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GA4 Channel Grouping Checker
Enter the source, medium and campaign of a link, or paste a list of full URLs, and see which default channel group Google Analytics 4 will most likely put the traffic in, which of Google's rules matched, and what to fix. It is built for problems like sessions landing in Paid Search when you are not running any paid campaign.
Private by design
Everything on this page runs in your browser using fixed rules. There is no server involved, and nothing you paste or type is sent anywhere or saved. Your rows are held in memory only and disappear when you refresh or close the page, so copy your results before you leave.
The site's ordinary page analytics follow your cookie settings and only record which part of the tool was reached, never what you typed.
Rules as of 3 November 2026
The checker implements the manual-traffic rules in Google's own documentation: [GA4] Default channel group. See also Google’s list of sources and categories, Traffic-source dimensions, manual tagging, and auto-tagging and Collect campaign data with custom URLs. Google can change these definitions at any time, so check the official page if a result surprises you.
- This predicts the default channel group only. It does not model custom channel groups, the primary channel group you may have edited, or data-driven attribution.
- Google applies the same definitions to three dimensions: Default channel group (event scope, using the property’s attribution model), Session default channel group (session scope, last click) and First user default channel group (user scope, last click). The rules below are the same for all three; which one a report shows depends on the report.
- Google owns the source lists (search, social, shopping and video) and can change them and the definitions at any time. This tool carries a small, labelled sample of the lists and flags everything else rather than guessing.
- Google’s page does not say which rule is checked first when several match. This tool follows the order the rules are listed in and tells you whenever that choice could change the answer.
- The checker cannot see the referrer, the Google Ads ad network type, or whether your Google Ads account is linked. Those can change what GA4 reports for the same URL.
Results
Rules as of . Predicts Google’s default channel group only.
| Row | As entered | Predicted channel | Confidence | Rule that matched | Why and checks |
|---|
What the confidence labels mean
Row
The rules this checker applies
These are Google's manual-traffic definitions in the order its page lists them, in plain words. Google does not say that the order is a priority order, but some rules only make sense if they are checked first (a Paid Search rule would never fire if Organic Search were checked before it), so this tool reads the list from the top. Where that choice could change an answer, the result is labelled "Depends on rule order". Matching ignores capital letters, as Google's page states.
8 of the rules depend on Google's lists of search, social, shopping and video sources. The checker carries a labelled sample of 70 well-known sources and a short list of common values it checked and did not find, and treats everything else as unknown rather than guessing.
| Order | Channel | Rule in plain words | Uses Google's source list |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Direct | Source is exactly (direct) and medium is (not set) or (none). | No |
| 2 | Cross-network | The campaign name contains “cross-network”. | No |
| 3 | Paid Shopping | Source is on Google's shopping source list, or the campaign name matches the shop pattern ^(.*(([^a-df-z]|^)shop|shopping).*)$; and the medium matches the paid pattern ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$. | Yes |
| 4 | Paid Search | Source is on Google's search source list and the medium matches the paid pattern ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$. | Yes |
| 5 | Paid Social | Source is on Google's social source list and the medium matches the paid pattern ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$. | Yes |
| 6 | Paid Video | Source is on Google's video source list and the medium matches the paid pattern ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$. | Yes |
| 7 | Display | Medium is exactly one of display, banner, expandable, interstitial or cpm. | No |
| 8 | Paid Other | Medium matches the paid pattern ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$: it contains “cp” anywhere, or is exactly “ppc” or “retargeting”, or starts with “paid”. This is the catch-all for paid-looking mediums that no source-specific paid rule claimed. | No |
| 9 | Organic Shopping | Source is on Google's shopping source list, or the campaign name matches the shop pattern ^(.*(([^a-df-z]|^)shop|shopping).*)$ (the word “shopping” anywhere, or “shop” at the start or after a character that is not a letter other than e). | Yes |
| 10 | Organic Social | Source is on Google's social source list, or the medium is exactly one of social, social-network, social-media, sm, social network or social media. | Yes |
| 11 | Organic Video | Source is on Google's video source list, or the medium contains “video” anywhere. | Yes |
| 12 | Organic Search | Source is on Google's search source list, or the medium is exactly “organic”. | Yes |
| 13 | AI Assistant | Medium is exactly “ai-assistant”. (Google also assigns this automatically when the referrer is one of its listed AI assistants; a pasted URL cannot show that.) | No |
| 14 | Referral | Medium is exactly one of referral, app or link. | No |
| 15 | Source or medium equals one of email, e-mail, e_mail or e mail. | No | |
| 16 | Affiliates | Medium equals “affiliate”. | No |
| 17 | Audio | Medium is exactly “audio”. | No |
| 18 | SMS | Source or medium is exactly “sms”. | No |
| 19 | Mobile Push Notifications | Medium ends with “push”, or contains “mobile” or “notification” anywhere, or source is exactly “firebase”. | No |
| 20 | Unassigned | None of the rules above matched, so Google reports the traffic as Unassigned. | No |
Google Ads clicks follow a separate set of rows based on the ad network type and campaign type, which are not in a URL. For those, the checker lists the possibilities and says what the tags alone would give if the click ID could not be used.
Frequently asked questions
What is a default channel group in GA4?
It is Google’s own set of rules for sorting traffic into broad buckets such as Organic Search, Paid Social, Email, Referral, Direct and Unassigned, based on the source, medium and campaign of a visit. The definitions are fixed by Google and cannot be edited. You can build your own custom channel groups alongside them, but those are a separate thing from the default grouping this tool checks.
Why did my traffic land in Paid Search when I am not running ads?
Google’s definition has two ways to reach Paid Search. A hand-tagged link lands there when its source is on Google’s search list (google, bing and so on) and its medium matches the paid pattern: contains “cp” anywhere, or is ppc, retargeting, or starts with “paid”. That test reads the tags, not your spend. A Google Ads click lands there when its ad network type is Search or Partners, or its campaign type is Search, Hotel or Travel. To find out which applies to you, open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, set the dimension to Session source / medium, and filter on the Paid Search channel. Then add Landing page and Session Google Ads campaign to see where the sessions arrive and whether Google Ads is involved. Also check Admin, Product links, for a linked Google Ads account. This tool tells you what a given tag would do; it cannot tell you where the sessions in your property came from.
Will fixing my UTM tags change my historical data?
Correcting a link only affects visits that arrive after the corrected link is live. Sessions already recorded keep the source, medium and campaign they arrived with. Google also says its channel definitions may evolve, and notes that some integration data from before 15 June 2022 can be inconsistent. The pages used for this tool do not say whether a change to the definitions is applied to past data, so compare a date range before and after any change in your own reports.
Is this the same as my custom channel group?
No. This checker applies only Google’s default definitions. A custom channel group, or an edited primary channel group, uses rules you wrote, so the same traffic can sit in a different bucket there. If a report uses a custom group, this tool’s answer will not necessarily match it.
How do UTMs interact with Google Ads auto-tagging (gclid)?
Google says that when manual tags and auto-tagging are both present, it uses the auto-tagged values for source and medium. If the click ID cannot be used as intended, for example because the property is not linked to the Google Ads account, and any UTM parameter is present, Google derives all the traffic-source values from the UTMs alone. For a row with a click ID, the channel comes from Google Ads data such as the ad network type, so this tool lists the possibilities instead of naming a single channel.
Is the checker free, and are my links kept private?
It is free, with no signup and no email address. Everything runs in your browser using fixed rules. There is no server involved, and nothing you paste or type is sent anywhere or saved. The rows disappear when you refresh or close the page.
If you would like help working out what your analytics are really telling you, our Visibility Diagnostic is a separate, paid piece of work. You do not need it to use this checker.