Where Leads Come From (Attribution)

Attribution is the record of how a visitor reached your site before they filled in a form, finished a quiz, booked, registered for an event or paid. Hiveality reads the campaign tags on the link they clicked (the utm_ parameters), the site that referred them and the page they landed on, and saves that with the thing they did.

This page explains exactly what is recorded, when a channel gets credit, and how to tag your links so paid campaigns show up correctly.

What is recorded

Every form submission, quiz result, booking, event registration and order stores:

• Campaign tags: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term and utm_content from the link the visitor arrived on.
• Referrer: the outside site that sent them, for example instagram.com or google.com. Visitors who type your address or use a bookmark have no referrer.
• Landing page: the first page of the visit.
• Ad click IDs: gclid (Google Ads), fbclid (Meta), ttclid (TikTok) and msclkid (Microsoft) when the link carries one.

Hiveality features that send traffic around your own site add their own tags so you can tell them apart: Buzz cards use utm_source=buzz, BioLink pages use utm_source=bio, and webinar room links use utm_source=webinar.

How credit is assigned

• Tags follow the visitor through the visit. If someone arrives on a tagged link, browses several pages, then books, the booking keeps the tags. You do not need the form on the landing page.
• A new tagged link replaces the old one. If a visitor clicks an Instagram link, then later in the same visit clicks a Google Ad, the Google tags win.
• Untagged navigation changes nothing. Clicking around your menu never blanks the source.
• The referrer and landing page belong to the start of the visit. They describe how the visit began, not the visitor's first ever visit to your site.
• A visit ends when the browser tab or window is closed. A visitor who comes back tomorrow starts a fresh visit. If that return is untagged, their submission shows as Direct.

What "Direct" means

Direct means no campaign tags and no outside referrer were seen for that visit. It covers typed addresses, bookmarks, links in most messaging apps, and some links that browsers strip the referrer from. It does not mean the visitor never came from an ad, only that this visit did not carry that information.

Remembering earlier visits (rolling out)

Hiveality is rolling out a persistent memory so a visitor who clicked an ad one day and converted on a later day is still credited to the ad. When it is on for your site:

• The first visit that arrived on a tagged link or from an outside site is remembered for 90 days as the original source. It is kept until it expires.
• The most recent tagged visit is kept as the latest source and updates each time the visitor arrives on a new tagged link.
• Both are stored with each conversion, so reports can show first-touch and last-touch side by side.
• The one exception: if the original source was one of Hiveality's own internal tags (Buzz, BioLink, webinar) and a real outside source arrives later, the outside source becomes the original source. A Google Ad is never replaced by a Buzz card click, but a Buzz click is replaced by a later Google Ad.
• On sites using the consent banner, the memory is only kept after the visitor accepts analytics.

Until it is enabled for your site, reports reflect the single-visit rules above. Ask support if you want to know whether your site has it.

Tag every paid link

Ad platforms do not always pass their click information through to your site, and Hiveality does not infer a source from a click ID alone. Put UTM tags on every destination URL in Google Ads, Meta, TikTok and email campaigns. For example:

https://www.example.com/quiz?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=sleep-quiz

Tips that keep reports clean:

• Use lowercase, consistent values (google not Google, cpc not paid).
• Name campaigns the same way in every platform so they group together.
• Point paid links at a page where the visitor converts in the same visit, such as a quiz or booking page, so the credit is not lost to a later untagged return.

Where to see it

• Forms: the Forms area shows submissions by source, medium and campaign, with filters, in Forms.
• Quizzes: each quiz's analytics panel shows top UTM sources.
• Funnels: the funnel analytics dialog shows a channel breakdown for each funnel.
• Buzz, BioLink and webinars: their own analytics count leads, registrations, bookings and revenue using these tags.
• Contacts: a contact's activity feed records the source on each form submission.

The Website tab in Business Intelligence shows visits and referrers from site analytics. It does not show campaign tags, because site analytics deliberately drops query strings for privacy. Use the conversion reports above for campaign questions.

Common questions

Someone clicked my Instagram link, came back a week later from a Google Ad and booked. Who gets credit? With the single-visit rules, Google. When the persistent memory is on for your site, Google is the latest source and Instagram is kept as the original source.

My ad clicks show as Direct. Check that the destination URL in the ad platform carries UTM tags. A click ID on its own is not enough. Also check whether the visitor converted in a later visit, which reads as Direct until the persistent memory is enabled.

Does opening a link in a new tab lose the tags? Usually a new tab starts a fresh visit. Modern browsers open new tabs isolated from the page that opened them, so the visit's tags do not carry across. Tags on the link itself are still read, which is one more reason to tag every paid link rather than rely on the visit.

Does the cookie banner affect this? The single-visit record works without consent. The persistent 90-day memory respects the analytics choice on sites that use the banner.