UTM tracking without applying data correctly can be a mess and create an unbalanced picture. Our team at Exactvisitor has been interviewing a long list of customers before we defined the new update to UTM tracking and this really has a foundation in providing you with actionable insights and data that is unparalleled in the market. The Demand datagraph from ExactVisitor is the strongest and largest data graph in the market with it comes to adding extra data layers to visitors.
Here is how ExactVisitor set the traffic source so you have clear clarification on your traffic this can be applies to alerts as well.
| Order | Rule | Source |
| 1 | The referring domain is considered internal traffic based on your installed tracking pages. | None |
| 2 | The “utm_medium” parameter is “social” and the “utm_source” is exactly the name of a recognized social network. OR The “utm_medium” parameter is “social” and the referring domain is a social media site. | Organic Social |
| 3 | The “utm_source”, “utm_medium”, “utm_campaign”, or “source” parameter contains the word “email”. | Email Marketing |
| 4 | The “utm_medium” parameter contains “paid,” “ppc,” or “cpc”, and the “utm_source” parameter is exactly the name of a recognized social network. OR The “utm_medium” parameter contains “paid,” “ppc,” or “cpc”, and the referring domain is a social media site. OR The “utm_source” or “utm_medium” contains “paidsocial”. | Paid Social |
| 5 | The “utm_source”, “utm_medium”, “utm_campaign, or “source” parameter contains the word “adword”, “ppc”, or “cpc”. | Paid Search |
| 6 | The “gclid” parameter is present, as it is the Google click ID. | Paid Search |
| 7 | The “utm_source”, “utm_medium”, or “utm_campaign” parameter is present and the referring domain is google.com. | Paid Search |
| 8 | The “utm_source”, “utm_medium”, “utm_campaign”, or “source” is present and does not contain the words “email”, “adword”, “ppc”, or “cpc” | Other Campaigns |
| 9 | Referring domain is a social media site. | Organic social |
| 10 | Referring domain is a search engine. | Organic Search |
| 11 | Referring domain is not a social media site or search engine. | Referral |
| 12 | Referring domain is a mail domain or RSS reader. | Direct traffic |
| 13 | No referring domain or tracking URL. | Direct traffic |
Organic Search
Traffic categorized under Organic Search comes from non-paid search results in known search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Duckgogo and Yahoo.
Referrals
Traffic categorized under Referrals comes from external sites that link to your website can be Quora, a blog article from a thirdparty, review site etc.
Organic social
Traffic categorized under Organic social comes from social media websites or apps. A great example is when a visitor shares your content or website on their social media account, and their followers visit your content.
- ExactVisitor recognizes the following social media networks:
- BlogCatalog
- CoTweet
- Delicious
- Digg
- Facebook (Exactvisitor will also recognize “fb”)
- Fark
- Flickr
- FriendFeed
- Google+
- HackerNews
- HootSuite
- Instagram (Exactvisitor will also recognize “ig”)
- Knol
- LiveJournal
- Meebo
- Metacafe
- Mixx
- MyBlogLog
- MySpace
- Ning
- Orkut
- Plurk
- Propeller
- Quora
- Seesmic
- Slashdot
- Slide
- SlideShare
- Sphinn
- StumbleUpon
- Squidoo
- Technorati
- TikTok
- Tip’d
- Triiibes
- Tumblr
- Vimeo
- Wikipedia
- YouTube
- Zhihu
Email marketing
Traffic categorized under Email marketing comes from emails that used the “utm_campaign” parameter in the URL the visitor used to arrive at your site.
- It is important to apply a UTM in the URL so The “utm_source”, “utm_medium”, “utm_campaign”, or “source” parameter contains the word “email”.
Paid search
Traffic categorized under Paid search comes from paid search campaigns (e.g., Google AdWords, Facebook or LinkedIn ads).
Paid social
Traffic categorized under Paid social comes from a paid social campaign.
- ExactVisitor recognizes the following social media networks:
- BlogCatalog
- CoTweet
- Delicious
- Digg
- Fark
- Flickr
- FriendFeed
- Google+
- HackerNews
- HootSuite
- Knol
- LiveJournal
- Meebo
- Metacafe
- Mixx
- MyBlogLog
- MySpace
- Ning
- Orkut
- Plurk
- Propeller
- Quora
- Seesmic
- Slashdot
- Slide
- SlideShare
- Sphinn
- StumbleUpon
- Squidoo
- Technorati
- Tip’d
- Triiibes
- Tumblr
- Vimeo
- Wikipedia
- YouTube
Direct traffic
Traffic categorized under Direct traffic do not have an indication of their source. Typically, these are people who typed the URL directly in their browser, or removed all query parameters before entering a site.
Other campaigns
Traffic categorized under Other campaigns for UTM parameters marked as so.