Issues with Traffic Source Attribution from Instagram Linktree and LinkedIn

[MAmodei]

Hello,

I am experiencing issues with traffic source attribution from my Instagram Linktree and LinkedIn. For example, traffic coming from this link: https://linktr.ee/accountablehq is being incorrectly tagged as Direct Traffic instead of showing the original source.

I would like to understand the root cause of this issue. Is there a known problem with how Instagram or LinkedIn attribute traffic?

Specifically, why might traffic from these two sources be classified as direct traffic? For reference, here is a HubSpot article that attempts to explain this phenomenon, but it’s not entirely clear: Why Do I Have More Direct Traffic Than Expected?.

Interestingly, traffic from other sources, such as Reddit, is correctly tagged as Social.

I am currently using cookie tracking, as it’s challenging to add UTM parameters to all the links in my application.

Thank you for your support!

[Ben_M · Accepted solution]

Linktree has an article about adding utm parameters to the links. It looks to be pretty straightforward. https://linktr.ee/help/en/articles/5434179-how-to-add-utm-parameters . If I had to guess Hubspot is likely not recognizing the source and is not filtering it in its javascript so it ends up as direct traffic. I would also raise this as a support ticket so it gets in front of the Hubspot team for a potential fix (this is a user to user forum).