Default Channel Grouping
Channel groupings are rule-based definitions of your website’s traffic sources that support advertising intelligence and let you monitor the performance of all the channels sending traffic to your website. When you navigate to the Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report, you’ll see that the data is organized by the Session default channel grouping dimension.
Click on the letter to view terms beginning with that alphabet.
Click on the letter to view terms beginning with that alphabet.
Default Channel Definitions
These definitions reflect Analytics’ current view of what constitutes each channel. The following definitions are provided for your reference and may evolve as the market changes. Channel definitions are no longer case sensitive in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and can’t be edited. (In Universal Analytics, channel definitions have always been case sensitives, meaning paid_social and Paid_Social should both be defined if you are not sure which one you will be using.)
Channels For Google Ads Traffic
Paid Search
Traffic is Google Ads AND
Google Ads ad network type is one of (“Google Search”, “Google Partners”)
Paid Video
Traffic is Google Ads AND
Google Ads ad network type is one of (“YouTube Search”, “YouTube Videos”)
Paid Social
Traffic is Google Ads AND
Google Ads ad network type is one of (“Social”)
Cross-Network
Traffic is Google Ads AND
Google Ads ad network type is one of (“Cross-network”)
Display
Traffic is Google Ads AND
Google Ads ad network type is one of (“Google Display Network”)
Channels For Display and Video 360 Traffic
Display
Traffic is DV360 AND
DV360 creative format is one of (“Standard”, “Expandable”, “Native site
square”, “Backdrop”, “Templated app install interstitial”, “Deprecated”, “Native
app install”, “Native app install square”, “Native site”, “Templated app install”,
“Lightbox”)
Paid Video
Traffic is DV360 AND
DV360 creative format is one of (“Native video”, “Video”, “Templated app
install video”, “Flipbook”)
Audio
Traffic is DV360 AND
DV360 creative format is one of (“Audio”)
Paid Other
Traffic is DV360 AND
DV360 creative format is one of (“Publisher hosted”, “Tracking”, “Unknown”)
Channels For Search Ads 360 Traffic
The following are channels for non-Google Ads traffic; the channels for Google Ads traffic are the same as those listed at the beginning of this table under “Channels for Google Ads traffic”)
Paid Social
SA360 engine account type is one of (“bing”, “yahoo gemini”, “yahoo.jp”,
“baidu”, “admarketplace”, “naver”, “360.cn”, “yandex”)
Banner Ads
A form of display advertising. Banner ads are image ads embedded onto a web page. The ads can be static, or animated, and redirect to an external site when clicked
Channels For Manual Traffic
Direct
Source exactly matches direct AND
Medium is one of (“(not set)”, “(none)”)
Cross-network
Campaign Name contains “cross-network”
Paid Shopping
(Source matches a list of shopping sites OR
Campaign Name matches regex ^(.(([^a-df-z]|^)shop|shopping).)$) AND
Medium matches regex ^(.cp.|ppc|paid.*)$
Paid Search
Source matches a list of search sites AND
Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|paid.*)$
Paid Social
Source matches a list of social sites AND
Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|paid.*)$
Paid Video
Medium is one of (“display”, “banner”, “expandable”, “interstitial”, “cpm”)
Display
Source matches a list of video sites AND
Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|paid.*)$
Organic Shopping
Source matches a list of shopping sites OR
Campaign name matches regex ^(.*(([^a-df-z]|^)shop|shopping).*)$
Organic Social
Source matches a regex list of social sites OR
Medium is one of (“social”, “social-network”, “social-media”, “sm”, “social
network”, “social media”)
Organic Video
Source matches a list of video sites OR
Medium matches regex ^(.video.)$
Organic Search
Source matches a list of search sites OR
Medium exactly matches organic
Source = email|e-mail|e_mail|e mail OR
Medium = email|e-mail|e_mail|e mail
Affiliates
Medium = affiliate
Referral
Medium = referral
Audio
Medium exactly matches audio
SMS
Medium exactly matches sms
Mobile Push
Notifications
Medium ends with “push” OR
Medium contains “mobile” or “notification”
