Hit Level Segment and Last touch channel based report...

[harshkumarsharan]

I have created a segment with only entry page conditions and none of these entry pages are linked to any paid search campaigns, but when pulling up a report on Last touch channel it shows new numbers under Paid search for this hit level segment.

Hit level segment: Entry page is x, Entry page is y

Last touch channel                 Visit
PAID SEARCH                       100
-Breakdown by Entry page
Page x                                     50
Page y                                      50

[yuhuisg · Accepted solution]

Entry (and Exit) Pages are visit-scoped. So even though you have used a Hit-scoped segment, you're basically telling AA "return all hits where the visits of those hits had the first page of visit (i.e. Entry Page) set to x or y".

Furthermore, Marketing Channels are set per-hit, but visits are time-based (i.e. hits are within 30 minutes of each other). So you could have a situation where, midway through a visit, the Marketing Channel got set to "Paid Search".

For example:

12:00pm: Page X, Marketing Channel = "Organic Search"

12:02: something

12:03: something

12:14: Page A, Marketing Channel = "Paid Search"

The above 4 hits belong to the same visit where the first page was page X (i.e. Entry Page = X), but the first 3 hits are attributed to "Organic Search" while the 4th one is attributed to "Paid Search". This visit matches your segment's and your report's conditions. So it gets counted as one of those 50 for the "Page x" row in your example table.

[harshkumarsharan]

Yes I am able to get the gist now but can you please also explain a few cases where Marketing channel can get changed to Paid search from Organic or Direct?

for ex-

1) Can this be a case - User opens tab 1 - Page x directly then visits page 2 then page 3 (Last touch channel here is Direct only)

2)Or the above mentioned scenario happens and then simultaneously the same user opens google and searches and then enters to page 4 (Which is paid search linked via tracking code)
PS - It is not possible for the user to access a paid search page from the usual journey as the paid search pages are defined by Tracking codes

[yuhuisg]

Scenario (2) is the more likely scenario.

Analytics systems have no knowledge of the user's tabbed browsing behaviour, they just track hit after hit after hit. So all of the hits are recorded as if they are coming from the same browser tab. So (1) is unlikely to be the case.