CODEWITHSUNDEEP
webgoogle-analytics
emanuele
emanuele

Reputation: 2589

How tracking of the web traffic source works?

May be a stupid question, but I can't find any answer to this question on the web. In Google analytics it is possible to check the origin a connection to our website. My question, how Google can track the origin of those connections?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 362

Answers (1)

Eike Pierstorff
Eike Pierstorff

Reputation: 32780

If there is info in document.referer (for the javascript tracker, with the measurement protocol you'd have to pass a referer as parameter) Google identifies the source as referrer, unless it is configured (in the defaults or per custom settings) as a search engine (which is really just a referrer with a known search parameter). Also via the settings you can exclude urls from the referrer reports so they will appear as direct traffic.

If there are campaign parameters Google uses those (or else a Google click id (gclid) from autotagging in adwords, which serves a similar purpose). If campaign parameters or gclid are stripped out (e.g. by redirects) adwords ad clicks will be reported as organic search.

If there is no referrer and no campaign parameters/gclid (i.e. a direct type in or a bookmark) Google will identify the source as a direct hit, unless you have clicked an adwords ad before. In that case the aquisition report will report the source as CPC (click per cost) in the acquisition report (as Google puts it, they will use the last known marketing channel as source. Direct is not a marketing channel according to Google). However the multichannel reports will identify those more correctly as direct visits (which is why multichannel and acquisition reports usually do not quite match).

Upvotes: 1

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