Referrer-Based Channels: Dashboard Behavior Explained

“Organic, Referral, and Social attribution works slightly differently — here’s how.”

Overview

In Meritto, when leads arrive via Organic, Referral, or Social traffic, their attribution is determined based on the referrer URL (i.e., the domain the visitor came from before landing on your site or widget). These sources behave a bit differently in the Campaign Dashboard due to the nature of how they’re captured, and this article walks you through exactly what to expect.

How Attribution Works for Referrer-Based Channels?

When a lead visits your website/form without explicit UTM parameters, Meritto uses the referrer URL domain to classify the source.

Here’s how the system handles it:

This <referrer domain> is also stored as the Referrer Name, used in reporting.

How does it appear in the Campaign Dashboard?

When you open the Campaign Dashboard → Traffic Channel accordion for:

• Organic
• Referral
• Social

You will not see Publisher rows under these channels. Instead, you'll see Referrer Name-level rows, such as:

• Google (under Organic)
• Facebook (under Social)
• Indianexpress (under Referral)

This happens because these leads are mapped via referrer logic.

What You Should Know?

Associating Custom Publishers to These Channels

If you associate custom publishers (e.g., "instituteDunia", "Partner A") to these traffic channels:

• They will show up as Publisher rows
• However, you won’t see campaign-level drilldowns (Track Campaign) like in other channels
• The behavior won’t be consistent with Paid Ads, Offline, etc.

These publishers are treated differently from referrer-based leads in these specific channels.

Moving System Publishers (Organic, Referral, Social) to Other Channels

If you move the Organic, Referral, or Social publishers into a different traffic channel:

• The Referrer Name–level grouping will not be shown in the Campaign Dashboard under that new channel
• All leads under that publisher will now display under a single Publisher row (like "organic", "referral", or "social")
• However, this is just a visibility difference — the referrer data is not lost

Once the publisher is moved back to its original traffic channel (Organic, Referral, or Social), the Referrer Name–level rows will reappear in the dashboard.

Example: google and bing will collapse under just "organic".

Our Recommendation

To view domain-level attribution correctly:

• Keep Organic, Referral, and Social publishers in their default traffic channels
• Avoid mixing manual publishers into these unless you have a clear reason

Summary Table