Distinguishing between Paid and Non-Paid traffic in Google Analytics is more of an art-form than a science. It's difficult to find online help or literature that adds insight into this issue, and that's the motivation behind this blog entry: I want to make things easier for you, and me.
There are a few tricks that make it easy to ensure that the inbound URLs you have tagged with Google Analytics tracking parameters actually contribute to your "Paid Traffic" segmentation.
In review, Google Analytics offers the following URL parameters that are termed to be for Campaign tracking. These provide extremely valuable insight to you when combing through inbound traffic to your website for meaningful traffic metrics. By default, Google Analytics does not differentiate between Paid and Non-Paid traffic sources. Campaign tagging is required to accomplish this but Google doesn't seem to document this very clearly.
Definitions of the utm parameters: [by AnalyticsPros]
- utm_medium = [Required] the how or channel or type of marketing, important to differentiate because behaviors tend to vary by type, i.e. banner visits behave very differently than email visitors usually
- utm_source = [Required] the place from whence it comes, i.e. website, email marketing list or distributor, partner, more...
- utm_campaign = [Required] name of marketing initiative
- utm_term = used for paid search. keywords for this ad, or another term to distinguish this traffic source by it's most basic atomic element.
- utm_content = identifier for the type of marketing/advertising creative, the message, the ad itself, etc... good to slice across other dimensions to see patterns that stand regardless of medium, source, campaign, more...
For a reference on Google campaign tagging click here. Google utm parameters can appear in any order in the URL after the "?" or "&".
Example URL with Google Analytics campaign tagging parameters:
www.site.com?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=newkeyword &utm_campaign=mycampaign&utm_content=adtext
The parameter "utm_medium" is used by Google Analytics to classify inbound traffic to your site as Paid or Non-Paid. No other parameter is taken into account in this determination. When Auto-tagging is turned ON in AdWords, URL tagging is replaced with the AdWords "gclid=xxxxxxx..." parameter. The parameter is read by GA in a handshake between GA and AdWords where a complex attribution to AdWords keywords and campaigns is accomplished, yielding cost and click data for Google. No other paid traffic partner but Google receives this treatment -- only with Google AdWords auto-tagging will your site receive cost data associated with normal campaign tagging traffic.
Here is a cheat sheet for campaign tagging to ensure that your incoming traffic is categories as Paid by Google Analytics.
The following values for utm_medium are supported and resolve as "Paid" in GA (as of this article's date):
cpc, ppc, cpa, cpv, cpp, cpm
Tip: make them lower case only, or they will NOT be included in "Paid" reports/segments.
The "cpm" value in utm_medium has a conditional quality to it's attribution as paid.
- It attributes if the Paid segment is selected.
- It does not attribute in a custom report showing Paid traffic.
Screen grab of Paid Segment testing in GA:
Update: if utm_medium = referral, then the tagged inbound URL will be listed as a Referral, not a Campaign visit.
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