What Is Channel Grouping?
Channel grouping is an essential feature of Google Analytics that allows marketers to organize and analyze the performance of their various traffic sources. It helps them see their data more meaningfully, as it groups traffic sources into categories based on predefined rules.
The data is represented in the Default Channel Grouping, a grouping of the most common traffic sources, such as Direct or Paid Search. However, marketers can also label their traffic in other ways, according to their specific needs and analysis requirements, with the help of Custom Channel Grouping.
Google Analytics allows users to create 50 new channel groupings per view, with 100 custom channel groupings. The customization enables marketers to fine-tune their analysis and gain a deeper understanding of the performance of their traffic sources.
There are four channel groupings available in Google Analytics:
- Default Channel Grouping
- Custom Channel Grouping
- Private Channel Grouping
- MCF Channel Grouping
Each group has its unique rules and characteristics and helps marketers optimize their marketing efforts.
Why Does Channel Grouping Matter?
Channel grouping offers various benefits to marketers and businesses. Some of the prominent ones include the following:
- Custom Channel Groupings: You can create custom channel groupings to get a more accurate representation of the performance of their marketing channels. The Default Channel Grouping only shows a few fields. Therefore, custom channel grouping makes it easier to understand the data and make informed decisions to optimize your marketing efforts by selecting which fields you want to see.
- Data Filtering: Channel grouping also makes it easier to find relevant data quickly. You can use filters to view specific data sets, such as organic search traffic, direct traffic, or paid search traffic, and better understand these channels’ performance. All the filters are available on the dashboard.
- Segmented Categories: Marketers can analyze better-segmented categories, such as different types of social media traffic, email marketing traffic, or paid search traffic. It helps marketers get a detailed view of their data and understand how other channels contribute to overall success.
- Metrics by Source, Medium, and Campaign: For each visitor session, Google Analytics records the medium value, such as email or organic, and a more specific source value, such as linkedin.com or facebook.com. It also records the campaign name for click-throughs on inbound links configured with campaign parameters, such as links in email newsletters or short links in social media campaigns.
By viewing metrics by source, medium, and campaign, marketers can better understand the performance of different marketing channels and campaigns and make informed decisions to optimize their marketing efforts.
How Can Marketers Make the Most of Channel Grouping?
As mentioned earlier, Channel Grouping helps marketers understand their marketing channels’ performance and make data-driven decisions. It enables them to highlight or aggregate different traffic channels to see how they perform straightforwardly.
You can also create quality acquisition reports customized to highlight specific data sets, such as organic search traffic, direct traffic, or paid search traffic, that’ll help you as a marketer understand the impact of different channels.
With the help of medium, source, and campaign values, marketers can better understand their campaigns’ performances and see which campaigns drive the most traffic, conversions, and revenue.