channels that brought first-time visitors to the website.
- – It uses first user scoped dimensions such as First user primary channel group, First user source / medium and First user campaign, and its primary metric is New users.
- – GA4 separates user-level acquisition from session-level acquisition, so User acquisition answers how you got the person and Traffic acquisition answers how a particular visit started.
- – A common mistake is comparing totals across the two reports and expecting them to match. Users in the User acquisition report are counted once against their first channel, so a returning visitor who arrives later from paid search will still be credited to the original channel.
Where exactly is the User Acquisition Report located in GA4?
Open your GA4 property and go to Reports in the left navigation, expand the Life cycle collection, click Acquisition and choose User acquisition. If your property uses a customised report navigation, an editor may have moved or removed it, in which case you can rebuild the same view in Explore using the First user dimensions and the New users metric.
What is the difference between First user source / medium and Session source / medium?
First user source / medium records where a person came from the first time they ever visited, and it stays attached to that user for all their later sessions. Session source / medium records the origin of each individual session, so the same person can show up under different sources over time. The User acquisition report uses the first, and the Traffic acquisition report uses the second.
Why do New users and Total users differ inside the User Acquisition Report?
New users counts people whose first ever session falls inside the selected date range, while Total users counts everyone active in that range, including people acquired months earlier. If you are judging campaign effectiveness at bringing genuinely new people, read the New users column and the first user dimensions together, not Total users.
Can the User Acquisition Report show which campaign drove a purchase weeks later?
It will show conversions and revenue grouped by the first user channel, so you can see the downstream value of the channel that originally acquired the customer. That is first-touch style reporting and it will not match your Advertising section attribution, which applies a data-driven or last click model across the full path. Use both, and be clear about which question you are answering before quoting a number in a meeting.