Google Ads showing as Direct Traffic

[AdamBecker98]

Hi all,

Lots of similar posts to this, but I figured I'd give it a shot:

We’ve been reviewing our Original Source attribution in HubSpot and flagged some misattribution. Over the past six months, about 20% of our total new contacts have been labeled as Direct Traffic, but came through paid Google Ads, based on valid UTMs captured at the time of form submission. 

We investigated and think our UTM tagging and account setup/integration with our website is up to snuff. This leaves us with some possible reasons: cookie consent not accepted, return visitors, browser privacy settings, or delayed script loading (less likely) - the usuals.

Does this sound like a reasonable real-world rate of misattribution based on privacy factors alone or should we keep digging? If so, and since we have reliable utm_source values for most contacts, any advice on reporting based on UTM source rather than Original Source?

Thanks!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @AdamBecker98,

HubSpot sorts traffic as per this table: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/reports/understand-hubspots-traffic-sources-in-the-traffic-analytics-t...

Can you confirm your utms are set up accordingly?

Best regards

[AdamBecker98]

Hey Karsten!

Thanks for the reply and the link,

We double-checked our UTM structure against HubSpot’s guidelines and everything looks correct — utm_source=google, utm_medium is either cpc or paid_search, and utm_campaign and utm_term are consistently present. 

That being said, what do you think?