Traffic attribution is just a matter of looking at your collected campaign data from different perspectives. You may be interested to know how effective your campaigns are in driving repeated visits to your site, in which case you might be interested in looking at which campaign triggered the original visit. Perhaps you simply wish to know which campaigns are the most effective at sending traffic your site right now. Or, perhaps your needs are a combination of the two. Looking at how your traffic is attributed will answer many questions regarding your marketing strategy.

Traffic attribution types are available with filters involving sources that generated traffic for your web site (e.g., campaigns, referring URLs, traffic sources, etc.). To use them, you need to click on the Show Filters button and select a filter with the attribution type you are interested in.

Figure 1: Filter with Traffic Attribution Type

Filters with traffic attribution types for provide you with a more accurate picture of how visitors return to your site. If you filter your reports using traffic attribution types, you can answer questions such as: Do visitors remember your web site after first reaching it via a paid search campaign? Do they bookmark your web site and thus incur no additional costs for you with their subsequent visits? Or, do they access your web site via another campaign and thus add to your costs? The answer to these questions will help you determine the actual cost of acquiring a returning visitor.

For each filter with Traffic Attribution options, you can find a short explanation by clicking on the “i” icon.

Figure 2: Help Text for Filter with Traffic Attribution Type