Displaying Full Referrer URL in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google are transitioning Analytics users to GA4, which has a different type of reporting. Previously it was very easy to see a list of referrers with their full URL. In GA4 it doesn’t seem possible, but I found a reasonable workaround.

Use the Explore tab to create a new Exploration with the following settings:

Variables

• Dimensions: Page referrer
• Metrics: Active users

Tab Settings

• rows: Page referrer
• show rows: 500 (optional)
• values: Active users (or New users)
• cell type: Heat map (optional)
• filters: (exclude any URL patterns here)

Then minimise the Variables and Settings panels.

This will give you a long table of full referrer URLs along with the number of users that came from there. In my case most are domain names, but a handful are full URLs pointing to a page.

It remains to be seen if this can be done more easily or more comprehensively.

Originally posted answering my own question at stackoverflow.