Acquisition and Marketing Channels

Matomo helps you understand how visitors arrive at your website by tracking their acquisition sources and marketing channels. This includes identifying whether a visit came from a search engine, a social media platform, a paid campaign, a link on another website, or by typing your URL directly into the browser.

Understanding acquisition is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and optimising your channels. Matomo groups visits by Channel Type to give you a high-level view of traffic sources, and uses Referrer information to attribute visits and conversions to specific campaigns or sites. This page contains a collection of guides that explain how Acquisition reports work in Matomo:

  • Attribution logic and how Matomo tracks source information.
  • Search engine and keyword reporting.
  • Referrer websites and UTM-tagged campaign tracking.
  • Marketing channels such as paid search, social networks, and email.
  • Segmenting traffic based on acquisition data.
  • Common troubleshooting tips.
 

Getting started

How do I measure marketing campaigns performance? (emails, ads, paid search, social media) What is Campaign Tracking?

Attribution

What is the default attribution model used in Matomo? What does Multi Channel Conversion Attribution do? Which attribution models does the multi attribution feature support?Create a new visit when a user visits my website using a new campaign or a new website referrerEnable the Multi Channel Conversion Attribution for a goal or ecommerce orderWhen cookies are disabled by a visitor (cookieless tracking), how does it impact Matomo reports accuracy?Why are there sometimes 0 visits, but some conversions recorded, for example for a Keyword, a Website or a Custom Dimension?Matomo attributes conversions to the last seen referrer by default. How do I credit conversions to the first referrer instead?

Referrers

What are Referrers?Create a new visit when a user visits my website using a new campaign or a new website referrerAdd a referral exclusion in MatomoWhat does « Keyword not defined » mean in the Referers > Search Engines keywords report?Matomo attributes conversions to the last seen referrer by default. How do I credit conversions to the first referrer instead?Referrer links are not showing in the Acquisition Websites; Direct Entry is too highVisits from search engines or campaigns are not recorded, Matomo shows « There is no data for this report » for all Referrers reports.

Search Engines

Does Matomo track search engine bots or other spider / robots? Where are my search keywords displayed?View my SEO search rankings evolution over timeWhat are the metrics available for each Search keyword?

Social Networks

Track user acquisition and social media activity with Matomo

Campaigns

What is Campaign Tracking? Build campaign tracking URLs Common Campaign Tracking Use Cases and ExamplesDisadvantages of Campaign Tracking URLsAnalyse marketing campaign reportsAdvanced: How to Manually Build Campaign Tracking URLs URL Builder – Marketing Campaign TrackingCustomize the Matomo Campaign parameters pk_campaign and pk_kwdDoes Matomo support Google Analytics campaign parameters (utm_campaign, utm_medium, utm_source, utm_term)?Visits and clicks data provided by search engines, ad networks or affiliates do not match Acquisition reports in MatomoTrack Google Ads Campaigns with Matomo

Segments

How do I get the most popular landing pages viewed by visitors coming through a specific channel type? (direct, search, website, social or campaign)Create a segment using the Acquisition Date condition

How to

Create a simple affiliates system and track new customers and new revenue for each affiliate

Troubleshoot

Visits from search engines or campaigns are not recorded, Matomo shows « There is no data for this report » for all Referrers reports.Referrer links are not showing in the Acquisition Websites; Direct Entry is too highMissing campaign links in Campaign Reports

On-Premise FAQs

What is Search Engine Keywords Performance?Add the dimensions Campaign name, Campaign medium, Campaign source, Campaign keyword, Campaign content to a custom reportInstall the Marketing Campaigns Reporting plugin