Organic search
People finding and visiting you through unpaid search results. No fee is charged for the click, though earning the visibility still costs work.
See it
What it is
Organic search is discovery and traffic from unpaid search results. It includes the ordinary blue links and can include unpaid result features, but not Google Ads or shopping placements bought through an ad auction. The dividing line is visible on the page: Google marks bought placements with a small Sponsored label, and everything without one is organic. 'Organic' describes how the result was placed, not how little work it took to earn.
Reach for it when you are separating search growth from paid acquisition. Google Search Console measures impressions and clicks on Google's results side. Google Analytics 4 measures visits that reached your site and classifies recognized search referrals under Organic Search, so the two products answer different questions.
Gotcha: not every visit gets classified cleanly. Missing referrer data, consent choices, redirects, and attribution rules can move or remove sessions in analytics. Judge the channel with both Search Console and site analytics, and do not treat a ranking report as traffic.
Ask AI for it
Build an organic search performance report by joining Google Search Console's Search results data with Google Analytics 4's Organic Search default channel group. Break out queries, landing pages, impressions, clicks, click-through rate, sessions, engaged sessions, and conversions. Explain mismatches caused by consent, attribution, time zones, or clicks that never became loaded sessions, then list the five landing pages with the clearest growth opportunity.