Acquisition Reports

Understand how visitors find your website.

Overview

Acquisition reports show you where your traffic comes from — search engines, social media, referral links, direct visits, and marketing campaigns. This is essential for understanding which channels drive results and where to invest your marketing efforts.

Navigate to Acquisition in the reporting menu. Its reports include Overview, All Channels, Search Engines & Keywords, Websites, Social Networks, Campaigns, and the Campaign URL Builder.

How Visits Get Classified

Each visit is assigned one channel, in priority order:

1. Campaigns — the URL carried UTM parameters, which override the referrer
2. Search Engines — the referrer matches a known search engine
3. Social Networks — the referrer matches a known social platform
4. Websites — any other referring site
5. Direct Entry — no referrer was recorded at all

The referrer is captured at the start of the visit, and arriving with new campaign parameters starts a new visit.

All Channels

Location: Acquisition → All Channels

A breakdown of traffic across the five channel types, expandable into the detail underneath each.

Note that Direct Entry isn’t only typed URLs and bookmarks — links opened from email clients, PDFs, desktop and mobile apps, and other untrackable sources arrive without a referrer too. For healthcare organizations that email patients heavily, tag those links with campaign parameters or they’ll all appear as direct.

Using This Report

• Compare channels — Which sources drive the most traffic?
• Track trends — Are search referrals growing or declining?
• Measure mix — A healthy site typically has diverse traffic sources
• Identify opportunities — Underperforming channels may need attention

Search Engines

Location: Acquisition → Search Engines & Keywords

Traffic from organic search results, broken down by engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and many others).

Keywords

Important Note: Search engines strip search terms from referrer data for privacy reasons, so most organic visits appear as “Keyword not defined.” This is normal and affects every analytics tool.

The fix is the Search Keywords Performance feature, which imports your real keyword data (clicks, impressions, CTR, position) directly from Google Search Console — and Bing/Yahoo and Yandex — into these reports. Note that imported keywords are aggregate: they enrich keyword reports but can’t be tied to individual visits or conversions.

Search Insights

Even without keyword-level data, search reports help you:

• Track organic search traffic trends
• See which search engines matter for your site
• Compare organic search to other channels

Websites (Referrals)

Location: Acquisition → Websites

Other websites that link to you and send traffic — expandable from the referring domain down to the specific referring pages.

Why Referrals Matter

• Partnership value — See which partners send traffic
• Link opportunities — Identify sites that might link to you
• Reputation monitoring — See who’s talking about you
• Spam detection — Identify suspicious referral sources

Analyzing Referrals

Look beyond just traffic volume:

• Which referrers have low bounce rates?
• Which referrers drive goal conversions?
• Are there surprising referral sources?

Social Networks

Location: Acquisition → Social Networks

Traffic from social media platforms, recognized automatically: Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and many others.

Social Insights

• Which platforms drive meaningful traffic?
• Is social traffic growing or declining?
• Do social visitors engage with your content?
• Which platforms drive conversions?

Campaigns

Location: Acquisition → Campaigns

Traffic from marketing links tagged with campaign parameters.

Campaign Reports

Tables per tagged dimension:

• Campaign names — expandable to keywords
• Sources, Mediums, and combined Source ⋅ Medium
• Content and Campaign IDs (when tagged)

Use the built-in Campaign URL Builder (in the Acquisition menu) to generate consistently tagged URLs.

Campaign Metrics

For each campaign, see visits, bounce rate, average visit duration, goal conversions, and revenue (if configured).

Measuring Campaign Success

Don’t just look at traffic. A campaign’s success should be measured by:

1. Volume — Did it drive significant traffic?
2. Quality — Did visitors engage (low bounce rate, multiple pages)?
3. Conversions — Did visitors complete goals?
4. Efficiency — Cost per conversion (compare to campaign spend)

Source and Medium

Understanding the difference:

Source

Where the traffic originated: google, facebook, newsletter, partner_site

Medium

How the traffic arrived: organic, cpc, referral, email, social

Common Source/Medium Combinations

Attribution

When a visitor completes a goal, the conversion is credited to a traffic source.

Last Non-Direct Attribution

By default, credit goes to the last non-direct referrer or campaign — remembered for up to 6 months:

1. Visitor clicks a campaign link → lands on your site → leaves
2. Days later, the visitor returns by typing your URL directly → completes a goal
3. The conversion is attributed to the campaign — the direct return visit doesn’t steal the credit

If the later visit had instead come from organic search, organic search (the most recent non-direct source) would get the credit.

Beyond Last-Click

Single-touch attribution undervalues the channels that start journeys. Use Multi Channel Attribution to compare six attribution models — first interaction, linear, position based, time decay, and more — across the full path to conversion.

Comparing Traffic Sources

To compare source performance:

1. Navigate to Acquisition → All Channels
2. Sort the tables by different metrics (visits, bounce rate, conversions)
3. Apply segments to compare specific audiences
4. Export data for deeper analysis

Quality vs Quantity

High traffic isn’t always good. Compare:

Google Ads drives fewer visitors but better quality (lower bounce, more conversions).

Exporting Acquisition Data

All acquisition reports can be exported:

1. Navigate to the report
2. Click the export icon
3. Choose your format (CSV, TSV, XML, JSON, HTML)
4. Download

For recurring marketing reports, set up scheduled email reports under Administration → Personal → Email Reports.

Next Steps

• Campaign tracking — Tag your marketing campaigns
• Multi Channel Attribution — Credit the whole journey
• Goals — Measure conversions by source
• Custom reports — Build acquisition dashboards