Here, we’ll explain how to properly set up your sources on Google Analytics.
But first, here’s how they work ↓
How “sources” and “channels” work in Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the machine that receives data from your website(s). This data includes the origin of your visitors, known as “Source”.
To group these “sources”, there are the “channels” created automatically by Google, which are:
- “Organic”
- “Direct” which is displayed as “(none)” in Google Analytics
- “social”
- “referral”
- “Email”
- “cpc”
- etc.
So you could find several different sources in “Organic”, i.e. several different search engine names. Example:
- Baidu
- Ecosia
- etc.
For the “Direct” channel, there’s only one source: traffic that enters the site URL directly into the “https” bar. Often these visitors have bookmarked the site in question.
For the following channels, on the other hand, a large number of sources are likely to be associated with them. For this reason, it’s best to associate certain traffic sources with the right channels. This is made possible by UTMs. What are UTMs? And how are they used? ⬇️
Why set up your Google Analytics sources?
It just so happens that you may be receiving traffic to your site from several referral sites. But you don’t want to lose track of them. That’s what UTM parameterization is for.
This solution integrates UTMs (=Urchin Tracking Modules) into a URL 🧑💻 using this Google site: Campaign URL Builder
Here a simple URL:
https://www.domainname.com Here an URL with UTM:
https://www.domainname.com?utm_source=Linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Service1 This URL contains 3 UTMs:
- Source: the name of the traffic source
- Medium: the channel you wish to associate with the source
- Then the “Campaign”: the detail you wish to add to differentiate a specific timeframe, event, etc.
There are many more, but these are the most commonly used.
When should I include UTMs in my URLs?
Traffic from social networks often goes into the “referral” channel instead of the “social” channel. It’s therefore preferable to add UTMs for each of your URLs posted on your social networks.
This would allow you to group together all your visitors coming from social networks.
Example:
- Source: Linkedin or Twitter or Instagram, etc.
- Medium: social (not capitalized* to match Google’s spelling)
- Campaign: Video/Infographics/Ads for example, to differentiate all traffic coming from your Linkedin posts. And if you wish, a + indication, such as seasonality, or the name of an advertising campaign on Meta Ads.
You carry out several marketing actions with your partners, including Newsletters, Landing Pages or posts on your social networks.
- In the case of a Newsletter with a partner, here’s what you could set as the UTM:
- Source: Newsletter
- Medium: Email
- Campaign: Name of your partner (for example)
- In the case of a Landing Page created by your partner and talking about an offer common to both your companies, we recommend the following:
- Source: Name of your partner
- Medium: referral
- Campaign: LP_OfferX → LP being the acronym for Landing Page
- In the case of a post on your respective social networks:
- Source: Linkedin
- Medium: social
- Campaign: Name of your partner
You run an e-mailing campaign from your Marketing Automation tool:
- Source: Emailing or Newsletter if you’re running one.
- Medium: Email
- Campaign: Offer_X → where you put the subject of your e-mail
- Campaign content: image → this UTM allows you to add even more detail, and here you can add whether it’s the link on the image or on the text, etc.
You’re running a Google Ads campaign.
If you link your Google Ads accounts with Analytics, then you won’t need to add any UTMs to your paid ad URLs.
These will look like this:
- Source: Google
- Medium: for “cost per click”, because ultimately the metric we look at most often on Google Ads is the cost per click of our ads.
However, if you want to go into more detail about your ads, you can always add the “Campaign” UTM.
Lire aussi :
Qu’est-ce qu’une Landing Page ? A quoi sert-elle ? Comment bien l’agencer ?
