Overview
The Traffic Rules feature allows Triple Whale customers to create custom traffic rules that override the default attribution logic based on specific conditions. In this article, we will explore how to use the different components of the Traffic Rules feature to ensure accurate traffic attribution. We've created our own default recommended rules, and you will also be able to create your own. Let's dive in!
Why Traffic Rules?
Attribution is about assigning order revenue credit to the appropriate sources. A large part of how Triple Pixel does that is through tracking the UTMs and referrer sites identified in a customer's journey, and then providing you with the attribution models necessary to give or withhold credit as you see fit.
For a variety of reasons, there may be steps in the customer journey which you want to either exclude entirely or to be identified in a particular way. Allow me to provide a few examples:
PayPal Checkout -- Customers are redirected from your site to PayPal (or any third-party checkout) to confirm payment. Yet PayPal shouldn't appear as a "credited source" for that purchase alongside your marketing channels.
Google Chrome redirects -- Unrelated to Google Branded Search, Google appends a UTM of
google.com/url?q=to redirect links. We want to ensure that Google Ads isn't receiving credit for those events.Hubspot -- Hubspot automatically appends a UTM of _hsenc= to certain links. We want to ensure that these are recognized properly as coming from Hubspot, so that Hubspot gets rightful credit in this instance.
For these such as the ones above, we created Traffic Rules. Using custom rules, you can override the standard attribution logic and ensure your data tells the right story.
Rules in a Nutshell
A Traffic Rule works as an if/then equation.
If the assigned Condition/s are met, then the desired Action is taken.
For our purposes, there are two outcome options for any assigned Condition:
Exclude/Ignore this traffic event from your attribution data
Assign this traffic to Channel X (selected by you)
Note: Unless all assigned conditions are met, the action will not be taken.
Global Traffic Rules
Since there are many widely-shared instances where traffic should be redirected, we created our Global Traffic Rules. This is a set of pre-defined rules that makes your attribution data more accurate. By automatically removing irrelevant traffic sources and rerouting misleading traffic to the right attributed source, we ensure that you can give more credit to the sources that matter. Although we recommend keeping Global Traffic Rules on, you can always turn them off at any time.
Custom Traffic Rules
You can also create your own custom rules to override the attribution logic. Let's walk through the process of creating a custom traffic rule together.
In our example, myshop.com is a DTC brand owned by Tony. Tony also runs a blog, hosted at blog.myshop.com. Tony wants to exclude blog.myshop.com so that it doesn't appear as an (organic) attribution source.
Conditions
First, we will assign the Conditions for Tony's rule. Conditions are defined with these three fields:
Source - Page URL, Referrer.
Evaluator - Contains, Does not contain, Is, Is Not.
Value - a free text field.
In our example, where traffic is arriving at Myshop.com from blog.Myshop.com, Tony doesn't want his blog to appear as an attribution source. Therefore, he would define the Condition as "Referrer Contains blog.myshop.com".
Tony also wants to exclude traffic from his Quiz sub-domain, quiz.myshop.com. To do this, he would click + Add Condition and choose the relationship between the first and second conditions:
Or - either of the conditions has to be met for the action to be executed.
And - all conditions must be met for the action to be executed.
Since, in our example, Tony wants his Blog and Quiz traffic to be excluded in either circumstance (i.e. not just when both criteria are met in a single customer journey, he will select Or as the relationship between his assigned conditions.
Actions
Once you have defined the conditions, it's time to define an action -- your desired outcome from this if/then formula. As we mentioned earlier, there are two outcome options for any assigned Condition:
Exclude/Ignore -- Traffic from this page will be ignored in your attribution data
For example, you might want to exclude a source you don't need, like a payment gateway.
Assign to Channel -- Assign any traffic meeting the assigned condition/s to a channel.
To select an existing channel, start typing in the field and a list of matching channels will appear.
If you don't choose any available channels in the dropdown, we will create a new one for you.
For example, you might want to group all traffic with a unique URL parameter (such as an affiliate ID) into a new "affiliate" channel.
FAQ
Q: How many custom rules can I have?
A: As many as you like. Keep in mind that we evaluate rules in the order they are sorted. Once the conditions of a rule are met, we execute the action and stop evaluating the rules for that event.
Q: Are the attribution changes permanent?
A: Yes. Once you create and activate the rule, all the changes to attribution are permanent. Therefore, if you have a rule that excludes particular sources, all matching page visits will be excluded. You can turn off the rule, affecting only future page views.
Q: Are rules case-sensitive?
A: No. We transform both the conditions and the URL to lowercase before checking for any matches.