On this page
  1. The order of the rules
  2. The tabs
  3. Why organic search terms are rare
  4. Two ways of counting: first source vs every arrival
  5. Changing how traffic is classified
  6. Related

Where: Website analytics › Sources.

The order of the rules

For every arrival, the source is decided in this order. The first rule that matches wins:

  1. Your own channel rules. Project rules come before the defaults — for example, you can give one partner site its own "Partners" channel.
  2. UTM parameters. If the link carries utm_source, utm_medium and so on, they decide.
  3. Ad click IDs. With no UTM tags but a parameter such as gclid, msclkid, wbraid, gbraid, yclid or bd_vid in the address, the visit is paid search. An ad link without UTM tags is still recognised.
  4. The referring domain. Search engines become organic search, social networks social, and AI products — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot — "AI assistants". Other sites are referrals.
  5. No referrer. Typed addresses, bookmarks and some in-app browsers are direct.

Links from your own site to your own site count as internal, not referrals. With no outside source they fall back to direct, so internal clicks are never counted as acquisition.

The tabs

  • Channels — the groups above, with conversions.
  • Referring sites — the exact domains.
  • Search engines and AI sources — each listed separately.
  • UTM — split into source, medium, campaign, term and content.
  • Search terms — organic terms, paid terms (utm_term) and on-site search.

Ad click IDs have their own table showing only the type and a hash, never the raw value.

Why organic search terms are rare

Most browsers and search engines no longer pass the query to the site being visited, so the organic terms column is usually sparse. That's expected, not a tracking fault. Full queries need data from the search platform, under Search performance. Paid terms (UTM term) and on-site search terms are recorded in full.

Two ways of counting: first source vs every arrival

Channels and Referring sites can switch between:

  • First source of the session (default) — one visit, one source: the one it started with.
  • Every arrival — also counts arrivals from another external site in the middle of a session.

An example: a visitor types your address, then a few minutes later clicks through from a LinkedIn post. By default the second arrival starts a new session, so you see one direct visit and one social visit. To see how many arrivals each source actually produced, switch to the second method.

That's why rows can add up to more than total visitors: the same person may arrive from two sources and be counted once in each row.

Changing how traffic is classified

Add a rule under the channel rules in Configuration › Website settings. Rules apply to new data; to apply them to history as well, start a recalculation from the same page.

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