Unfortunately, the problem of some Google Ads traffic showing up as “(organic)” in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is an old issue that still persists. Many users notice that paid traffic is categorized as organic, which can lead to confusion. Let’s dig into why this happens and how to address it.
How to Check if You’re Experiencing This Problem Finding out if you have this issue is pretty straightforward. Check the Traffic Acquisition report in GA4. If you see a significant amount of traffic from “Paid Search” (or “google / cpc” if your primary dimension is session source/medium) combined with campaigns labeled as “(organic),” your data may be incomplete. Even if you can see campaign performance in Google Ads, it’s important to create a unified view of all traffic sources and campaign data. This helps avoid confusion and gives you a clearer picture.
Why Is Google Ads Traffic Classified as Organic? This often happens with traffic that has a GCLID but no UTM parameters. When the referrer = google without UTM tracking, GA4 (in BigQUERY) might classify that traffic as organic. However, this doesn’t explain all cases.
How to Solve the Problem?
As of now, I don’t know exactly when Google will fix this issue. To prevent Google Ads traffic from being classified as “(organic),” you can try the following steps:
1. Adjust Tracking Templates in Google Ads: make sure your tracking templates in your campaigns are set up correctly. This will help avoid misclassification of traffic.
2. Modify Data in BigQuery: If the event contains a GCLID, set the channel to a predefined value for paid traffic (cpc). You can pull the campaign name either from the URL or through a join with the Google Ads dataset.
If you work with GA4 to BigQuery exports, be sure to check out my SQL cheat sheet.
