Channel report

The channel report shows traffic channels that visitors use to reach your website. There are five channel types used in Analytics:

• Campaign: Visitors land on your site after clicking a link with added parameters: utm_*, pk_* , gclid or custom campaign parameters. Campaign traffic is a result of marketing campaigns like ads placed on other websites, email marketing, social media posts, search engine marketing (SEM). The success of the campaign can be measured by the number of visitors it drives to your site and the engagement and conversion rates of those visitors. See more about tagging campaigns.

  Channel definition: source = value from the campaign source (pk_source, utm_source or a custom parameter), medium = value from the campaign medium (pk_medium, utm_medium or a custom parameter).

• Direct entry: Visitors enter your site by directly typing its URL into their browser. This shows that they already know your site’s address, so the number of direct entries can be used as a measure of your brand awareness. When someone comes to your site through a direct entry, it’s a good sign that you’ve successfully made an impression on them and that they’re interested in what you have to offer.

  Channel definition: source = direct, medium = direct

• Search engine: Visitors come to your site after clicking a link in search engine like Google or Bing. Search engine traffic is a good way to gauge how visible your business is in search engines. Google is the most popular search engine, with a market share of over 90%. But there are many other search engines out there, like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo. We detect about 275 different search engines.

  Channel definition: source = detected search engine name, medium = organic

• Social: Visitors enter your site from social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Social media can drive lots of new traffic to your site. When people share links to your site on social platforms, it can increase visibility and attract new visitors. Social media platforms grow in numbers, and we currently recognize about 75 different ones.

  Channel definition: source = detected social network name, medium = referral

• Website: Visitors come to your site after clicking a link on another site. For example, if you place a link to your site on medium.com and someone clicks on it, the traffic from that link will be recorded as website traffic from medium.com. Website traffic indicates that your content resonates with users on other sites. If you see that a particular site is sending a lot of referral traffic your way, focus on promoting your content there to increase your traffic even more.

  Channel definition: source = referrer domain name, medium = referral

To view the report, follow these steps:

1. Go to Menu > Analytics.
2. Navigate to Reports.
3. On the left, click Channels.
4. View the report.
   

   

5. To access specific sections of the report, click the section name.
   

   

6. Also, whenever you see a nested dimension in the report, you can click the dimension to dig deeper into data.
   

   

7. If you want to see two dimensions in a single view, click + and choose a dimension.
   

   

Metrics in the report

In the channel report, you’ll find the following metrics:

• Visitors: The number of unique visitors. Every visitor is counted once, even if they visit the website many times during the day.
• Sessions: The number of sessions performed by visitors. A session starts with the first event and ends 30 minutes after the last event (after the session is over).
• Bounce rate: The percentage of sessions during which visitors viewed only one page and didn’t continue to another page view, goal conversion, or e-commerce conversion. Bounce rate = Bounces / Sessions * 100%
• Goal conversion rate: The percentage of sessions during which visitors completed a goal. Goal conversion rate = Sessions with a completed goal / Sessions * 100% (You need to set goals to collect this data.)
• Sum of goal revenue: The revenue counted for the goal. (You need to set goals to collect this data.)

You can apply segments to this report, export this report to a CSV, XML, JSON, or JSON (KV) file format, or customize the report.