In this article
- What Traffic Structure shows you
- Setting the date range
- Data visualization options
- Filters
- Traffic Channels
- Improving attribution with GET parameters
- By Visited Pages Per Session
- By Session Duration
- By Bounce Rate
- Internal Traffic
The Traffic Structure module shows you where your website visitors are coming from and how they engage once they arrive. You can analyse traffic by channel, pages visited per session, session duration, bounce rate, and internal navigation — all within a single module.
What Traffic Structure shows you
Traffic Structure is divided into five tabs, each covering a different angle of your incoming traffic:
- Traffic Channels — where visitors come from (direct, organic, social, email, paid ads, etc.)
- By Visited Pages Per Session — how many pages visitors browse per visit, by channel
- By Session Duration — how long visitors stay, by channel
- By Bounce Rate — the percentage of single-page visits, by channel
- Internal Traffic — page views generated by visitors already browsing your site
Go to Web Statistics → Traffic Structure to access this module.
Setting the date range
Use the date picker above the report tiles to select the time period you want to analyse. You can choose a specific day or a custom date range. Focusing on the period when a campaign or change was active makes it easier to measure its impact.
Note: The platform remembers your last-used date range, segments, and filters when you navigate between pages or log back in. When your session expires or you close the tab, it resets to the default of Last 30 Days.
Data visualization options
Each report block can be displayed in multiple formats. Switch between them using the icons at the top of each block:
| Visualization | Best used for |
|---|---|
| Line Diagram | Tracking how a metric evolves over time. Customize each line with filled, unfilled, or dashed styling via the three-dot icon next to any KPI. |
| Line Chart Stacked | Showing cumulative totals across channels — lines do not intersect because values are stacked on top of each other. |
| Stepped Line Chart | Displaying discrete changes over time using horizontal and vertical steps — useful for data collected at regular intervals. |
| Table View | Examining exact values side by side. Columns show Date, Direct, Email, Paid Ads, Organic Search, Social Media, Other Referrals, and AI Traffic. |
| Bar Chart | Comparing KPIs against each other at a glance — bar height reflects the value for each channel. |
| Radar Chart Stacked | Evaluating relative performance across multiple channels simultaneously on a single polygon chart. |
Tip: Click on any KPI label above a graph to show or hide that channel's line. This lets you focus on the channels most relevant to your analysis.
Filters
Filters are available across all report blocks and can be combined to segment your data precisely. Click the filter icon on any block to apply them.
| Filter | What it does |
|---|---|
| Browser Name / Version | Identify traffic or performance patterns related to specific browsers or versions. |
| City / Country of Visit | Analyse traffic from specific locations — useful for regional campaigns or local SEO. |
| Device Type | Compare behaviour across desktop, mobile, and tablet visitors. |
| Company Name / Category | For B2B — segment by visiting company or industry to validate which channels bring your target audience. |
| Operating System | Filter by OS to spot compatibility issues affecting specific visitor groups. |
| Page URL | View data only for visitors who arrived on a specific landing page. |
| Screen Resolution | Ensure your design renders well across the most common screen sizes used by your visitors. |
| UTM Campaign | Filter by UTM parameters to measure the performance of individual campaigns. |
| IP | Isolate or exclude traffic from specific IP addresses — useful for filtering out internal team visits. |
To add filters: click the filter icon → select a category and value → click Add New Filter to layer more. To remove filters, click the minus icon next to each or select Remove All Filters.
To save a filter combination, click Save set filters for report block, name it, and click Save Changes. Saved templates appear in the filter panel for quick reuse. To edit or delete a saved template, click the pencil icon next to its name.
Traffic Channels
This tab shows where your visitors come from. Traffic is grouped into seven channels:
| Channel | Description |
|---|---|
| Direct | Visitors who typed your URL directly, used a bookmark, or arrived from a source that did not pass referrer data. Sessions with an empty referrer are classified as Direct. |
| Traffic from email marketing campaigns, tracked when campaign URLs include email tracking parameters. | |
| Paid Ads | Traffic from paid search or display advertising. |
| Organic Search | Visitors who found your site through unpaid search engine results (Google, Bing, etc.). |
| Social Media | Traffic from social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter). |
| Other Referrals | Visitors arriving from a known referrer that does not clearly belong to any of the other channels. |
| AI Traffic | Visitors referred to your site from AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Meta AI, Mistral, and Perplexity. This tracks human visitors clicking links from these platforms, not AI bot visits. |
Note on Email traffic: Some email clients suppress the HTTP referrer, which causes email-driven visits to appear as Direct. To prevent this, add tracking parameters to all campaign URLs. See Improving attribution with GET parameters below.
Historic Development of Tracked Sessions by Channel
This chart shows how the number of sessions from each channel has changed over your selected period. Toggle individual channels on or off using the labels above the chart, and switch between daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly granularity.
Hovering over any data point shows a tooltip with the session count per channel. If comparison is enabled, it also shows the count from the previous period and a green or red percentage change.
Use the Compare button (top right of the block) to enable:
- Compare Previous Period — benchmarks against the immediately preceding equivalent period.
- Compare Year over Year — benchmarks against the same period in the previous year.
Total Website Traffic By Channel
This block displays a donut chart and bar chart side by side, showing how total sessions are distributed across channels. The total session count is shown above the donut chart. Hover over any segment or bar to see the session count and percentage for that channel. Below each bar, a green or red percentage shows change compared to the previous equivalent period.
Improving attribution with GET parameters
When referrer data is missing — common with email clients, some mobile apps, and links shared in messaging platforms — visits may be misattributed to Direct. You can fix this by adding GET parameters to your campaign URLs to force correct channel attribution.
The required format is:
https://your-landing-page.com/?_channel=[channel]&_category=[category]
Available channel values:
| Parameter value | Maps to channel |
|---|---|
email |
|
paid |
Paid Ads |
search |
Organic Search |
social |
Social Media |
unknown |
Other Referrals |
The category value is free text — use it to identify the specific source (e.g., gmail, outlook, instagram, google).
Examples:
https://www.yoursite.com/?_channel=email&_category=gmailhttps://www.yoursite.com/?_channel=social&_category=instagramhttps://www.yoursite.com/?_channel=paid&_category=google
By Visited Pages Per Session
This tab shows how many pages visitors browse on average during a session, broken down by traffic channel. Higher values indicate visitors are exploring more of your content.
Average Pages Visited Per Session Overall
This tile shows the overall average across all channels for the selected period, with a green or red percentage indicating the change versus the previous equivalent period.
Note: Days with zero data are excluded from the average to avoid distorting the result. If a visitor views the same page multiple times in one session, it counts only once.
Historic Development by Traffic Channel
This chart shows how pages per session has evolved over time for each channel. Toggle channels on or off, switch between time granularities, and use the Compare button to benchmark against a previous period or year over year.
By Session Duration
This tab shows how long visitors stay on your site on average, by traffic channel. Longer durations typically indicate higher engagement with your content.
Average Session Duration Overall
This tile shows the overall average session duration for the selected period, with a percentage comparison to the previous equivalent period shown in green (improvement) or red (decline).
Note: Sessions with only one page view are excluded from the average — session duration requires at least two page interactions to calculate. This may understate average duration for single-page websites.
Historic Development by Traffic Channel
This chart shows how average session duration has changed over time per channel. Switch between daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly views. Use the Compare button to benchmark against a previous period or the same period last year.
By Bounce Rate
This tab shows the bounce rate — the percentage of sessions where the visitor viewed only one page before leaving — by traffic channel. A lower bounce rate indicates more engaged visitors.
Bounce Rate Overall
This tile shows the overall bounce rate for the selected period. A green percentage indicates the bounce rate has fallen (improved) compared to the previous period; red indicates it has risen.
Note: A "bounce" is any session with only a single page interaction, regardless of how long the visitor spent on the page or how they left.
Historic Development by Traffic Channel
This chart shows how bounce rate has evolved per channel over time. Toggle individual channels, switch between time granularities, and use the Compare button to add a comparison period. Hover over any data point for exact values.
Internal Traffic
Internal Traffic measures page views generated by visitors who had already visited at least one other page during their session — regardless of where the session originally came from. This reflects how well your site encourages deeper navigation.
How it is calculated
For example, if three sessions visit 1, 4, and 3 pages respectively:
- Total page views: 8 (1 + 4 + 3)
- Internal page views: 5 (the 3 second-and-beyond pages from session 2, and 2 from session 3)
- Internal vs. overall ratio: 5 ÷ 8 = 62.5%
Note: All sessions with an internal referrer are attributed to the Direct channel in the Traffic Channels tab.
Internal Page Views vs. Overall Page View Traffic
This report block displays a chart comparing internal page views to total page views over time. You can isolate either line for focused analysis or display both together to see the overall ratio. Switch between available visualization types, group by day, week, month, or year, and use the Compare button to benchmark against a previous period or year over year.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.