I'm troubleshooting a Marketing Channels issue in Adobe Analytics.My Paid Search rule is:IF ANY Query String Parameter utm_medium contains cpc Query String Parameter utm_source contains google or bing THEN Paid SearchMy Referral rule is:IF ALL Referring Domain is not empty Tracking Code does not contain cpc or paid social THEN ReferralI'm finding hundreds of First Time Visits classified as Referral where: Referrer = google.com Campaign UTM Medium = cpc Campaign UTM Source = google All of our paid search traffic comes from Google/Bing and uses valid UTM parameters (utm_source=google, utm_medium=cpc).When I break down these Referral visits, most are associated with Google CPC campaigns and paid search landing pages.Given the Paid Search rule above, I would expect these visits to be classified as Paid Search, not Referral.Has anyone seen Google CPC first-time visits fall into Referral despite matching Paid Search criteria?

B

BryceR22

Level 2

Solved

Google CPC first-time visits are being classified as Referral

Forum|Forum|13 days ago
June 8, 2026
5 replies
170 views

I'm troubleshooting a Marketing Channels issue in Adobe Analytics.

My Paid Search rule is:

IF ANY

Query String Parameter utm_medium contains cpc
Query String Parameter utm_source contains google or bing

THEN Paid Search

My Referral rule is:

IF ALL

Referring Domain is not empty
Tracking Code does not contain cpc or paid social

THEN Referral

I'm finding hundreds of First Time Visits classified as Referral where:

Referrer = google.com
Campaign UTM Medium = cpc
Campaign UTM Source = google

All of our paid search traffic comes from Google/Bing and uses valid UTM parameters (utm_source=google, utm_medium=cpc).

When I break down these Referral visits, most are associated with Google CPC campaigns and paid search landing pages.

Given the Paid Search rule above, I would expect these visits to be classified as Paid Search, not Referral.

Has anyone seen Google CPC first-time visits fall into Referral despite matching Paid Search criteria?

Best answer by Jennifer_Dungan

I agree with @MandyGeorge check the order… but the next thing, is what metric are you looking at? Are you sure you aren’t just seeing the result of cross-channel attribution?

A common mistake that people make when troubleshooting Marketing Channels is forgetting that there can be multiple channels within the same visit.

First, please look at the metric “Marketing Channel Instances” against your Channel breakdowns and see if you still have as many Google CPC hits as you believe.

Also, when was the last time you updated your rules and what retention period are you using (default is 30 days). It’s possible if you made recent changes, you might be seeing traffic that was mis-associated before your recent change and you either need to wait 30 days for that data to clear, or you need to force a reset of your channels so that you start with clean data from “point X”

Could you share some screenshots of your rules? There may be something strange there that wasn’t included in your description of your rules, but it might be impacting what’s happening? I would expect Adobe should trim whitespace on the rules, but to be safe, make sure there are no extra spaces in your Paid Search rules (just in case). I believe that Marketing Channel Rules should not be case sensitive, but that could be something to check as well?

Do you have a QA or Dev suite? Can you set up the rules there and test in isolation?

Good Luck, and hoping to hear more details.

MandyGeorge

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

First thing to check is the order of your rules. Which rule comes first in your marketing channel rules? Hits are checked against the first rule (rule #1), if they match, they’re assigned, if not, it moves onto rule #2, and so on.

So this means that if your referral rule is listed before your paid search rule, then the hits will get assigned to referral and not even be checked against the paid search rule. Can you confirm which order your rules are in?

The next thing I would check is make sure your query string parameters aren’t malformed. It’s unlikely to be the cause, but it’s a good idea just to check and make sure that they’re formatted correctly to be recognized as valid QSPs.

Jennifer_Dungan

Accepted solution

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

I agree with @MandyGeorge check the order… but the next thing, is what metric are you looking at? Are you sure you aren’t just seeing the result of cross-channel attribution?

A common mistake that people make when troubleshooting Marketing Channels is forgetting that there can be multiple channels within the same visit.

First, please look at the metric “Marketing Channel Instances” against your Channel breakdowns and see if you still have as many Google CPC hits as you believe.

Also, when was the last time you updated your rules and what retention period are you using (default is 30 days). It’s possible if you made recent changes, you might be seeing traffic that was mis-associated before your recent change and you either need to wait 30 days for that data to clear, or you need to force a reset of your channels so that you start with clean data from “point X”

Could you share some screenshots of your rules? There may be something strange there that wasn’t included in your description of your rules, but it might be impacting what’s happening? I would expect Adobe should trim whitespace on the rules, but to be safe, make sure there are no extra spaces in your Paid Search rules (just in case). I believe that Marketing Channel Rules should not be case sensitive, but that could be something to check as well?

Do you have a QA or Dev suite? Can you set up the rules there and test in isolation?

Good Luck, and hoping to hear more details.

B

BryceR22Author

Level 2

Thanks Jennifer.

A few additional details:

Marketing Channel Settings

Marketing Channel expiration = 30 days of inactivity
Rules were updated more than 30 days ago
Paid Search is above Referral in processing order

What I'm Looking At

The metric I'm primarily using is First Time Visits, not just Visits or Unique Visitors.

Example

When I segment to:

Marketing Channel = Referral

and then break down by:

Referrer → google.com

I find:

Campaign UTM Medium = cpc
Campaign UTM Source = google
Campaign UTM Campaign = evergreen: branded search (this is a Google paid search cpc campaign)

with hundreds of First Time Visits.

Additional Validation

Using Adobe Experience Platform Debugger, I confirmed the landing URL contains:

utm_source=google
utm_medium=cpc

and these are paid search landing pages.

My confusion is that these appear to be first-touch Google CPC visits, yet they are being classified as Referral rather than Paid Search.

B

BryceR22Author

Level 2

Screenshot 4

A

ArturoRi1

Level 1

Moving my answer to the right Community Profile.

Arturo Rivero

Anonymous_badger

Level 1

Hi @BryceR22

The details you provided actually make me think this is not a rules problem. If Paid Search is above Referral and the debugger shows the UTMs in the landing page URL, then the Paid Search rule should have fired on the first hit. Jennifer’s answer points in the right direction, from my perspective, with more than one channel present during the same visit. I would lean into the segment you built to further refine it.

Quick check: pull the same report using First Touch Channel, instead of Marketing Channel. If those same visits show as Paid search, then nothing is broken (remember that the Marketing Channel Dimension is Last Touch). Drop in Marketing Channel Instances and breakdown by Marketing Channel Detail: if you see two instances, the second one with a search engine as the referrer, then this is your confirmation that there was a mid-visit re-entry.

If the mid-visit flipping is real but you don't want it, the standard fix is adding "Is First Page of Visit = Yes" to your Referral rule. That's how Adobe's own default Direct and Internal rules are scoped, and it stops Referral from matching anything but the entry hit.

Hope this helps.

Arturo Rivero

B

BryceR22Author

Level 2

Hi @Anonymous_badger

Thanks for the suggestion. I ran the same analysis using First Touch Channel and attached the results.

The outcome was very different from what I was seeing with the Marketing Channel dimension:

Paid Search = 339 First Time Visits (94.4%)
Organic Search = 10 First Time Visits (2.8%)
Referral = 5 First Time Visits (1.4%)

Based on that, it looks like the vast majority of acquisition traffic is being classified correctly as Paid Search on first touch.

What I'm still trying to understand is why I continue to see paid search campaign values (evergreen: branded search, evergreen: electrification, etc.) when I break down Organic Search and Referral further. Based on the First Touch results, am I correct that I may be mixing channel attribution scope with campaign attribution scope, rather than seeing a true Paid Search classification issue?

manpreetkaur27

Adobe Support

Hi @BryceR22 Were you able to complete the validations outlined by Jennifer? Please let me know if there are any remaining questions.

B

BryceR22Author

Level 2

Hi Manpreet,

Yes, I completed the additional validations suggested by Jennifer and Anonymous Badger.

I ran the same analysis using First Touch Channel instead of the Marketing Channel dimension and found that Paid Search accounted for 339 First Time Visits (94.4%), while Referral accounted for only 5 First Time Visits (1.4%).

That helped clarify that most acquisition traffic appears to be entering through Paid Search as expected.

However, I'm still trying to understand why I continue to see paid search campaign values (for example, evergreen: branded search, evergreen: electrification, etc.) when I break down Organic Search and Referral further.

I've shared the results back with Jennifer and am waiting for her thoughts, but if you have any additional insight into whether this is expected attribution behavior or something worth investigating further, I would appreciate your perspective as well.

Thank you.

Jennifer_Dungan

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Still trying to figure it out… cause on the surface, your rules look good… but there must be one part of the puzzle we just aren’t seeing…

Marketing Channel Settings

What I'm Looking At

Example

Additional Validation

Sign up

Login with SSO

Login to the community

Login with SSO

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded