Google Analytics Audit Test #

96

Search Traffic Not In Organic Channel

Why It Matters:

Critical to understanding where your traffic comes from.

Industries:

All

Checks For:

Accuracy

How accurate is your recent data?

Insight Category:

Attribution

Can you tell which marketing efforts are working?

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Background

A GA4 audit is essential for uncovering missing insights—key data points that organizations don't yet know and can act upon. A well-done audit evaluates both behavioral tracking and traffic attribution, ensuring each is accurate and useful. It also assesses whether the data collected truly supports business decisions and reporting.

Test Detail

This test checks whether search engine traffic—like visits from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo—is being properly classified under the “Organic Search” channel in Google Analytics.

If it’s appearing under “Unassigned,” “Referral,” or “Other,” it suggests that your Google Analytics property is misclassifying organic traffic, which can distort performance reporting and make SEO efforts appear ineffective.

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Google Analytics audit test results.

How to Conduct This Test

Basic Tests

  • In Google Analytics > Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, look at the Session default channel group.
    • Filter for Session source values like:
      • google
      • bing
      • duckduckgo
      • yahoo
      • search.[domain].com
    • Check whether they’re grouped under “Organic Search” or incorrectly assigned to “Referral,” “Direct,” or “Unassigned.”
  • Use Explore to break it down further by Source / Medium and verify that mediums like organic are present and consistent.

Automated, Free Audit

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Seeing search engine sessions outside the Organic Search channel? That’s a signal GA4 needs tuning. Hire a pro to resolve this quickly.

How To Fix

  • In Google Analytics Admin > Data Settings > Channel Groups, review and customize your default channel grouping rules.
  • Ensure that traffic from known search engines with medium=organic is correctly assigned to “Organic Search.”
  • Check that no campaign tags (UTMs) are overriding natural search traffic—e.g., avoid using utm_medium=referral or utm_medium=cpc on SEO links.
  • Audit your tag manager or server setup to make sure it’s not rewriting sources or stripping referrer data on landing pages.
  • Hire a pro to correct your channel group definitions and ensure SEO performance is tracked accurately.

Tips from a Google Analytics Consultant

Focus on Insights

Every Google Analytics audit should result in a plan for more insights.

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An insight is:

  • something you don't know
  • and can act on to improve performance

The Goal

Identify and remove insight blockers. Don't get tempted to track things you can't act on!

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