Traffic sources, UTM and ad click IDs

How a visit gets a channel

Open Web analyticsSources. The first table groups visits by channel type. The rule order is:

1. UTM parameters win. If the landing URL carries utm_medium=cpc or utm_medium=email, that decides the channel regardless of the referrer.
2. Ad click IDs. A URL with gclid, msclkid, wbraid, gbraid, yclid or bd_vid is paid search even without UTM.
3. Referring host. Search engines become organic search, social networks become social, AI products become AI assistant, everything else is referral.
4. Your own site. A hop from one of your registered hostnames is internal and never counts as acquisition.
5. Nothing. No referrer and no parameters is direct.

Rules you add under ConfigurationWeb settingsChannel rules are checked before the defaults. You can recompute history after changing them.

UTM parameters

The UTM tab splits into source, medium, campaign, term and content. Each row has visitors, sessions, pageviews, bounce rate and duration; the channel table also shows conversions from your goals.

Three naming rules keep reports readable:

• Lowercase everything. Newsletter and newsletter are two rows.
• Medium is the type, source is the place. utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter, utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google.
• Campaign names carry a date or a version. spring-sale-2026 is still readable next year.

Ad click IDs for 14 platforms

TapCub reads the click ID that ad platforms append to landing URLs — Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft Ads, X Ads, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit Ads and Yandex Direct globally, plus Ocean Engine, Baidu Marketing, Tencent Ads and Kuaishou in China. Nothing to configure.

They appear in a separate table as a type and a hash; the raw ID is never shown or exported. Click a row to filter other reports by that platform, which is the fastest way to see which pages and goals paid traffic actually reached. Channel ROI across platforms is in Marketing analytics.

Why search terms look thin

The search terms tab has three parts: organic terms, paid terms from utm_term, and on-site search terms. Organic terms only exist when the referrer carried the keyword, and modern browsers almost never pass it to a third-party site. That column being short is expected and is the same in every analytics tool.

For full organic queries, connect Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster under Web analyticsSEO; clicks, impressions, CTR and position then appear next to your pages.

Filter and share

Click any source, campaign or click-ID row to add it as a filter. Every other report narrows to the same visits, so "which pages did the spring newsletter land on" is two clicks. Filters are in the URL, which means a shared link opens the same view for a colleague. Saving the view as a report and scheduling it by email is covered in the developer docs.