Networks

The screen

Networks is the first screen under Sources in the rail, ahead of Campaigns: every campaign runs on exactly one platform, so a network is the level above a campaign. The title is the site's name. The header carries the stamp of when the page last read, a button to read again, and the period control (see Time periods). Top to bottom: four figures, then the table.

The figures

Four figures stand above the table, value over label.

A paid click belongs to exactly one network, so the three funnel figures are the sums of the table's rows and Paid clicks is the number the Share column divides by. What makes a conversion primary or secondary is yours to declare through the tracking API; the Conversions screen reads the same tiers.

Paid networks

The table is titled Paid networks: Every network observed, ranked by clicks — open one to read its clicks in the monitor. Highest first. A zero is drawn faint: an observation that did not happen, not a grade.

Share and Engaged % divide by different things, and each header says which. A network that engages twice as often may simply be the one you bid on brand terms with; the screen reports the proportion and nothing more. Share and Engaged % leave the table first when the screen narrows; on a phone each row becomes a card.

Hovering a row shows an arrow at its right edge; clicking the row, or the network's name, opens that network in the Overview (see the lens a row opens). Rows are named by the platform: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, ChatGPT Ads, or Other Paid. Some platforms carry a brand mark on their tile; the others show the label's first letter.

Below the table, a footnote states how a network is recognized — Networks are recognized from a click id (gclid, fbclid, ttclid, msclkid) or from utm_medium/utm_source; traffic matching neither is organic or direct. — and the two bases Share and Engaged % divide by. When the trend is shown, it names the bar width the sparklines are drawn at.

When the window holds no paid click, the panel says No paid networks observed in this period. and what would fill it: a network appears as soon as one of its clicks arrives carrying that platform's click id, or UTM tags declaring it paid.

The trend

Each row's sparkline is that network's paid clicks per bar across the whole window. The bar width is the finest that keeps a row at 24 bars or fewer — hourly for a one-day window, 12-hour bars for the default seven days, daily from a month up — and the footnote names it, for instance Trend: 12-hour clicks, each row scaled to its own peak. Every row carries the same bars; a bar with no click is a hairline tick, not a gap. Hovering a sparkline shows the network, its paid clicks and the bar width.

Bars are scaled to their own row's peak, so a network with a tenth of the volume still shows its shape. Only shapes are comparable between rows; the Paid clicks column is where magnitude is compared. Every bar is the same ink whichever way the shape goes: no bar is darker for being taller.

Network resolution

A session's network is read from its first page view, from the parameters found on the URL the browser landed with. A click id is read first; a UTM pair is read only when no click id is present.

1. Click ids. The first of these present on the landing names the network, whatever the UTM tags say. A click id shows the platform, not that an ad was bought: Meta appends fbclid to organic outbound links too, so a link shared on Facebook or Instagram reads as Meta.

2. The medium. With no click id, utm_medium decides whether the session is paid at all. Compared lowercased, the built-in list is cpc, ppc, paid, paidsearch, paid_search, paidsocial, paid_social, sponsored, display and affiliate. A medium rule set on the UTM tags screen applies before this list and can make a medium paid or not paid.

3. The source. Under a paid medium, utm_source names the platform. A source rule set for the site applies before the built-in values.

4. Other Paid. A paid medium whose source names no platform above is kept as Other Paid: the traffic is paid, it just cannot be attributed to a platform. It is ranked like any other row.

A session matching none of this is organic or direct, not a paid click, and does not appear on this screen. A rule on the UTM tags screen can move a session between networks or make it paid, but it never outranks a click id. How to tag links so they read as intended is on Tag your ad links.

The lens a row opens

Opening a row goes to the Overview with that network as its lens, over the same period. There, the network's name is printed under the site's title, and the funnel, the curve and the live feed are scoped to that platform's paid clicks.

The Overview's breadcrumb carries a network switcher. Its first row is All networks, with every paid click of the window; the rows under it are the same networks as this table, each with its paid clicks. Any pick drops the campaign lens and any open record with it.

The window and the plan

The period control offers Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days, Last 30 days and This month, plus a custom range; the period is in the address of the page, so the window is shareable. This screen reads one window and has no comparison with a previous period.

A plan governs how far back the window can reach, not how long the data is kept: Free reads back seven days, and the paid plans widen the window (Plans and billing). When a month runs past the plan's event allowance, a band above the screen says so; on Free the numbers stop at that moment, and the events after it are kept and appear whole when the plan changes. On a paid plan nothing is withheld: the overflow is billed.

Nothing else on this screen is withheld by plan.

What this screen does not do

• It does not grade a platform. There is no Clean, Watch or Quiet. What fills that place is arithmetic: the share, and the shape of the row's own trend. Ranking is not grading.
• It is a list, not a dashboard. No panel chart and no column picker. The sparkline is a mark inside a cell.
• It has no network filter of its own. The table is the networks; the Campaigns screen makes the same choice for a campaign.
• It reads one window at a time. The Overview carries the previous-period comparison.
• The trend says what happened, never whether it was good. Bars never change color with direction or height.