What is Organic Shopping in GA4?

In GA4, organic shopping refers to website traffic that arrives to your site from unpaid product listings.

This traffic comes from organic search results in Google Shopping and other search engines. Unlike shopping ads, organic shopping results appear naturally based on search relevance.

Tracking organic shopping traffic in GA4 helps marketers understand customer behavior, keyword performance, and conversion rates. It also allows marketers to measure the impact of their SEO work on product listings.

Below, we’ll explain how to find organic shopping data in GA4 and the impact tracking organic shopping can have for your business.

Table of contents

• How to Find Organic Shopping Data in GA4
• How is Organic Shopping Traffic Shown in GA4?
• Why Track Organic Shopping Traffic in GA4?

How to find organic shopping data in GA4

To access your website’s organic shopping data in GA4, follow these steps:

Open GA4 and navigate to the Reports section:

Click Acquisition, and then click Traffic Acquisition:

You will then see your organic shopping traffic listed in the table below:

Here, you can see key metrics such as:

• Session count
• Conversions
• Engagement Rate

If needed, you can also use Explorations for a deeper analysis. Take a look at our guide to creating custom reports in GA4 for more details.

How is organic shopping traffic shown in GA4?

GA4 categorizes organic shopping traffic based on the source. It separates Google-driven traffic from non-Google traffic.

Organic shopping traffic from Google sources

Traffic from Google Shopping results falls under organic shopping in GA4. This includes users who click on free product listings within Google Search and Google Shopping.

GA4 attributes this traffic to Google as the source. Marketers can analyze it separately from other organic channels to assess the effectiveness of Google’s unpaid shopping results. From there, you can determine whether you need to change the products listed there to improve their performance.

Organic shopping traffic from non-Google sources

Other search engines also display free product listings. These search engines include:

• Bing
• Yahoo
• DuckDuckGo

GA4 categorizes these under organic shopping, but the source will reflect the search engine that it came from. It won’t be listed as a Google source.

Analyzing non-Google organic shopping traffic helps marketers optimize for alternative search engines. It also provides a broader view of organic ecommerce performance.

Why track organic shopping traffic in GA4?

Tracking organic shopping traffic in GA4 provides valuable insights. It helps businesses refine their SEO strategies and optimize product listings. In this section, we’ll discuss some specific reasons you might want to track organic shopping traffic.

Measure organic search effectiveness

Organic shopping data can help marketers evaluate the impact of their SEO efforts.

Of course, there are a lot of other ways to measure your SEO performance, but actively tracking traffic coming from organic shopping results will give you insight into how many people are landing on your website with the intent to either:

• Learn more about your product
• Purchase your product

Business owners crave this “bottom-of-the-funnel” (BoFu) traffic, so tracking it in your reports can be incredibly useful! Bottom-of-the-funnel traffic is vital for a business to succeed, as this is where most of your revenue will come from. Yes, lots of revenue can be gained from top-of-the-funnel traffic too, but this conversion time will be much longer than that of BoFu traffic.

By using this data, you’ll see what product listings rank well in search results and whether they attract visitors. You can analyze the data to see which search queries drive traffic and optimize their listings accordingly.

Identify high-performing keywords

GA4 allows marketers to track search queries that drive organic shopping traffic.

Finding these top keywords will help refine your content and target high-converting search terms. This data provides insights into customer intent, allowing businesses to tailor their product descriptions and metadata for better visibility.

Important note: You must use a custom Exploration to find the keywords driving organic search traffic. You must also connect to Google Search Console within your GA4 account.

Understand customer behavior

GA4 provides interesting behavioral insights into organic shoppers.

You can use GA4 to track metrics such as:

• Session duration
• Pages viewed
• Conversion paths

Understanding how customers and potential customers navigate your site helps optimize the shopping experience. The goals here should be to reduce friction and improve user engagement. All of this work should then lead to more conversions.

Cost efficiency

The most important thing to remember is that organic shopping traffic is free to an extent.

I say “to an extent” because there is also a time and monetary investment required to obtain organic traffic. However, as the table below from FirstPageSage shows, the traffic you get from organic sources (including organic shopping) is much higher in value and comes at a lower overall cost:

Unlike paid ads, you don’t have to spend money on clicks to attract visitors through organic shopping.

By tracking this data, you can refine your marketing strategies to maximize cost-effective opportunities. The goal is to boost organic shopping visibility so you can rely less on paid campaigns while driving strong sales.

Improve conversion rates

You can optimize product pages by actively analyzing organic shopping data to boost conversions.

A detailed review of this data helps identify drop-off points, allowing you to improve the user experience and enhance overall performance.

Insights on abandoned carts and low-engagement pages from organic shoppers highlight key areas for improvement, so you can refine your strategy for better results.

Benchmark performance

GA4 allows you to compare organic shopping traffic with other channels. This benchmarking helps you allocate resources to the most effective strategies. You can track trends and adjust your approach to maintain a competitive advantage.

For example…

If a business were looking at its traffic acquisition data and found that its organic shopping engagement rate was much higher than that of its paid advertising, this could encourage them to actively increase the traffic coming from organic shopping sources to reduce spend on paid ads that are not engaging users as well as they could be.

How to increase organic shopping traffic

In this section, we will give you some tactics that you can implement to increase the organic shopping traffic coming to your website.

Optimize product content

Optimizing your product content is the first step to increasing organic shopping traffic.

Ensure your product titles and descriptions include relevant keywords. Use clear, engaging language that encourages clicks. Adding user-friendly and compelling descriptions will improve your search rankings and attract more potential buyers.

Maintain a high-quality product feed

Regularly updating your product listings is essential to keep them accurate, relevant, and competitive. Keeping product details such as pricing, availability and descriptions up to date helps prevent confusion and frustration for shoppers.

Removing outdated or incorrect information improves search visibility by signaling to search engines that your listings are well-maintained and reliable. Accurate product feeds also enhance the user experience, reducing the chances of customers abandoning their purchase due to inconsistencies between the listing and the actual product.

Beyond SEO benefits, optimizing product feeds helps build trust with search engines and customers. Shoppers are more likely to complete a purchase when they see up-to-date information that is in line with their expectations. By maintaining clean, error-free product listings, businesses can improve engagement, conversions, and overall customer satisfaction.

Use high-quality images

High-quality images are crucial for attracting and engaging shoppers. Clear, high-resolution product photos make listings more appealing, increasing click-through rates and drawing more potential buyers to your site.

When customers can see detailed product images from multiple angles, it builds trust and confidence, reduces hesitation, and increases the likelihood of purchasing. Shoppers are more likely to engage with listings that provide zoomed-in views, lifestyle images, and accurate color representation, helping them feel more confident in their buying decisions.

Nike is an example of a website that has great product images.

Investing in professional, well-lit product photography enhances the user experience and leads to higher conversion rates. More conversions mean increased revenue, making high-quality images a cost-effective strategy for improving overall sales performance.

Implement product schema

Adding schema markup to your product pages helps search engines better understand key details about your products, such as:

• Name
• Price
• Availability
• Customer Reviews

This extra layer of information allows search engines to present your listings more effectively in organic search results.

Implementing product schema enables rich snippets, which display important details directly in search results. These enhanced listings may include:

• Star ratings
• Pricing
• Stock status
• Special offers

This makes your product listing more attractive to potential buyers. Users who see this additional information upfront are more likely to click on your listing instead of a competitor’s.

Beyond improving click-through rates, structured data enhances your SEO performance by helping search engines index your product pages more accurately. This increases your chances of appearing in relevant search results, ultimately driving more qualified organic traffic to your store and boosting conversions.

The importance of tracking performance

Tracking organic shopping traffic in GA4 is essential because it provides valuable, actionable insights that help businesses optimize their ecommerce strategy. By analyzing this data, you can refine your approach based on user behavior rather than guesswork.

For example, suppose GA4 shows that many organic shoppers leave your site after viewing a specific product page. This may indicate slow loading times, unclear product descriptions, or unappealing images. Identifying and fixing these problems can lead to higher engagement and more conversions.

Regular monitoring ensures consistent growth in organic ecommerce traffic. Businesses that track trends over time can spot seasonal fluctuations, consumer behavior shifts, and keyword performance changes. This allows them to adjust their content, SEO strategies, and product offerings accordingly.

Ultimately, tracking organic shopping traffic helps businesses stay competitive by continuously improving their approach, making data-driven decisions, and maximizing the impact of their organic search presence.

Frequently asked questions

To conclude this article, we’ll answer some common questions about organic shopping in GA4.

How can I track organic shopping traffic in GA4?

Use GA4’s Traffic Acquisition report and filter by Organic Shopping in Session Default Channel Grouping.

How is organic shopping traffic different from other traffic sources?

Organic shopping traffic comes from unpaid product listings in search results. Other sources include paid ads, direct visits, and social media referrals.

Are organic shopping listings free?

Yes, Google and other search engines display organic product listings for free. Businesses do not need to pay for clicks.

Can Amazon traffic be classed as organic shopping?

No, Amazon is not classified as organic shopping in GA4 because it is an external marketplace. Depending on the visit’s source, Amazon traffic typically appears under ‘Referral’ or ‘Direct’ channels.

Wrapping things up

Organic shopping traffic in GA4 provides valuable insights into how users find and engage with your product listings through unpaid search results. By tracking this data, businesses can optimize their SEO efforts, identify high-performing keywords, and improve conversion rates without relying on paid ads.

Understanding how organic shoppers behave on your site enables better decision-making, from refining product descriptions to enhancing user experience. Regularly monitoring performance trends ensures you can make strategic adjustments to maintain a competitive edge.

With the proper tracking and optimization strategies, organic shopping can drive cost-effective, high-intent traffic, helping businesses maximize visibility, engagement, and sales. Start leveraging GA4 today to unlock the full potential of your organic product listings!

Monitoring organic search traffic in GA4 will lead to you wanting to make changes to your website! You can use SEOTesting to measure the results of these changes and use data to determine whether those changes have led to more or less traffic.

We offer a 14-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up. So give us a try!