[UA] About MCF Channels (and the MCF Channel Grouping)

Learn about the channels used in the Multi-Channel Funnels reports.

In the Multi-Channel Funnels reports, channels are your sources of traffic. The MCF Channel Grouping is the default set of labels, with each label applied to a channel or group of channels that you want to see in your reports.

In this article:

MCF channel definitions

The following channel labels are defined as part of the MCF Channel Grouping and are the labels used by default in your reports. The channel definitions are not case sensitive.

Channel Description
Display Interactions with a medium of "display" or "cpm". Also includes Google Ads interactions with ad distribution network set to "Content"
Paid Search Traffic from the Google Ads Search Network or other search engines, with a medium of "cpc" or "ppc" 
Other Advertising Sessions that are tagged with a medium of "cpc", "ppc", "cpm", "cpv", "cpa", "cpp", "affiliate" (excluding Paid Search)
Organic Search Traffic from unpaid search on any search engine (i.e., medium="organic")
Social Network Traffic from any of approximately 400 social networks (that are not tagged as ads)
Referral Traffic from websites that are not social networks
Email Sessions that are tagged with a medium of "email"
Direct Sessions in which the user typed the name of your website URL into the browser or came to your site via a bookmark (i.e., source="(direct)" and medium="(not set)" or "(none)")
(unavailable) or (other) Sessions that don't match any channel definition

 

Dimensions for Campaign Manager 360, Display & Video 360, and Search Ads 360 are not available for Default Channel Groupings. Those dimensions are, however, available for custom Channel Groupings that you create.

Choose how you want to see your data

In the Assisted Conversions and Top Conversion Paths reports, you can see your data organized according to the MCF Channel Grouping (the set of labels shown in the table above), your own custom channel grouping, or according to Source, Source/Medium, and other options. You do this by selecting a different primary dimension (above the report's table).

  • MCF Channel Grouping organizes channels according to the labels in the above table.
  • Selecting Channel Groupings allows you to define your own labels as part of a channel grouping.
  • Selecting Source, Source/Medium, Medium, or one of the options in the Other drop-down list organizes channels according to Source, Medium, Keyword (if applicable), and Campaign (if applicable). For example, a referral from example.com would show up in your reports as follows:
    • Source: example.com
    • Medium: referral
    • Source/Medium: example.com/referral

Related resources

To learn more about the MCF Channel Grouping and how to define your own labels, read Create and use MCF Channel Groupings.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
12650323560896465702
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true
true
true
69256
false
false