Channels and sources in Analytics

2 min readChecked against the dashboard on 16 October 2026

The By channel table at the bottom of Analytics → Overview splits your traffic and sales by where they came from. Open a channel to see every source inside it.

The channels

SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Other paid ads, Organic social, Email, Direct, Referral and Other. When your sales come from a connected store, you may also see No source recorded: orders that arrived without any source attached.

The columns

Column	What it shows
Traffic	Visits from that channel
Orders or Conversions	Store orders, or conversions when there are no store orders
Revenue	Sales credited to the channel
Spend	Ad spend, for the paid channels
ROAS / cost	Return on that spend

Each figure shows its change against the previous period. The Total row sums everything.

Sources inside a channel

Click the arrow beside a channel, or the "sources" count next to its name, to list its sources: for example which search engines sit inside SEO, or which websites inside Referral. Use the search box above the table to find one source by name, such as "bing" or a website address.

Sources only appear once the detailed sync has run, so a newly connected Google Analytics account can show channels before it shows sources.

Small notes under a channel

Reported by the platform: the figures come from Google or Meta themselves, usually because Google Analytics isn't connected.
From the Brainito pixel: traffic counted by the pixel on your website.
No data in this period: the channel is connected but had nothing in the range.
Connect Google Analytics or Search Console: shown on SEO when neither is connected.

When Google Analytics is connected, an ad row can show two sets of numbers: what Google Analytics saw, and underneath, what the ad platform itself reported. Platforms count differently, so the two rarely match exactly.

Going deeper

Click a channel's name to open its detail page: Email opens your email metrics, Google Ads and Meta Ads open their campaigns, and SEO, Direct and Referral open Website Traffic.

Export CSV at the top of the page downloads this table for the range you are viewing.

Next: open Analytics, expand your biggest channel and check which sources are driving it.

What the Analytics page showsAnalytics puts your website traffic, sales and ad spend on one page, split by marketing channel. Open Marketing Manager in the sidebar and choose Analytics. It has an Overview tab, a Data sources tab and, if it is switch How sales are credited to channelsWhen you have a connected store, Analytics counts your store's own paid orders, after refunds, and credits each one to the channel its buyer last came from. This is called last-click (or last-touch) attribution.Data sources and missing numbersThe Data sources tab in Analytics shows what feeds the page and whether each feed is up to date. When a number looks missing, wrong or stuck, start here.Reading your email metricsThe Metrics page is the overview across everything you send.

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