Unallocated traffic in Google Analytics 4: what is it and how to avoid it?

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If you're using Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and looking at some of your acquisition reports, you've probably noticed that some of the traffic is showing as Unassigned .

Unattributed traffic is important to understand where visits to your website are coming from that GA4 didn't recognize, to learn what's working for you, or to track when other people/sources share your content and the traffic comes from them.


In this article, we will look at what exactly "Unassigned traffic" is, how to identify it, and what are the most common reasons for its occurrence.

We will also give you some tips that can help you fix south africa number dataset of the problems and measure the effectiveness of your channels more accurately to ensure that your traffic and campaigns are more accurately tracked and optimized.



What is Unassigned traffic?
"Unassigned traffic" is reported from sessions that are not attributed to a specific source or medium of traffic from the default channel group in Google Analytics 4 ( GA4 ).


There are currently 18 main channel groups in Google Analytics 4:
Affiliates ( partners );
Audio ;​
Cross-network ( several networks );
Direct ( directly );
Display ( display network );
Email ( email );
Mobile Push Notifications ;
Organic Search ;
Organic Shopping ;
Organic Social ( organic social media );
Organic Video ( organic videos );
Paid Other ;
Paid Search ;
Paid Shopping ;
Paid Social ( paid social media ads );
Paid Video ;
Referral ( referral );
SMS.
There are also certain rules for how Google Analytics 4 attributes a given traffic source or medium to one of these groups.

For example, if the source has a medium of "organic", then it will be grouped under "Organic Search", and if the medium is "cpc", then GA4 will include it in "Paid Search".

However, when the source or medium is manually set differently, or in some cases not set at all, then the traffic may not meet Google Analytics 4 rules and is grouped as “ Unassigned ”.

Impact on Google Analytics 4 reports
Understanding and properly analyzing traffic is extremely important for making informed decisions that can help develop a website and improve the user experience on it.