Direct traffic tracking allows your team to track Partner-level traffic without the use of a tracking link.
Most click traffic tracking uses tracking links, embedded links in ads, logos, or text on Partner sites. Direct Traffic Tracking, however, identifies the source of consumer traffic arriving on your website without using a tracking link. Instead, information from the landing page URL or the referring URL identifies the source of the traffic.
Set up direct traffic tracking
Navigate to Partners → Partners.
Under the Actions column, select
[Drop-down menu] → Tracking.Select Direct Traffic Tracking.
Set up your Rules to identify the traffic. You can read an explanation of the identification rules below.
Select Save.
There are three ways to identify traffic—by Landing Page, by Referring URL, or by both. Each tracking method has a sub-section, and, depending on how your Partner’s traffic is recognized, you will need to set up rules to instruct impact.com on how to categorize the inbound traffic.
Note
Each identification rule additionally requires a matching rule, so stricter or more lenient combinations can be set (e.g., contains, starts with, does not contain, exactly matches, etc.).
Landing Page | Description |
Landing Page URL | Identify traffic based on landing page URL or porting of it. |
Landing Page Domain | If your program has multiple domains and a domain for each Partner (known as Unique Domains), set the rules here. |
Landing Page Query String | Match by the parameter name only, regardless of the parameter value. For example, adding a link with a dynamic value, |
Landing Page Parameter | Use when the landing page parameter is a fixed name=value pair. For example, if you want to track when Partners send traffic to |
Tip
As a referring URL is not always available, setting up landing page rules instead is recommended. Many factors can hinder Using Referral URL Parameters.
Referring URL | Description |
Referring URL | Configure the Partner traffic to be matched by the referring URL. Specify a list of comma-separated domains, or match part of the domain, using wildcard matching. For example, matching on the directory part of the URL - |
Referring Domain | For example, all traffic from petercoupons.com impact.com attributes to the Partner: Peter Coupons. |
Referring Query String | Use when a specific parameter name is present in the referring URL. For example, adding a link with a dynamic value, |
Referring Parameter | Use when the Referring URL contains a specific name=value query string pair. For example, if you want to track when the Partners sends traffic to |
If both landing page and referring URL domains are enabled, using the following for guidance on how to create a rule:
Rule | Description |
AND | Requires a match of both the landing page and referring domain. |
OR | This option is more flexible and allows for a match of either the landing page or referring domain. If "OR" is selected, the landing page method takes precedence in the case of any conflicts. |
Note
If you want to track the events using direct traffic, you'll need the UTT and Identity Function tags on every page of your website.
Tip
Create a 'test' partner account to set up Direct Traffic Tracking on the Partner account with all of the required rules and then follow the Direct Traffic Path to see if everything tracks as expected. Doing this will help troubleshoot your setup and help advise with other Partners’ configurations.