When visitors arrive at your website, you likely want to know: "Where did they find me? Was it Google Search, an Instagram Story, a LINE Official Account, or did they click through after asking ChatGPT or Google Gemini?"
In the "Traffic Sources" card under "Analytics › Overview" in your dashboard, Kanorio provides three tabs—"Source Channels," "AI Assistants," and "Marketing Campaigns"—to help you evaluate your acquisition performance from different angles.
We count the "first page of the session" only; internal navigation is never inflated: Traffic sources are calculated based on "sessions (the first page of each visit)". For example, if a visitor clicks from Instagram to your homepage and then views 4 other pages on your site, the system records it as 1 Instagram source. It will not miscount the subsequent 4 internal page views as "Direct." The system also automatically excludes your own domain to ensure the source proportions are accurate.
Switch to the "Source Channels" tab to see a ranked list and percentage of all channels driving visitors to your site (including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, LINE, YouTube, TikTok, X/Twitter, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, major AI assistants, and other external sites).
In many traditional analytics tools, when visitors click a link from a mobile LINE chat, Instagram profile, or Threads, the mobile app typically does not pass a Referrer URL. Consequently, these visits are often dumped into a "Direct" bucket.
Kanorio implements Smart Multi-Layer Attribution (checking 4 signals in order) to help you recover lost social traffic:
utm_source, Google Ads gclid, Meta Ads fbclid, ChatGPT referral parameter oppref).When you see "Direct" traffic, it typically includes:
Switch to the second tab, "AI Assistants" (also visible in the "AI & Security" card on your "Overview" dashboard), to view a ranking of real visitors driven by ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot.
This is a common point of confusion—simply put, one is "a bot crawling your site," and the other is "a real person walking into your store after reading an AI recommendation."
| Comparison | Overview › Traffic Sources › AI Assistant | Analytics › AI Bots Tab |
|---|---|---|
| Who is tracked? | Real potential customers | AI company automated crawlers (Bots) |
| Scenario | A real person asks a question in ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Claude, and the AI includes your website link in the response. The person clicks the link to visit your site. | OpenAI (GPTBot), Anthropic (ClaudeBot), Google, and others send automated programs to read your web content to build knowledge bases or retrieve answers in real-time. |
| Business Significance | You have already gained actual traffic and business opportunities! | This indicates your website content has been indexed by AI, which is the foundation for receiving "AI Assistant" traffic (see ). |
How can I get more visitors from ChatGPT and Gemini? We recommend writing clear, structured service descriptions and blog posts that directly answer common customer questions, and keeping "Search Bots" enabled in .
If you have a link in your Instagram bio, a "Summer Sale" post in your Stories, and a broadcast message in your LINE Official Account, looking at "Source Channels" only tells you that "100 people came from Instagram and LINE today." It doesn't tell you which specific post or campaign brought them.
By adding a short ?utm_... tag (UTM parameter) to your shared URL and switching to the "Marketing Campaigns" tab (or the UTM traffic source tab in ), you can clearly see the performance of each individual campaign.
You don't need to install any tools. Just append ? and the following parameters (connected by &) to your public URL:
| Parameter Name | Meaning | Common Examples |
|---|---|---|
utm_source (Required) | Which platform is the link on? | instagram、line、facebook、newsletter、qrcode |
utm_medium (Optional) | What is the format of the exposure? | bio、story、post、cpc、email |
utm_campaign (Recommended) | What is the name of this campaign or topic? | 2026_summer_sale、new_menu_launch、vip_only |
Reporting Rules: When a URL contains
utm_campaign, the "Marketing Campaigns" list displays your campaign name (e.g.,2026_summer_sale). If onlyutm_sourceandutm_mediumare filled, it will automatically combine them asinstagram / story.
Assuming your website URL is https://shop.example.com:
https://shop.example.com/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=bio&utm_campaign=ig_profilehttps://shop.example.com/shop?utm_source=line&utm_medium=broadcast&utm_campaign=autumn_menuhttps://shop.example.com/?utm_source=qrcode&utm_medium=poster&utm_campaign=taipei_storeNot at all! UTM parameters are just "invisible name tags" for your analytics system; the page content remains identical. Furthermore, Kanorio automatically sets a Canonical URL for all pages, so Google search engines will not index duplicate pages due to UTM parameters.
Yes, as long as the URL shortener or QR Code generator preserves the original ?utm_... parameters during the redirect (which most mainstream services do), the attribution will remain accurate when the visitor arrives at your site.
We recommend that your team standardizes on "lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores" (e.g., always use instagram instead of mixing IG and Instagram). While Kanorio automatically merges common sources (like ig and instagram) into "Instagram," the campaign name (utm_campaign) will reflect exactly what you type. Consistent naming makes your reports much cleaner and easier to read!