Understanding Attribution Traffic Sources

The source report provides an in-depth breakdown of which channels on your site are generating the most traffic. With this information, we will be able to identify opportunities for growth and determine which channels offer the most potential. 

The data represented in the sources report is hugely important in analyzing your marketing efforts, determining your successful campaigns and traffic channels, and thus being able to make decisions on which marketing efforts to invest in.

Where to find the first and latest attribution for a contact

Heading the contact record > located on the bottom right column click on the activity tab

For contact creation, the first and latest attribution is defined as:

- First attribution: The contact's first interaction is recorded in the system. This is usually their first visit to your website or an interaction with any of the sources listed above.

- Latest attribution: The contact's last interaction before they were converted to a contact in the system

How traffic is categorized into each source

It follows a set of rules to categorize traffic into a specific source, and checks the full page URL and the referring domain, if available, against these rules. They are applied in this order:

Order

Rule

Source

1

The "source" parameter contains the word “adword” for Google Ad. 

The "source" parameter contains the word “linkedin_ad” for Linkedin Ads and "twitter_ad" for Twitter Ads when the campaign name is present. 

Paid Search

2

The "gclid" parameter is present, as it is the Google click ID.

The "msclkid" parameter is present, it is the Microsoft click ID for Bing/Yahoo

Paid Search

3The "utm_source", "utm_medium", or "utm_campaign" parameter is present and the referring domain is google.com.Paid Search4The "source" parameter contains the word “fb_ad” for Facebook Ad.
We have deprecated utm_source=facebook, please use "fb_ad"Paid Social5The referring domain is a social media site. Social Media6Referring domain is a search engine. (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Duckduckgo)Organic Search7Referring domain is not a social media site or search engine.Referral8No referring domain or tracking URL.Direct Traffic

Direct Traffic

Traffic categorized under Direct traffic does not have an indication of its source (See row 8 above). Typically, these are people who typed the URL directly in their browser or removed all query parameters before entering a site. 

To view the source URLs for these visitors, click the Direct traffic source.

Paid Search

Traffic categorized under Paid search comes from paid search campaigns (e.g., Google AdWords). This will help in analyzing the Google Ad Reporting.

It needs to have the UTM parameters matching (It is case sensitive) (See rows 1-3 above)

{YourLandingPageUrl.com}?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium={AdName}&utm_campaign={CampaignName}&utm_content={AdGroupName}&utm_keyword={keyword}&utm_matchtype={matchtype}&campaign_id={campaignid}&ad_group_id={adgroupid}&ad_id={creative}

UTM Parameters:

utm_source=adwords

utm_medium={AdName}

utm_campaign={CampaignName}

utm_content={AdGroupName}

utm_keyword={keyword}

utm_matchtype={matchtype}

campaign_id={campaignid}

ad_group_id={adgroupid}

ad_id={creative}

Paid Social

Traffic categorized under Paid social comes from a paid social campaign. (eg Facebook Ads). This will help in analyzing the Facebook Ad Reporting.

It needs to have the UTM parameters matching (It is case sensitive) (See row 4 above) 

utm_source=fb_ad&utm_medium={{adset.name}}&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}&utm_content={{ad.name}}&campaign_id={{campaign.id}}

Please Note:

When using custom values for UTM parameters be sure to check formatting, spelling, and to remove any spaces before and after the URL. 

Organic Search

Traffic categorized under Organic Search comes from non-paid search results in known search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Duckduckgo. 

To view the keywords used in the search engine, click the Organic search source in the Sources table. 

When there are Unknown keywords (SSL), it is likely due to the search engine encrypting user data. For example, Google encrypts all the search terms entered by their users.

Social Media

Traffic categorized under Organic social comes from social media websites or apps. An example is when a visitor shares your content or website on their social media account, and their followers visit your content or visit the links inside your messages on social media.

Referrals

Traffic categorized under Referrals comes from external sites that link to your website. It should not be a search engine or social media site. A referring domain may have more than one page that links to your site.