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I've been doing a ton of research on Google Analytics v4 and the biggest hurdle I have is that I cannot find how to simply report on the conversion rate for any default channel grouping (or campaign, etc.).

I've checked the Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition report, I've used the new Explorer, and I've also even tried Google Data Studio. None of these have this metric available.

GA4 report with only total conversions available:

GA4 showing total conversions per channel but not conversion rate

GA4 Explorer no Conversion Rate metric in search results:

Explore metric search only has conversion totals

Google Analytics 4 does have a Default Channel Groupings dimension, and does report on raw conversion numbers, but does not appear to have a conversion rate metric that shows the percent of converting sessions (like Universal or Gtag has).

Universal Analytics has conversion rate metrics in many reports:

Universal GA showing conversion rate metrics

I've heard rumors that Google is still working on adding features to GA4, and while I'm trying to avoid complaining about making GA4 the default property type without essential features, I am wondering if anyone has found the conversion rate metric in any reports, and if not, what are your workarounds?

I would certainly argue that this should be able to be done without needing to jump through hoops, but at this point I would take any process to find this data in GA4. The only thing I can think of at the moment would be to do the math manually inside of Data Studio... but that is much more time consuming compared to two clicks in Universal Analytics.

I will happily update this in the future and provide my own answer if necessary once this metric is added (if it is truly missing as of now).

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    Our workaround is using Universal Analytics :-) Mar 23, 2021 at 13:09
  • Same here. We are not able to track campaigns in real-time or in the past. There is something wrong with GA4.
    – Marius
    Jun 8, 2021 at 5:36

1 Answer 1

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I don't know when GA implemented this (whether it was there the whole time or if this is a recent addition) but you can add columns to these reports by customizing them, and one of the columns you can add is Conversion Rate.

  1. View the report, for example the Traffic Acquisition report, and then click the pencil icon in the upper right.

customize report button

  1. Click on "Metrics" in the "Report Data" section

metrics

  1. Click "Add Metric" at the bottom of the list

add metric

  1. Select "Session Conversion Rate" from the list (there is also a "User Conversion Rate" metric available as well)

session conversion rate metric

From here you can rearrange the columns as needed, but you can now save the customized report and have your conversion rate column(s).

conversion rate columns

Why this is not a default metric shown all the time is beyond me since it is literally the most important metric in pretty much any report... This is quite a pain to have to do each time if you manage lots of websites, but I guess at least it is available.

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