Channels

Every session gets one channel, decided by its first pageview: Paid, Email, AI, Organic search, Social, Referral or Direct.

Rule order

The rules run in this order and the first match wins:

utm_medium (case-insensitive):
- cpc, ppc, paid, paidsearch, paid_social or paidsocial is Paid.
- email, newsletter or e-mail is Email.
Referrer host, when the visitor came from another site:
- A known AI host is AI.
- A known search host is Organic search.
- A known social host is Social.
- Any other host is Referral.
utm_source, or ref when utm_source is missing, when there is no referrer:
- A known AI source is AI, a known search source is Organic search, a known social source is Social.
- Any other value is Referral.
Any other utm_medium with no referrer and no source is Referral.
Everything else is Direct.

Referrers from your own domain and its subdomains are ignored, so moving between your pages never changes the channel.

Known hosts

A leading www. is ignored, and subdomains match: old.reddit.com matches reddit.com. Entries ending in a dot match any domain ending, so google. covers google.com and google.de.

Channel	Hosts
AI	`chatgpt.com`, `chat.openai.com`, `perplexity.ai`, `claude.ai`, `gemini.google.com`, `copilot.microsoft.com`, `chat.deepseek.com`
Organic search	`google.`, `bing.com`, `duckduckgo.com`, `search.yahoo.`, `yahoo.`, `ecosia.org`, `yandex.`, `baidu.com`, `search.brave.com`, `startpage.com`, `kagi.com`, `qwant.com`
Social	`t.co`, `x.com`, `twitter.com`, `facebook.com`, `instagram.com`, `linkedin.com`, `lnkd.in`, `reddit.com`, `news.ycombinator.com`, `youtube.com`, `youtu.be`, `threads.net`, `bsky.app`, `mastodon.social`, `pinterest.com`, `tiktok.com`, `producthunt.com`, `indiehackers.com`

AI is checked before search, so gemini.google.com is AI, not Organic search.

Known sources

These utm_source or ref values are matched exactly, lowercased:

Channel	Sources
AI	`chatgpt`, `openai`, `perplexity`, `claude`, `gemini`, `copilot`
Organic search	`google`, `bing`, `duckduckgo`, `yahoo`, `ecosia`, `brave`
Social	`twitter`, `x`, `facebook`, `fb`, `instagram`, `ig`, `linkedin`, `reddit`, `hackernews`, `hn`, `youtube`, `threads`, `bluesky`, `tiktok`, `producthunt`

Examples

Landing	Channel
`/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc` from google.com	Paid, medium wins over the referrer
`/?utm_medium=newsletter`	Email
From `news.ycombinator.com`	Social
From `chatgpt.com`	AI
`/?ref=producthunt` with no referrer	Social
From `someblog.dev`	Referral
Typed URL or bookmark	Direct

Referrer names

In breakdowns, aliases share one row: t.co and twitter.com show as x.com, lnkd.in as linkedin.com, chat.openai.com as chatgpt.com, and every Google country domain as google.com.

Custom channel rules are Not available yet.

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