How to Read UTM Reports in Google Analytics 4 (Step-by-Step)

You've been tagging your campaign links with UTM parameters. Traffic is flowing. Data is being collected.

Now what?

A lot of marketers set up UTM tracking and then don't know where to find the data in GA4 — or they find it, but can't interpret it correctly. GA4's reporting structure is significantly different from Universal Analytics, and even experienced marketers find it confusing at first.

This guide is a complete, step-by-step walkthrough for reading UTM reports in Google Analytics 4. You'll know exactly where to look for your campaign data, how to interpret what you see, and how to use it to make better marketing decisions.

Before You Start: Make Sure Your Links Are Tagged

This guide assumes you're already tagging your campaign links with UTM parameters. If you're not yet, head to findbest.tools/utility/utm-builder to generate properly formatted UTM URLs in seconds.

The reports in this guide only show useful data if your campaign links have utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaignparameters attached. Without them, traffic arrives as "direct / none" with no campaign context.

How GA4 Processes UTM Parameters

When someone clicks a UTM-tagged link and arrives on your site, GA4 captures the UTM parameter values and stores them against that session. Specifically:

utm_source → stored as session source
utm_medium → stored as session medium
utm_campaign → stored as session campaign
utm_content → stored as session manual ad content
utm_term → stored as session manual term

One important thing to understand: GA4 uses a session-scoped attribution model for UTM parameters. This means the UTM data is attributed to the session, not to individual events within the session. The user's first touch in a session determines the session's source/medium.

This matters for how you interpret campaign data — we'll cover this more in the section on attribution.

The 3 Primary Reports for UTM Data

Report 1: Traffic Acquisition (The Starting Point)

Where to find it: Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition

This is the most important report for UTM data. It shows you a breakdown of all sessions, broken down by their source — and it respects your UTM parameters.

Default view:

By default, the primary dimension is "Session default channel group" — GA4's automatic channel categorization (Organic Search, Direct, Email, Paid Social, etc.).

For UTM analysis, change the dimension:

Click the blue dimension dropdown at the top of the table. You have several options:

• Session source/medium → Shows google / cpc, newsletter / email, facebook / paid_social
• Session source → Shows only the source (google, newsletter, facebook)
• Session medium → Shows only the medium (cpc, email, paid_social)
• Session campaign → Shows your utm_campaign values
• Session default channel group → GA4's automatic grouping (useful for sanity checking)

Recommended starting view for campaign analysis:

Switch to "Session source/medium" first. This gives you the full picture: which platform + which type of traffic combination is sending you visitors.

What the metrics mean:

• Sessions — Total number of sessions initiated by each source/medium
• Engaged sessions — Sessions where the user was active for 10+ seconds, converted, or viewed 2+ pages
• Engagement rate — Engaged sessions ÷ total sessions (replaces bounce rate in GA4)
• Engaged sessions per user — Average engagement depth per user
• Average engagement time — How long users were actively engaged per session
• Event count — Total events triggered (page views, clicks, form fills, etc.)
• Conversions — Sessions that resulted in a conversion event
• Total revenue (if ecommerce is set up) — Revenue attributed to each source

Report 2: User Acquisition

Where to find it: Reports → Acquisition → User Acquisition

User Acquisition differs from Traffic Acquisition in a subtle but important way: it attributes data to the first-touch source — meaning the source that brought the user to your site for the very first time, ever.

Traffic Acquisition attributes to the session source — the source that brought the user in for a particular session.

When to use each:

Use Traffic Acquisition when you want to know which campaigns are driving sessions and conversions now — across all return visits.

Use User Acquisition when you want to know which channels are bringing in *new users* — useful for measuring the top-of-funnel reach of campaigns.

For most campaign analysis, Traffic Acquisition is more directly useful. User Acquisition is better for understanding your acquisition channels at a growth/funnel level.

Report 3: Advertising → Traffic Acquisition (with Google Ads)

If you're running Google Ads, there's a separate Advertising section in GA4 that gives you more granular paid traffic analysis. This is outside the scope of UTM parameters, but worth knowing about for paid search attribution.

Step-by-Step: Analyzing a Specific Campaign

Let's walk through analyzing the performance of a specific UTM campaign from start to finish.

Scenario: You ran an email newsletter campaign in April 2026 with the UTM campaign name newsletter_product_launch_apr2026. You want to know how it performed.

Step 1: Go to Traffic Acquisition

Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition

Step 2: Change the Dimension to Session Campaign

Click the blue dimension dropdown and select "Session campaign." Find newsletter_product_launch_apr2026 in the list.

Step 3: Set the Date Range

In the top right corner, click the date range selector and set it to cover the period when your campaign was active (e.g., April 1–30, 2026).

Step 4: Read the Campaign Row

For your campaign row, you'll see: Sessions, Engaged sessions, Engagement rate (good benchmark: 50%+ is healthy), Average engagement time (good for email: 90+ seconds), and Conversions.

Step 5: Drill Down into Source/Medium

To see how that campaign broke down by channel, add a secondary dimension. Click "+" next to the dimension dropdown and add "Session source/medium". Now you can see, for example: newsletter_product_launch_apr2026 | newsletter / email.

Step-by-Step: Comparing Multiple Campaigns

To compare campaigns side by side:

1.Traffic Acquisition → change dimension to Session campaign
2.Set your desired date range
3.Sort by Sessions (descending) to see highest-traffic campaigns first
4.Or sort by Conversions to see highest-converting campaigns
5.Click any campaign name to drill into it further

Pro tip: Use the search bar above the table to filter to a specific pattern. For example, type email to see only campaigns with "email" in the name — useful if you follow a consistent naming convention.

Step-by-Step: Analyzing Content Performance (utm_content)

If you used utm_content to tag different links within an email or different ad creatives in a campaign, here's how to find that data.

Method 1: Add Secondary Dimension

Traffic Acquisition → change dimension to Session campaign
Find your campaign
Add secondary dimension: "Session manual ad content"
You'll see a breakdown of each utm_content value within that campaign

Method 2: Explorations

For more detailed content analysis, use GA4 Explorations:

Go to Explore (left sidebar) → Blank exploration
Add dimensions: Session campaign + Session manual ad content
Add metrics: Sessions + Conversions
Drag dimensions to Rows and metrics to Values

Step-by-Step: Finding Keyword Data (utm_term)

If you tagged paid search links with utm_term, you can find keyword performance data:

Traffic Acquisition
Add secondary dimension: "Session manual term"
This shows which keywords drove traffic, alongside their campaign context

This is especially useful for understanding which search terms are converting, not just which ones are driving clicks.

Understanding GA4 Attribution Models

This is where a lot of marketers get confused. When a user visits your site multiple times before converting, which visit gets credit for the conversion?

The attribution logic:

In GA4, the default attribution model for reports is data-driven attribution (for accounts with sufficient data) or last-click attribution. This means:

The conversion is attributed to the last campaign that brought the user to the site before they converted
If a user clicked an email link on Monday, came back via a Google search on Wednesday, and converted on Wednesday, the conversion is attributed to the Google search — not the email

What this means for reading UTM reports:

When you see "conversions" in the Traffic Acquisition report for a specific campaign, those are the conversions where that campaign was the last touchpoint before conversion. Your email campaign may have played an important role in the path even if it's not credited with the conversion.

To see the full conversion path:

Go to Advertising → Attribution → Conversion paths. This shows the multi-touch journey — including which campaigns appeared earlier in the path even if they weren't the last touch.

Key Metrics to Track for Each Channel

Different channels should be evaluated on different metrics. Here's a quick reference:

Email Campaigns

Primary: Conversions, conversion rate

Secondary: Engaged sessions, average engagement time

Warning sign: Low engagement rate (<40%) suggests poor email-to-landing-page relevance.

Paid Social

Primary: Conversions, cost per conversion

Secondary: Sessions, engagement rate

Warning sign: High sessions but low engagement rate suggests ad creative/landing page mismatch.

Organic Social

Primary: Sessions, engagement rate

Secondary: New users (check User Acquisition for this)

Warning sign: Very low average engagement time suggests people click and immediately leave.

Paid Search

Primary: Conversions, conversion rate

Secondary: Sessions, engagement rate per keyword

Warning sign: Low conversion rate from high-CPC keywords signals irrelevant traffic.

Creating a Custom Campaign Dashboard

Instead of navigating to different reports every time, you can save a custom dashboard in GA4:

Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition
Set your preferred dimension (e.g., Session campaign)
Customize the metrics columns to show your key metrics
Click the star icon (☆) at the top right to add it to "My Reports"
Name it something like "Campaign UTM Performance"

Now it's one click away every time you open GA4.

Common GA4 UTM Reporting Questions

Why are some campaigns showing as "(not set)"?

This happens when sessions arrive without a campaign UTM value but do have a source/medium. It can also occur when UTM parameters are present but get stripped by redirects. Check your tagged URLs to ensure the parameters survive any redirects.

Why does my data look different between Traffic Acquisition and Advertising?

The Advertising section uses a different attribution model (last non-direct click with Ad platform data integration) compared to Traffic Acquisition's session-based attribution. Both are valid — they just answer different questions.

Why is "Direct" still showing high traffic even though I'm tagging everything?

A few reasons: (1) You may have some untagged touchpoints (e.g., a bio link that hasn't been updated). (2) Bookmarked URLs never have UTMs. (3) Typed URLs are genuinely direct. Run an audit of all external links pointing to your site and ensure they're tagged.

My utm_content data isn't showing. Where is it?

It's stored as "Session manual ad content" — you need to add this as a secondary dimension or use Explorations to see it. It doesn't appear in the default Traffic Acquisition columns.

Monthly UTM Reporting Template

MONTHLY UTM CAMPAIGN REPORT — [Month Year]
==========================================

TOP CAMPAIGNS BY SESSIONS:
1. [Campaign name] — [Sessions] — [Engagement rate] — [Conversions]
2. [Campaign name] — [Sessions] — [Engagement rate] — [Conversions]
3. [Campaign name] — [Sessions] — [Engagement rate] — [Conversions]

TOP CAMPAIGNS BY CONVERSIONS:
1. [Campaign name] — [Conversions] — [Conversion rate]
2. [Campaign name] — [Conversions] — [Conversion rate]

CHANNEL BREAKDOWN (Session source/medium):
- email: [Sessions] / [Conversions]
- paid_social: [Sessions] / [Conversions]
- cpc: [Sessions] / [Conversions]
- social: [Sessions] / [Conversions]

NOTABLE FINDINGS:
[2-3 key observations from the data]

ACTION ITEMS:
[What will change next month based on this data]

Fill this in monthly using GA4's Traffic Acquisition report. Over time, you'll have a clear, comparable record of campaign performance that informs planning.

Putting It All Together

GA4's UTM reporting is powerful when you know where to look. The key reports are:

Traffic Acquisition → Session campaign for campaign comparison; Session source/medium for channel breakdown

User Acquisition → For first-touch attribution and new user analysis

Explorations → For custom, detailed breakdowns including utm_content analysis

Attribution → Conversion Paths → For understanding multi-touch journeys

The data you see is only as good as your UTM tagging. If your links are consistently tagged using a tool like findbest.tools/utility/utm-builder, your GA4 reports will be clean, accurate, and genuinely useful for decision-making.

If your tagging is inconsistent or incomplete, the reports will reflect that mess — and no amount of GA4 expertise will fix bad input data.

Start Reading Your Campaign Data Today

1 Open GA4

2 Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition

3 Change the dimension to "Session campaign"

4 Set your date range to the last 30 days

5 See which campaigns have actually been driving your traffic

What you find might surprise you. Build better UTM links at findbest.tools/utility/utm-builderand start making decisions based on what's actually happening.

Open UTM Builder →

Start from the beginning

What Are UTM Parameters? A Beginner's Guide →