Channel grouping

Channel grouping lives in the Marketing area of the dashboard, under Acquisition.

At a glance#

What it does#

Channel grouping is the editor for how sessions get classified into marketing channels. Rules are ordered and first-match-wins, each matching on a session's acquisition signals — referrer host and UTM parameters — and assigning a channel name.

GA4's default groupings seed the list, and you can add, reorder and rename rules. Saving replaces the whole set, and the change reshapes both future classification and history, because the backend re-classifies.

When to use it#

Once, deliberately, early — and then only when your channel mix genuinely changes.

This page defines the vocabulary every other acquisition report uses. Channels, Traffic sources and the landing-page acquisition breakdown all read the classification produced here. Getting it right is upstream of all of them.

Workflow#

1. 1

   Start from the GA4 defaults

   They are a reasonable, widely-understood baseline, and matching a convention people already know is worth more than a perfect bespoke taxonomy.

2. 2

   Order from most specific to most general

   First match wins, so a broad rule placed early swallows everything after it. This is the one mistake that makes the whole classification useless.

3. 3

   Add rules for your own channels

   A partnership, a newsletter, a community — anything that does not fit a default and that you want to see separately.

4. 4

   Leave a catch-all last

   Unmatched sessions need a home. Without one you get an "other" bucket you cannot reason about.

Permissions and prerequisites#

Web apps only. Requires the web attribution lane — referrer, UTM and landing data — which the web SDK feeds automatically.

Limits and edge cases#

• Saving replaces the entire set. This is not an incremental edit; the rules you submit become the whole list.

• First-match-wins is unforgiving about order. Reordering changes the output as much as rewriting a rule.

• Rules match referrer host and UTM only. They cannot classify on anything else.

• Untagged traffic with no referrer cannot be classified beyond direct.

Troubleshooting#

Everything landed in one channel. A broad rule is too early in the order. Move it down.

A channel disappeared after editing. Its rule was removed, or an earlier rule now matches its traffic first.

Classification looks wrong for one source. Check which rule matches it first — the one you expect may be later in the order.

Where the data comes from#

Rules are ordered and first-match-wins. Saving replaces the whole set and re-classifies history, so past reports change too.

Served by

• Dashboard

Related#

• Channels

• Traffic sources

• Campaigns

• Automations

• Journeys

• Landing & exit pages

• Marketing overview