I’ve got a lot empty fields in events collected by JS tracker. The most critical fields - utm label, they are empty even there is a utm label in URL as get parameter. So currently I have no record with filled utm fields and it is confusing me. How it collected by trackers? What can be wrong?
Hi @sphinks,
You’ll need to set up the campaign attribution enrichment, and configure the utm parameters you’re using (if they’re not the standard ones).
Hi @Colm,
thanks! It helps, but what is about referer utms? It is still empty. Should I add setting to same enrichment module to parse ref_* fields in the same way? Or there is another enricher?
@sphinks, the utm_ properties (if present in URL query string) only work with page_url, not page_referrer (referer URL). It doesn’t make much sense to have referer URL examined. You would be interested in the marketing campaign stats whereby some links from an ad (ad network) would have a link to your resource (web page) with the relevant utm_ properties describing the campaign added to that link. The referer URL would be your own website after the initial pageview event (with those utm_ properties). You can always follow the user journey from his/her initial landing to your web page (where utm_ are captured) navigating around your own website.
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@ihor what is the reason to have field for referrer utm labels in events and not have it filled? I suppose those fields should be somehow filled to make it easier create reports of source. I’m using DBT tool, there is existing Snowplow model and prepared dashboard for looker with traffic source. That dashboard is based on referrer utm labels, but as I see there in no single event that comes from to database with filled referrer utm label. So that is my question are coming from.
The referer terms are a little confusingly named. They don’t reference the traditional utm_* equivalents and instead reference values generated by the referer parser enrichment.
These values are:
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
refr_medium |
Type of referer (ex. ‘search’, ‘internal’) |
refr_source |
Name of referer if recognised |
refr_term |
Keywords if source is a search engine |
Rather than the utm_medium, utm_source and utm_term of the referring URL. It’s still possible to retrieve the referring utm_* values but you’d need to parse the contents of the full referring URL in the page_referrer column.
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Good explanations both. In case the high level isn’t clear - with the referrer, you’re interested in the absolute source of the user - who came from search, a partner website, email click through etc.?
With marketing attribution/utm parameters you’re interested in how your advertising is performing specifically - which campaigns are attracting more users, which lead to most revenue etc.?
Hope that’s helpful.